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Worth the sacrifice Heathy Maloney a key component on U.S. team
NEW YORK (AP) -- Kristen Maloney has spent thousands of hours in the gym in the past 13 years. She's sweated and sacrificed, perfecting her routines with mind-numbing repetition. She went home early from parties to make sure she got enough sleep. She did extra schoolwork before competitions so she wouldn't fall behind in class. She endured dozens of injuries, some serious. She did all of it with the dream of representing her country at the Sydney Olympics and winning a medal. But after operations on her shin and shoulder last fall, she wondered if it was all in vain. "It was really hard for me," said the two-time national champion, who missed almost four months because of the operations. "I wasn't really sure if I'd make it back in time." Well, she's back. With a dedication rarely seen in the gym, Maloney got into shape and now hopes to help the U.S. team return to the medals podium in Sydney. A healthy Maloney is one reason the Americans are optimistic. Only nine months after finishing last in the medals round at the world championships -- even once-lowly Australia beat them -- the United States has regrouped and is again showing signs of being able to compete with the Russians, Romanians and Chinese. With Bela Karolyi leading the way, the Americans have gotten stronger and tougher. They've increased the difficulty of routines that are now among the most challenging in the world. Throw in a few members of the Magnificent Seven for a little star power, and the U.S. team is no longer the wimp it was at the world championships. "It's like the sky and the earth," said Karolyi, who came out of retirement last fall to become the national team coordinator. "It's a big difference. A very big difference." Maloney can take some of the credit for that, although it didn't look good for her after an operation on her right shin in October and one on her right shoulder in November. It was one thing to get healthy. It was another to get healthy in time to practice the difficult tricks and routines she'd need for the Olympics. "We just decided she HAD to have enough time," her coach, Donna Strauss, said. "She was in the gym as many hours as anybody that was healthy. She had a point to prove." Maloney rode a stationery bike with a vengeance, spending so much time on it that at one point she never wanted to see a bike again. She worked on her dance moves and flexibility, the little things that can turn an above-average floor routine into a medal-winning performance. She spent hours on conditioning exercises. When her shoulder healed, she could shimmy up a rope in a pike position so fast it would make a PE teacher proud. At the U.S. Gymnastics Championships last month, her first full meet since the world championships last October, it was as if Maloney never took time off. Her lowest score was a 9.375, on the uneven bars in the all-around preliminaries, and she bumped that up to a 9.6 in the finals. Showing swagger and spunk with her new dance moves, she earned the two highest scores on the floor, a 9.825 and a 9.850. Maloney finished a close second to Elise Ray, but she just smiled when people asked if she was disappointed she didn't win again. "I'm just so happy to be back," she said. "For me, it wasn't a matter of winning or losing." That won't be the case for her and the rest of the Americans in Sydney. While the U.S. team has made up ground, the Romanians and the Russians are still favored. Defending world champion Romania is, as always, stocked with talent, led by Olympic bronze medalist Simona Amanar and reigning world champion Maria Olaru. Russia, the silver medalist in Atlanta, comes to Sydney fresh from a victory at the European championships. Former world champion Svetlana Khorkina, written off after her 12th-place finish at last fall's world championships, won her fourth European title as well as golds on the uneven bars and balance beam. "Gold is going to be a stretch, but I think this team can win a medal," said Mary Lee Tracy, the assistant U.S. coach in 1996. "The talent level is very competitive, so yeah, I think we do have a shot." In the men's competition, the Americans hope to win their first team medal since the 1984 squad took gold. The United States was five points behind China at last year's world championships, but less than 2 1/2 points behind third-place Belarus. "We didn't have the difficulty. We didn't have hard enough skills in our routines," said Peter Kormann, the men's coach. "That is gone. We now will go to the Olympics with a very comparable difficulty to even China, the defending world champion. ... We're going to be right in the mix." The Americans could also end their all-around drought. An American man hasn't won an Olympic all-around medal since Peter Vidmar's silver in 1984, and the United States has yet to win one in a non-boycotted Olympics. But five-time national champion Blaine Wilson finished just .001 points away from a bronze medal at last year's world championships, and he's improved since then. "He's way better than he was last year," teammate John Roethlisberger said. "I don't see too many people in the world beating him." While Maloney has an outside chance at an all-around medal, individual glory has never really mattered much. She didn't grow up dreaming of being the next Mary Lou Retton, and she didn't beg her parents to put her in gymnastics after watching the Olympics. The only reason she got into the sport was because her mother's ears needed a break. When Maloney was 5, she'd scream when her mother dropped her older brother and sister off at school because she wanted to go, too. So Linda Maloney enrolled her daughter in gymnastics class two days a week. "I said, `This is your school. You can go and play here,'" Linda Maloney said. "One thing led to another and before you knew it, we were there all the time." Even as her hours at the gym increased, her family made sure Maloney had a normal life. Instead of moving halfway across the country to train as many elite gymnasts do, she's always lived at home in Pennsylvania. She's trained with the same coaches, Strauss and her husband, Bill, since she was 8. She went to her high school in Pen Argyl, Pa., and the closest she came to a tutor was asking her teachers to explain what she missed when she was gone for competition. She still hangs out with friends from grade school, and she spends her free time at the mall or the movies. "We tried to make sure she made the important things, which I think really did help her a lot," Linda Maloney said. "You need the outside interests to take your mind off the gym. For the past year, making the Olympic team has been the most important thing in Maloney's life. She even put off going to UCLA for a year so she could train. She's always imagined it would be a thrill to step on the floor in Sydney. But after the operations, doubts, rehabilitation and all the work she did this year to get there, it will be that much sweeter. "I've always dreamed of medaling and getting up on the podium," Maloney said. "It would mean a lot, knowing my hard work and training has paid off."
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