"My pain is not your entertainment": an American gymnast unveils terrible injury videos

For American gymnast Samantha Cerio, it was bad enough to have suffered a terrible injury, falling apart both knees while tearing several ligaments during a recent meeting. The 22-year-old engineering student was forced to relive that moment again and again through social media, and she called for it to end.

"Those of you who signal me and tag me in the video of my injury, I kindly ask you to stop," Cerio would have tweeted Wednesday (Thursday NZT) before making his account privately.

"Pbading through the pain and seeing my knees bent abnormally in real life was pretty awful, but continue to see it from videos / images because some people feel they have the right to repost it, this is not a problem. is not correct. "

"My pain is not your entertainment," she added.

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Cerio was competing with his Auburn Tigers at an NCAA regional tournament in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, last week, with a trip to the national championships in play. The Anchor of the Routine Team On Auburn's ground, she was trying to run a double front with an unarmed finish with a blind landing when things went terribly wrong.

In a scene that Auburn's women's gymnastics coach Jeff Graba described as "hard to watch," Cerio stayed on the carpet for several minutes as medical staff looked after her and the onlookers gasped. While she was being taken on a stretcher, her thoughts went to her teammates.

"It's a soldier," said Graba about Cerio. "The last thing she said was:" Will help girls. "The girls rallied around her."

With a rallying cry of "Stick it for Sam!" the other Tigers did the job, posting the highest regional score in history and ranking among the top two to send Auburn to the competition the next day.

"Sam is so pbadionate about everything she does, especially with this team," said senior gymnast Abby Milliet. "So I circled everybody and I said, 'We're not going to do that, we're not going to be sad, we can be sad later, because that's all.' is sad, but we're going to do what she would want us to do … Sam would not want us to give up, she would fight harder. "

By stating Sunday in an Instagram post that the competition represented her "last night as a gymnast", said Cerio, "I could not be more proud of the person that gymnastics has made me." learned the work, the humility and the integrity, and the dedication, to name a few, who confronted me with challenges and obstacles that I I would never have imagined and tested who I am as a person.

"It may not have finished as planned, but nothing is going as planned."

Graba tweeted Tuesday that the Cerio operation "lasted two and a half hours and was an extreme success." "We know that the road to complete healing is going to be long and difficult, but we are confident that she will be able to fully recover."

For Drew Watson, another Auburn gymnast, Cerio was the perfect person to have with her.

"Sam is the most team-oriented and dynamic person," Watson said following Cerio's injury. "She wants everything for the team.It always has the equipment we need.It's a nail clipper or something for hair, she is still there, and she would not want us to collapse. "

Cerio's athletic career may be over, but she is well prepared to excel in other areas. Co-winner of the year's Southeast 2019 Conference Gymnastics, she is a major in Aerospace Engineering who, according to Auburn, "already has a job in Seattle at Boeing where she will be working on rockets as a Engineer in structural design badysis. "

"Sam stands out because she's a great role model for everyone here on campus," said Steven Leath, chairman of Auburn. "She is the perfect ambbadador for Auburn because she represents hard work and integrity, she represents athletics, she represents academics, she represents everyone. Sometimes you forget everything that she does because she makes her look so easy. "

The most immediate goal of Cerio is to recover in time for his wedding in June. "She wants to walk down the aisle and get married, and we hope to be able to do it," Graba told NBC News.

For such a capable person, it could be all the more frustrating to feel relatively helpless in the face of even friendly tags posted in his online publications that show him his scary episode. In her Twitter message, she always indicated that she was at least as concerned about those who surrounded her.

"I have family members, friends and teammates who do not need to see me get hurt again and again."