Gymnastics : USA’s Retton, Daggett Win All-Around Titles

Olympic champion Mary Lou Retton Sunday became the first woman gymnast to win three American Cup all-around titles, needing only two events to establish her superiority over a field of mostly unproven international challengers.

The United States scored a sweep when Olympian Tim Daggett edged China’s Yang Yueshan for the men’s all-around title in a battle that went down to the final event.

The 17-year-old Retton, in her first international meet since the Summer Olympics, picked up where she left off seven months ago in Los Angeles.

With a crowd of 12,000 in Market Square Arena echoing cheers of “We love you, Mary Lou,” and a nationwide TV audience looking on, Retton finished first in all four women’s events.

Wearing her Olympic red, white and blue leotards and flashing the form that carried her to the all-around gold medal in Los Angeles, Retton opened with a 9.85 score in the vault and followed it with a crowd-stirring 9.825 score in the uneven bars.

Retton finished with 39.350 points. China’s Yu Feng was a distant second with 38.650 and Romania’s diminutive 14-year-old dynamo Daniela Silivas finished third with 38.325.

Retton said she was especially pleased with her performance on the balance beam, where she scored a 9.825.

“That’s the best beam I ever did in my life,” said Retton, who followed a 9.775 effort by Silivas.

Daggett, one of the few members of the gold-medal winning American Olympic team still competing, edged Yang in the final event, the high bar.

Daggett and Yang were tied after five events, but the UCLA psychology major won it with a 9.70 score in the high bar. It was the same apparatus in which Daggett scored a 10.00 at Los Angeles to cement the U.S. team’s gold medal victory over China.

Daggett finished with 57.350. Yang was second with 57.300 and Japanese Olympian Koji Sotomura was third with a total of 56.850

Daggett’s victory also marked the ninth time in the 10-year history of the American Cup that a U.S. gymnast had won the men’s title.

Thirteen nations were represented in the two-day meet, but attrition cut the list of challengers.

Li Ning, China’s triple-gold medal winner, dropped out of the all-around competition before the meet started with an injured right shoulder.

The Soviet Union was not represented, and Hungary’s three gymnasts were delayed in New York by an airline strike and missed Saturday’s qualifying round.