Stephen Lovekin/Getty ImagesThis budding fashionista is a perfect-10 trouper.
Just a day after suffering a knee injury following a nasty fall from the uneven bars at a gymnastics tour in California, Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman put on her game face and swung by New York Fashion Week Tuesday.
So how's the sturdy champ holding up?
We chatted up Raisman backstage at the Badgley Mischka show, where she admitted that although she's doing fine now, the pain was initially so intense she thought she was "gonna pass out." Yikes!
"My hands slipped off the bar and I fell on the concrete," she says, noting that she missed the mat and ended up banging both knees on the hard floor.
(Indeed, it was a freaky spill—you can see it here at the 1:50 mark, right after her teammate, McKayla Maroney, was herself injured and carried off the podium.)
The fall was especially frustrating since the 18-year-old had nailed that particular move countless times in competition. "I've done it before, so I was kind of like, Oh great," she says.
"I was hoping I wouldn't fall and miss the mat, but I fell all the way back and it really hurt!" she recalls with a laugh. "I thought I was gonna pass out…I just thought I was gonna throw up because it hurt so much."
What a difference a day makes: Backstage at the Fashion Week show, Raisman—decked out in a cute blue-and-white Badgley Mischka dress and red patent-leather pumps—was the picture of perfect composure, gamely smiling for photographers while powering through her injury.
"They're just really sensitive when I touch them," she says, pointing to her bum knees. "But it doesn't look really bruised."
Still, not once did Raisman—who told us that she'd "definitely" love to make a run for the 2016 Olympics—consider skipping out on her front-row commitments at Fashion Week.
"No, I thought that I would make it," she explains matter-of-factly.
Now that's a winning attitude.