A Night Of Ups And DownsThe resurrected Russians were flawless in unseating mistake-prone China for the gold in men's team gymnasticsby Tim Layden
Some Olympic finals can be measured by the sounds they emit. Yesterday at the Georgia Dome, a Chinese gymnast's fall from the horizontal bar was followed by the sickening slap of flesh against mat. A teammate did the same, and with that second spill, China, the overwhelming favorite in the men's team competition, was relegated to silver medal status. Earlier, the United States had made a bold and unexpected run at the bronze, and the crowd's roar made the building quiver with patriotic hope. But then two consecutive U.S. gymnasts fell from the pommel horse. The noise subsided, and so did the medal hope.
Kip Simons and the Americans soared on the horizontal bar but were no match for the Russians.
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Entering the second half of the two-day competition, there seemed to be two certainties. One was that the Chinese, winners of the last two world championships, would win the gold medal; two, that the U.S., which finished ninth at the 1995 world championships, had no chance to win a medal. One of those assumptions was crushed, the other severely tested.
Throughout the withering competition, whose outcome was determined as much by failure in the face of opportunity as it was by success, the Russians had performed flawlessly. They won the gold after shining in both Saturday's compulsories and yesterday's optional exercises. China, known for its precision, fell apart on the second day as the competition unfolded on the six apparatuses. "The Chinese dropped the ball more than any team I've ever seen," said Tim Daggett, a former U.S. gymnast. "I've never seen anything like it."
The Chinese's most dramatic stumble came on the horizontal bar, their fifth apparatus in the rotation, at a time when they were in striking distance of the Russians—.651 of a point behind. But in a matter of moments they were out of the gold medal chase. First, Huang Huadong fell from the horizontal bar on a release, hushing the audience at one end of the arena. Then Shen Jian also failed to catch the bar after a release. "We made some errors," said Chinese coach Huang Huabin, "because it is under great pressure doing this."
Dmitri Vasilenko on the horse.
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Given their fourth-place performance at the '95 world championships last October, the Russians hardly looked like gold medal contenders entering these Games. But under the direction of Leonid Arkaev, who directed the Unified Team in 1992, they devoted five hours a day to practicing their compulsory program, and the work paid off richly. Russia entered the optionals with almost a full-point lead over China. "We have a strategy to beat China, but I can't say now," Arkaev had said after the compulsories. Clearly the strategy was to perform well on the first night and force the Chinese to chase.
For Russia, the victory was a tribute to Arkaev and his reconstruction of a program that had been taken apart by the Soviet revolution. Eerily, Arkaev has coached almost all the members of the teams from Ukraine, which won the bronze, and Belarus, which finished fourth, ahead of the U.S. "This is much better than any previous [Russian] team," Arkaev said.
It is a strikingly young team, led by 20-year-old Alexei Nemov, who finished first in the individual scoring and heads into the all-around competition as the favorite to supplant Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus as the best gymnast in the world. He summarized his gymnastic history as such: "My mother took me to the sports club in 1982, and now I am exhausted." Only one member of the Russian team is older than 23, and he's 25-year-old Sergei Charkov.
The U.S. positioned itself for a run at the bronze with a brilliant performance on the horizontal bar in which the Americans added maneuvers to raise their degrees of difficulty. As a result, the U.S. passed Belarus and trailed Ukraine by 1.025. When Alexandre Svetlichnyi of Ukraine fell hard from the horizontal bar, the U.S. had an opportunity to make another move.
But then its last two gymnasts on the pommel horse, Mihai Bagiu and team leader John Roethlisberger, fell during their routines. The pommel horse is the U.S. team's weakest event, and Bagiu and Roethlisberger were attempting new, more difficult routines. "We went all out," said Bagiu. "I would have felt worse if I did the old routine and fell short than I did trying the new routine and falling."
Roethlisberger, who finished fifth in qualifying for the men's all-around competition, said, "We came here to get a medal, but this is a performance we can all be proud of." Teammates Blaine Wilson (12th) and John Macready (33rd) also qualified for the all-around finals. Wilson qualified for the rings finals, Jair Lynch for those on the parallel bars.
Yet as solid as the Americans' performance was—"This is the most improved team in the world," said U.S. coach Peter Kormann— the gymnasts' reaction can be measured by the tears that were shed afterward. And in this matter they might learn from the Russian team, which was built four years ago from the remnants of the Soviet sports system and climbed back up the world ladder to yesterday's gold.
"We had to search deep," said Arkaev, his eyes confident and strong. "But it's tough luck that makes you better. The experience of surviving made us tougher here."
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