U.S. Women Win Gymnastics Gold

These were young faces, Hollie Vise’s sprinkled with freckles, Terin Humphrey’s showing the barest trace of a smile, Carly Patterson singing to herself in the middle of a crowd roaring its approval at being a part of history.

They were the faces of champions, of the first U.S. women’s gymnastics team to win a gold medal at the World Championships. The only team to encounter such adversity, losing three members to injury or illness before they took the floor for the team competition Wednesday.

The only team to win the world championship, perhaps because they’re too young to know what they’re not supposed to do, young enough to dream big and limber and talented enough to make those dreams come true.

There was so much working against them. The missing teammates, for a start, and an unforgiving format in which all three performers’ scores counted on each event. Yet, they stood Wednesday at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim before an unabashedly patriotic crowd of 10,120 as the only U.S. team to ascend to the top of the medal stand at the World Championships, with Romania one step below and, surprisingly, Australia in third.

“Wow,” said U.S. team captain Tasha Schwikert, who contributed a clutch performance on vault in the first rotation and a superb uneven bars routine to put the U.S. in the lead after the second rotation. “I couldn’t have imagined this at all.

“I was hoping for a medal,” added Schwikert, the only holdover from the U.S. team that won bronze at the 2001 World Championships. “After everything that’s been thrown at us, wow. We were hoping we could come here and get a medal. Wow. That’s the only thing I can say.”

Wow, indeed.

“We were kind of thinking that with everything that happened, it couldn’t get worse,” Patterson said.

China, the leader in the team preliminaries, wilted on the floor and never reclaimed the precision it had in qualifying. The U.S., which had ranked third in qualifying, only got better and totaled 112.573 points. Romania, winner of the previous five women’s world titles, was second with 110.833 points, barely ahead of first-time medalist Australia (110.335).

China was fourth, with 110.259 points, Spain fifth (109.722) and, shockingly, Russia was sixth with 108.985 points, its first non-medal finish since 1995.

“I was very impressed with the U.S. after so many bad injuries and accidents,” Romanian Coach Octavian Belu said. “The team has such great potential.”

Only the 1996 U.S. women’s Olympic team -- the so-called “Magnificent Seven” -- had won a gold medal at this level. To Martha Karolyi, the U.S. women’s national team coordinator and the guiding force behind the program’s renaissance after being shut out of the medals at the Sydney Games, Wednesday’s events were even more magnificent than the Atlanta victory.

“Because we had so many setback situations,” she said. “But since we arrived here our preparation was excellent. Then we had sickness and illness and injury came up, but you just don’t quit. I told the girls the world is for the toughest.

“They just rise to expectations.”

Although they lost U.S. vault champion Annia Hatch to a serious knee injury, 2002 world balance beam champion Ashley Postell to the flu before the competition started and competed with only a five-woman team after losing national all-around champion Courtney Kupets to a torn Achilles’ tendon Tuesday, they did not lose hope. They bent into some remarkably flexible positions on the balance beam, where they compiled the second-highest score among the eight teams, and on floor exercise, where they had the highest team score with 28.225 points -- but never broke.

Their lowest score was an 8.875 from Vise on the uneven bars, recorded after she forgot to pin her identification number to her back and risked disqualification while the sound board operator scrawled her number on the back of a start sheet and taped it to her back. Unnerved, she fell onto the mat face-first, but she came back in the next rotation to record a solid 9.512 on the balance beam.

“Even through all the bad times, we tried to stay positive and keep our spirits up,” said Humphrey, who had been the second alternate but moved into the lineup and threw her entire being into her floor exercise routine to earn a 9.30. They were ready from their first sprint down the vault runway to the last step of Patterson’s enchanting floor routine. They were determined, from veteran Schwikert to imperturbable 15-year-old Chellsie Memmel, who had the crowd at her tiny feet during her floor exercise routine and earned the highest combined total of the night, 37.887 points.

Russia flailed on floor exercise (a competition-low 26.512 points) and even the elegant Svetlana Khorkina couldn’t save her team on uneven bars. Ukraine self-destructed on the beam, with no competitor earning more than 8.80. China, weak on vault, was breathtaking on the uneven bars and beam but severely flawed on floor exercise. Spain, the first-rotation leader, struggled on vault and floor.

Through it all, the U.S. women hit routine after routine.

“I thought I’d just be cheering on the sidelines,” said Memmel, who became an alternate after she won the Pan Am Games all-around gold medal and worked her way into the top spot on the team after Postell, Hatch and Kupets were sidelined. “This is definitely much better.”

They were fairly certain they had won after they collected 28.399 points on the always-precarious balance beam, but not until Humphrey (9.30), Memmel (9.40) and Patterson (9.525) rolled out floor routines that had the crowd clapping in joy could they be sure.

“We were down to a five-woman team,” Schwikert said. “Our top vaulter was gone, our national champion was gone. Yet we got a medal, and it’s gold.

“Wow.”

Wow, indeed.

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The Results

The women’s team final from the Pond:

*--* Medal Country Points GOLD United States 112.573 SILVER Romania 110.833 BRONZE Australia 110.335

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