Haley DeProspero scrimped and saved for the trip to Beijing.
Once her fiance, Jonathan Horton, made the U.S. Olympic men’s gymnastics team, she was ready to buy her plane ticket and make her hotel reservations.
He said no.
“I’d worry about you the whole time,” Horton told DeProspero.
She argued, but he insisted. So, instead of watching in person as Horton led the Americans to the bronze medal and finished ninth in the all-around this week, DeProspero watched from Norman.
“I would love to be there to celebrate with him,” she said after the team finals. “But … I don’t want to distract him. I want him to be comfortable, and for him to be comfortable, that was to have me here.”
Horton worried about DeProspero’s safety in China, and that point was driven home over the weekend. The U.S. men’s volleyball coach’s in-laws were stabbed by an unknown attacker. His father-in-law was killed, his mother-in-law seriously wounded.
Horton called DeProspero when news of the attack broke.
“Especially now,” he told her, “I’m so glad you’re there.”
Horton also tried to convince his parents to stay in the United States, but they decided to make the trip to China.
“I’m a little bit of a worrier when it comes to my family,” Horton said before leaving for Beijing. “We’ll be taken care of in the village, but I’ll be worried about them the whole time.”
DeProspero will watch from afar again when Horton competes in the high bar finals. She still isn’t thrilled with the fact that she’s in Norman instead of Beijing, but with Horton being only 22 years old, this might not be his only Olympics.
The 2012 Olympics are in London.
“We’ll just pray that he goes to London, too,” DeProspero said. “I’m going to London.”