100 days before the Tokyo Games, Bend Olympian talks about her experience

(Update: adding video, new information, comments from Olympian)

Mohini Bhardwaj earned gymnastics silver medal for Team USA at 2004 Olympics

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- The opening ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is officially 100 days away. One Bend woman, Mohini Bhardwaj Barry, knows what it’s like to be on the world’s biggest stage.

"I feel like it was yesterday,” Barry told NewsChannel 21 Wednesday, recounting her experience at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. “I can feel what my hands felt, and what my feet felt like, and what my nervousness felt like."

For Barry, the memories feel so clear -- and they are of moments that almost never happened.

Barry missed the cut for the US gymnastics team by less than a tenth of a point in the 1996 Olympics.B

But she refused to let that be the defining moment of her career.

“I didn't feel like my experience was done,” Barry said. “Once I graduated, it was basically go to law school, go to the Olympics. I took the jump, and the leap. Well, the leap."

Not only did Barry make the team in 2004 as a 25-year-old, she was also named captain.

Barry competed in all four events -- vault, floor exercise, uneven bars and the balance beam. She admitted she wasn't supposed to compete in that last category.

Barry said she found out she was going to perform a beam routine just five minutes before she took center stage, making that both her best -- and worst -- Olympic experience.

"Beam is the worst, because it's literally four feet high, four inches wide,” Barry said. “Nobody wants to compete beam, because it's the one thing you can really fall off of."

Barry said that routine helped propel Team USA to the podium, earning a silver medal at those 2004 Olympics.

Barry was the first Indian-American gymnast, and second Indian-American athlete to medal at the Olympics.

Some 17 years later, she proudly shows off the hardware to her students at her OAA Gymnastics studio in Bend.

With the pandemic still prevalent across the globe, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be much different from the one she competed in. Several new guidelines are in place to keep the athletes, coaches and fans. For example, no overseas spectators will be allowed at the games.

Also, Olympic officials have outlined a new set of rules athletes must follow, which include minimizing physical interactions, avoiding handshakes, and staying in Official Games Venues only. That means they cannot visit gyms, tourist areas, shops, restaurants, bars or more.

Even though Barry said she never got to experience those things herself, since the gymnastics’ schedule was so strict, she feels for the athletes this year.

“I just feel bad for everybody,” she said. “They’re not going to get to actually have the actual Olympic experience they deserve to have.”

Wednesday marked 100 days until the opening ceremony for the Tokyo Olympics. Barry says this is a crucial time for Olympic hopefuls.

“They're just going to push it, to the absolute limit that they possibly can,” she said.

Just like Barry, these athletes hope to make their Olympic dreams come true.