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Element of surprise China, Russia favored, but U.S. could pull off upset
NEW YORK (AP) -- China has the best athletes, Russia claims the top names, and the United States has the greatest chance to surprise in men's gymnastics at the Olympics. Heading to Sydney, China once again is the gold-medal favorite. Competing in their own country, the Chinese won the World Championships last year, repeating the achievement of 1997 in Switzerland. On the women's side, Russia, Romania and China will vie for top honors. Few expect the U.S. team to repeat its gold-medal performance of 1996. The Chinese men's team is so deep it's hard to handicap the roster. The athletes train together all year, and coaches choose their six-man team from among nine or 10 gymnasts, all of whom are considered Olympic-caliber. While Lu Yufu led the Chinese at the last world championship with a fifth-place finish, it's depth, not names, that makes this team. China also has Huang Xu (11th at the world championship), Yan Wei (12th) and Li Xiaopeng, who won all-around at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Chinese athletes are usually plucked from the cream of the athletic crop at an early age, then moved to the national training center in Beijing. With one-on-one coaching over the span of a decade, the Chinese churn out gymnasts like nobody else. The only problem is, they're not always prepared for the big-time pressure of the Olympics. China probably had the best team in 1996, but faltered at key points -- Li looped his hand through the still rings during the team competition -- and finished second. "If China loses, it's almost always because they make mistakes," U.S. coach Peter Kormann says. "And they make mistakes a lot. They're not the most competitively sound team out there." Russia is the second-best team, although it's mostly because of the country's top two gymnasts. Nikolay Krukov came from nowhere to win the all-around last year when 1996 all-around silver medalist Alexi Nemov was the favorite. Krukov has since injured his Achilles tendon, and his status for the Olympics is uncertain. That means Nemov and Alexi Bondarenko, who won bronze in the parallel bars last year, will have to carry the Russian team. "I don't think they're that strong," American Blaine Wilson said. "They've got two good guys and that' it." Wilson is clearly the best among the Americans. The question is whether he'll have company. A pair of 17-year-old twins from Wisconsin, Paul and Morgan Hamm, give the United States the explosive athleticism to go into the next decade, but they may not be ready to explode at Sydney. Still, they've been unflappable through the qualifying procedure. If they don't let the pressure get to them, they could lead the United States o its first team medal in a non-boycotted Olympics since 1932. Others in contention for a men's medal are Belarus, Japan, Korea and Ukraine. Lu, Nemov, Wilson, Naoya Tsukahara of Japan and Bulgaria's Jordan Jovtchev are among the top picks for the all-around medal, although some athletes are reluctant to limit the list to just a few names. "Individually, I wouldn't be a favorite to win a medal," said 30-year-old John Roethlisberger of the United States. "At the same time, neither was Krukov at worlds last year. So nobody should limit themselves and say they have no chance. That puts you at a psychological disadvantage." Women's gymnastics is bigger in the United States than anywhere else in the world, mainly because the team traditionally is better and more charismatic than the men. Still, Russia's Svetlana Khorkina and Elena Produnova, China's Ling Jie and Romania's Maria Olaru all have a chance at becoming the next Naia Comenici. Produnova leads a strong Russian team, while Olaru won the all-around gold medal at the world championships.
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