Seoul ’88 / Richard Hoffer : Quibbling in Gymnastics Is Childish Play

They call it a gymnastics community, but it is no neighborhood we’d want to live in. The men, the athletes all collegiates and the coaches neutral observers, maintain a nice level of dignity. But the women’s program is astonishingly adolescent. And we’re not talking about the girl gymnasts, either.

Immediately after the trials Saturday, when the team was finally picked, Bela Karolyi opined that perhaps the Olympic training camp should be in his Houston gym. Karolyi had already gone on record saying he should be the Olympic coach. And so, with the Olympics just a month away, U.S. women’s coach Don Peters was being asked whether he would step aside or at least move the camp.

This is all based on the presumption that whichever coach produces the most athletes from his private gym should produce the Olympic team. Karolyi has three on the Olympic team (and the two alternates), and Peters was unable to provide even one from his SCATS gym in Huntington Beach.

But the United States Gymnastics Federation doesn’t hold with this presumption. The men’s coach is Abie Grossfeld, the coach at Southern Connecticut University, hardly a gymnastics hotbed. And briefly the women’s coach was Greg Marsden, the Utah coach. But the USGF botched that administration and Marsden resigned the position; Peters was appointed to return as Olympic coach.

Obviously, individual coaches should continue to participate in the Olympic training. Gymnastics is not quite a team sport and does not require an organizing influence as much as individual training. And so Karolyi is allowed to come to Huntington Beach and was even allowed a credential to Seoul. As far as that goes, the Karolyi camp will be represented by his wife, Marta, whom Peters selected as his assistant.

But Karolyi has resigned both his privileges, apparently hoping to force a bigger concession from the USGF, the “gymnastics community.”

It’s not coming, but Karolyi has done nothing to bind this community together. Rather it remains fractured, stirred up, with even the kids taking sides. Peters insists this will all blow over and perhaps it will, just as it did in 1984. But there will be lots of cross-talk until it does.

We leave it to Kelly Garrison-Steves, a qualifier who somehow rises above this mess: “It’s all beside the point.”

Francis Allen, the University of Nebraska gymnastics coach, had a ready answer when anybody asked how he managed to place five Cornhuskers, including the alternate, on the Olympic team. “Sheer coaching genius,” he said. “These kids couldn’t stand on their hands until I got them.”

Actually, Allen can only take credit for recruiting genius. One of the qualifiers, Lance Ringnald, has yet to even enter Nebraska. He’s just out of high school. Allen has always been high on his recruits; after his team won the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. meet earlier this year, Allen opened the press conference by announcing the signing of the prep star. Still, Allen was surprised by Ringnald’s performance in the trials.

“I knew he was good,” Allen said, “but I didn’t know he was that good.”

Allen, who also saw Nebraskans Scott Johnson, Kevin Davis and Wes Suter make the team (Tom Schlesinger made it as an alternate), says Ringnald is at the level the fabled Bart Conner was at this point in his career. Except that “Lance has more future than Bart ever had. This kid knows where he is in the air. No offense to Bart, but he never could have done that dismount off the bar (a double flip, double twist). He’s a twister and a flipper. I’d compare him to Mitch Gaylord, but Lance will be better. And Mitch was a pretty good gymnast.”

Kristie Phillips could yet make the women’s team. For some reason, the eighth-place finisher often does. Remember Kathy Johnson in 1984? If she does, she will add strength to the team with her beam routine. But she will not add much dignity.

After the trials Saturday she complained of low scoring, saying, “it hurts, seeing other girls doing the same routines and getting higher scores.” She blasted Peters, saying he’d wreck the team’s chances with his low-intensity workouts. And then when somebody asked what she’d wish for, if she could wave a magic wand, she said, “two injuries.”

Charles Lakes is one of those charismatic athletes with star quality. Fans love him. When he wasn’t somersaulting over the high bar (and getting a standing ovation for it), he was signing autographs for clusters of kids. This attention suits Lakes just fine. Let’s put it another way: Lakes lives on this attention.

Lakes is one of those people, and he admits it, who would rather look good than be good. He says his primary objective is not to place first, which he happened to do in the trials, but to entertain. “I don’t consider myself an athlete,” he said. “I’m an artist.”

His talent and attitude, however, exasperate his teammates and coaches. “He’d come in to workouts,” said 1984 Olympian Bart Conner, “jack around on the high bar, maybe touch the horse and leave.”

Lakes himself admits his workouts probably last no more than an hour. “Do I work less?” he said. “Yeah, I do. I hate to say it, but I only train an hour a day. I’m always the last one in and the first out.”

He defends his training habits, saying they mean he’s particularly efficient. Also, there is none of that wear and tear on his body. But nobody’s buying it. Conner noted that gymnastics’ other free spirit, Mitch Gaylord, eventually buckled down and attacked the gym.

Said Grossfeld, the Olympic coach: “When Charles really concentrates, he takes care of the details. We’ll make him workout a little harder and longer than he has.”