Chris Cameron is the defending N.C.A.A. all-around men's gymnastics champion, a member of the University of Michigan's defending N.C.A.A. championship team, and a rising star for the national squad.
His skill is even more remarkable given that he was born with hemihypertrophy, a congenital abnormality that causes one side of the body to grow faster than the other. At 12, Cameron had a growth plate removed from his fast-growing left leg to allow his right leg to catch up. The operation evened the length of his legs, but Cameron's muscles developed differently, wrapping themselves around bones that are nearly identical in length but unique in structure, size and bone density.
"The calf is probably where you see the biggest difference," said Cameron, 22, nonchalantly rolling up his pants to show the contrast between his limbs. Both legs bear the bruises and scabs that all gymnasts have, but the right one is noticeably slimmer than the left. Cameron estimates that there is about a 10-pound difference between them.
"I have to tighten my right shoe a lot more than the left, or wear two pairs of socks if I'm wearing dress shoes. Other than that, it's absolutely no hindrance at all," Cameron said.
In fact, Cameron's seeming imperfection gives him an edge in his signature events. On rings, he has less dead weight dangling below him as he twists and turns through his Maltese crosses and handstands. On pommel horse and floor, it's easier to keep his momentum going, and he can perform leg flares, a high-value move that adds difficulty points to his start values.
"If I get a little tired, where a lot of people would kind of drop down in their circle and get smaller and then they hit the pommel horse, I can keep going," he said. "Once I get my left leg up, the right leg kind of pops my whole body up, so it gives the flares a good look."
"Chris does some very aggressive and yet still stylish gymnastics," said Kevin Mazeika, the United States men's national team coordinator, who named Cameron to his squad in 2009. "It's fun to watch him."
Having different legs on one body, however, has disadvantages. Cameron has an uneven stride, which hurts him in vault, in which the gymnast needs a running start to launch himself onto the apparatus. He cannot point the toe on his right foot as well as he would like. And he endured teasing in middle school.
"He went through a period where he didn't want to wear shorts because he didn't want anyone to see," Cameron's mother, Suzanne Heckman, said. "But on a more personal level, he was better able to be at peace with who he was. Because of his success in gymnastics, he knew that being different wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It gave him a mental perseverance."
Today, Cameron can laugh at his asymmetry. His teammates call him Little Leg, and last Halloween, he dressed up as a peg-leg pirate, borrowing a cane from the team trainer and painting his skinny leg to make it look like wood. A daredevil, he surfs whenever he is home in Winter Haven, Fla., and he helped his teammate Thomas Kelley build a skateboarding halfpipe in the backyard of their shared house in Ann Arbor. While most gymnasts struggle to find the sweet spot between easy routines they can execute perfectly and more challenging moves that have a higher point value, Cameron always pushes for greater complexity.
"That's really the name of the game," Cameron said, "deciding how much risk to take, deciding whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze, so to speak. You can't fall behind the curve, difficulty-wise."
Cameron's high expectations have had an effect on his entire Michigan team. After losing eight all-Americans from the 2010 championship team, the Wolverines are rebuilding. Beset by injuries, they stumbled in their season opener against Penn State but rebounded against No. 2 Illinois and No. 12 California-Irvine. Michigan, currently ranked No. 6, came up short, 351.25-346.20, at home against No. 5 Stanford on Saturday in a rematch of last year's national championship, in which the Wolverines edged the Cardinal by 0.7 on the meet's final rotation. Cameron will play a major role in Michigan's drive for a another title.
"He's very good with the athletes when it's time to take the next step," Coach Kurt Golder said. "Sometimes, you're a little afraid as a gymnast to actually do the skill out of the pit, or just to do it, period. When he believes somebody can do something, he just tells them, ‘You can do this, and you're doing to do it.' "
Cameron also has a knack for figuring out easy fixes to other gymnasts' problems. He recently talked his teammate Ian Makowske into adding a Gaylord II, a twisting release move named for the Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord, to his high bar routine. Makowske, a walk-on for the Wolverines, nailed the routine Feb. 6 at the Winter Cup. His score, 15.350, was Makowske's best ever, and good for third place against the best talent in the nation.
"It adds a good five-tenths to my routine, which is huge, and it's kind of similar to a skill I do very, very well," said Makowske, who is also Cameron's roommate. "He's done so much with his own gymnastics that he knows how to help other people."
In addition to another N.C.A.A. title, Cameron wants one of the six spots on the 2012 Olympic team. At the world championships in the Netherlands in October, Cameron and Team USA were uneven. The team finished fourth, and Cameron fell on pommel horse, scoring 14.333, more than a point off his personal best. Pommel horse has traditionally been the Americans' worst event in international competition, and turning a perceived weakness into a strength is something Cameron knows how to do.
"It's a matter of adaptation," he said. "The rules of the sport are constantly changing, the skills are being updated and the level of gymnastics is advancing constantly. Everybody has to adapt to the changes of the sport. I just had to do it a little differently."
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