A world of hurt

Hands down, oft-injured gymnasts will be toughest athletes in Athens

Kerri Strug led the U.S. women to a gold medal in the 1996 Olympic team competition with two torn ligaments in her left ankle. Manny Millan/SI • Pete McEntegart: The 10 Spot -- Monday, June 28 • Kelli Anderson: Gymnasts as tough as they come • Phil Taylor Do not name your child after a network • Truth + Rumors: White Sox may trade Ordonez. Click here for Today's Sign of the Apocalypse, Game to Watch, Leading Off gallery and much more!

Since I've spent the last four days carefully observing the activities at the U.S. Gymnastics Olympic Trials in Anaheim, Calif., I thought I'd blog about how the sport fits into the average American's palette of recreational activities.

It doesn't.

There's a reason people don't go play pickup gymnastics at lunch. Or that annual company picnics do not feature interdepartmental uneven parallel bar competitions. Or that there probably isn't master's gymnastics team practicing in your area. "If you're not technically trained, you cannot try these skills without literally killing yourself," 1996 Olympic gold medalist Kerri Strug told me. "It's important that people don't try these things at home."

Even the people who know what they're doing when mounting a pommel horse or balance beam, such as the 33 competitors gathered at the Arrowhead Pond over the weekend, get seriously injured all the time. "Most of the people at this level have had several serious injuries that they have had to overcome," Scott Johnson, a 1984 gold medalist, said. "You can't really get this far without injuring something."

Adds Strug, who while hampered by two torn ligaments in her left ankle dramatically stuck the landing of a vault to help the U.S. women win the gold in the 1996 Olympic team competition, "Something is always hurting, but you do it anyway. It's how you're trained."

Gymnastics injuries include the usual athlete bęte noires such as sprained ankles, broken bones, torn ACLs, torn rotator cuffs, torn ligaments, split chins and permanent joint damage. They also include some unusual ones, like filleted biceps, paralyzed shoulders -- freshly minted Olympian Morgan Hamm, the twin brother of reigning U.S. and world champion Paul, fell on the parallel bars three years ago and suffered paralysis in his left shoulder for four and half months -- and some really, really painful things like torn big toenails. Top U.S. Olympic women's qualifier Courtney Kupets tore hers the preliminary rounds last week, but people were more interested in her left Achilles tendon, which she tore the day before the finals of the team competition at the 2003 Worlds in Anaheim. Ten months later, she tied for first place in the Nationals all-around competition with Carly Patterson. On Sunday, Kupets topped the field to earn a conditional place on the Olympic team.

One of the stomach-turning comeback stories on the men's side was that of two-time Olympian Blaine Wilson.  Wilson completely tore his left biceps off the bone during his still rings routine at the American Cup in late February and had the muscle surgically repaired with a titanium wire a few days later. Friday night, as Wilson performed his first unassisted ring routine since his surgery the audience cringed and his mother, Joan, cried. "I wasn't worried about it," said Wilson, who scored an admirable 9.45. "But somebody told me my mom was crying and I thought, 'Mom, come on you've got to be tougher than that.'"

Although you would never wish them on anyone, hideous injuries can augur great things for gymnasts. Mary Lou Retton had knee surgery just six weeks before she became America's darling by winning the USA's first all-around gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Four months before the '92 Games in Barcelona, Shannon Miller dislocated and chipped an elbow and had to have it surgically repaired. She went on to win two silvers and a bronze that year as well as two golds in Atlanta in '96.

My conclusion about gymnasts after watching just my second meet is that, transcendent toughness and corresponding insanity aside, they are the best overall athletes who will appear in Athens. Think of all they have to have in their repertoire: strength, speed, endurance, balance, flexibility, proprioception, fearlessness ... really, the only physical and mental attributes that do them no good are height, weight and common sense. The women also have to be able to dance, which is another activity most average Americans should never attempt. ...

Other notes from Anaheim: Twenty-eight years after wowing the world with the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics competition, Nadia Comaneci is still displaying remarkable balance and courage. In town with husband Bart Conner, who was being honored as a member of the 1984 US men's Olympic gymnastics team, Nadia was holding court with the media in four-inch stiletto heels that weren't much stouter than the wire holding Wilson's biceps together. ... Don't be surprised if other between-gigs actors start sponsoring Olympic hopefuls, as former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson did when she donated $20,000 to help gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj fund six months of training. During its prime-time broadcast of the women's preliminaries Saturday night, NBC showed Pam in the audience with her GO MO sign about six times. Best $20,000 she ever spent. ...

Another thing I learned while in Anaheim: Major League bases are not the only former sacred territory threatened by movie advertising. Passing by a banana peel someone had thoughtfully left lying by the elevator bank in my hotel yesterday, I noticed a round orange sticker where the blue Chiquita logo used to hold sway. Upon closer inspection I saw that it read not "organic" or "grown in Ecuador" but "See Garfield the Movie." I would have tossed the thing in the trash, but who am I to mess with product placement?...

Note to my colleague Chris Ballard, who wondered in his blog of a few days ago whether Gary Payton's nickname The Glove is the most ill-fitting in the NBA. In the Bay Area the Glove is long gone. Payton is now known as the Match because he gets lit up so easily.