Head Over HeelsWhen it was over, the wide-open gymnastics competition landed on its feetby Johnette Howard
In the end there was no need for regret, no wistful lament about what might have been. Two-time U.S. Olympian Shannon Miller, on the last chance of her career, ended three tear-soaked days of individual gymnastics frustration with one of the best performances of her life on the balance beam last night at the Georgia Dome to seize her first individual gold medal. And Russia's Alexei Nemov provided further assurance that he is, indeed, the ascending star in men's gymnastics. Nemov finished with six medals in these Games, and his relentless scavenging for individual gold was finally rewarded when he nailed a 9.787 vault. Fittingly, that was the only event of his five apparatus finals in which his sore left shoulder, which will need surgery after these Games, never came into play.
Miller was on the beam last night.
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But once injured U.S. gymnast Kerri Strug had scratched an hour before the start of last night's program, unable to go on because of her severely sprained ankle, it was a safe bet that nothing would surpass her climactic vault or the U.S. women's team gold medal victory as the most memorable gymnastics moments of the Games. Not Nemov's rebound—one gold, three bronze on the individual apparatuses—after he missed the all-around title. Not the bronze the U.S.'s Dominique Dawes won in the floor exercises. Not Miller's 9.862 on the beam, a score that withstood challenges from Ukraine's Lilia Podkopayeva (9.825) and Romania's Gina Gogean (9.787).
From the first handspring to the last, the wide-open meet that Atlanta hosted defied pat predictions and rewarded individual brilliance without regard to tradition or homeland or marquee name value. And it was enthralling to see.
Former Stanford gymnast Jair Lynch, a 24-year-old two-time Olympian who has suffered through the dog days of American men's gymnastics, turned in a stunning performance in his best event, the parallel bars (9.825), to win the silver—the only medal won by the U.S. men's team. Lynch and Dawes thus became the first African-Americans to win individual gymnastics medals.
Nemov came through with four individual apparatus medals over two nights.
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Oftentimes gymnasts have said it is the sheer import of the occasion—the unadorned fact that the Olympic Games are their showcase event—that lifted them to heights they hadn't reached before. Strug said that was what propelled her down the runway for her last vault in the team competition last Tuesday, though she'd heard something snap in her right ankle just moments before. After diminutive Ioannis Melissanidis held off a star-studded field to win the individual floor exercises on Sunday and give Greece its first gymnastics medal in 100 years, Melissanidis spoke of how he had walked to his starting spot on the mat telling himself, "I'm not in the U.S ... I'm in Athens. I am not Ioannis Melissanidis, I am Greece. I must be perfect. For Greece."
For every underdog that bit back or grabbed a slice of history, someone else was crowded off the summit. Fourteen-year-old Dominique Moceanu of the U.S., the pre-Games cover girl who was touted as the next Nadia, leaves Atlanta without an individual medal. Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus, who won six gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona Games, departs with just four bronze medals.
Two nights after prohibitive favorite China slipped from a sure gold to silver in the men's team competition, China's Li Xiaoshuang—the smallest man in the competition, at 5'2"—won the men's individual all-around title with a roof-scraping vault and a competition-closing high bar routine that were as notable for their recklessness as for the high scores they received.
Four years ago, Yuri Chechi of Italy thought his career was over at 22 when he tore an Achilles tendon 20 days before the Barcelona Games. But Sunday, competing in his first Olympics since Seoul in 1988, Chechi won the gold with nary a sway or a wobble in his routine on the rings, an event he mastered when his right leg never fully recovered from his injury. "I don't know why or how, but inside of me I found the power to go on," Chechi said.
Some gymnasts, like Moceanu, struggled right up to the end.
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In the end it was the promise of such moments—and the gymnasts' eventually coming through on it—that enthralled the crowds.
It is also possible that the U.S. can defeat Cuba in a single baseball game. Maybe not in a seven-game series, Bertman said, but in a single game, yes. The U.S. showed that yesterday. The team hopes it will have the opportunity to show it again, in a game for a gold medal, on Friday.
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SI Olympic Dailies
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