Here's The Real Reason We Love Watching Olympic Gymnastics

Among Americans, gymnastics is one of the most popular Olympic sports. In 2012, over 38 million people watched the USA women’s team take gold in London, and the “Fab 5,” led by America’s third consecutive Olympic gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas, returned home as celebrities. This year, with a similarly dominant team that includes Douglas and 2012 veteran Aly Raisman, as well as three-time world champion Simone Biles, NBC can reasonably expect similar numbers.

It’s not just Olympic viewership where the sport is popular, either; across the nation, at hundreds of clubs, close to 74,000 American girls and women are doing artistic gymnastics (the official name for the version of the sport that involves vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise), according to numbers provided by USA Gymnastics.