One Year to Barcelona : Men’s Gymnasts Have Chance at Pre-Games Meet

It has been some time since American men have been on top in gymnastics. More accurately, it has happened once--at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, when the United States won the gold medal in team competition.

At the 1932 Olympics, also held in Los Angeles, the U.S. men finished second to Italy, then a perennial power. But the U.S. team can’t always compete in Los Angeles, so maybe the good fortunes associated with it will carry forth if half of the team members are from the area.

National champion Chris Waller, No. 2-ranked Chainey Umphrey and No. 5 Scott Keswick are from UCLA. As teen-agers in 1984, they watched as three other Bruins--Peter Vidmar, Tim Daggett and Mitch Gaylord--helped the American men win the gold in gymnastics. This week, at the Pre-Olympic Invitational in Barcelona, Spain, Waller, Umphrey and Keswick hope to lead the United States back to respectability.

The success of the American men was short-lived, and after the Los Angeles Gamestheir reputation plummeted. That has been difficult to overcome in international competition. In gymnastics, some feel, the scoring begins long before the competition, giving perennial contenders a higher base from which to start.

“Barcelona is a high-powered team competition that we hope will put us back on the map,” said Art Shurlock, UCLA’s gymnastics coach. “After 1984, we dropped from first (in the world) to ninth.

“It’s been one small step at a time until last year, when we placed second at the Goodwill Games behind the Soviets but ahead of China. That was a big step for us.”

This meet, which includes teams from the Soviet Union, Japan, China, Hungary and Spain, can be pivotal for the Americans. The U.S. team is the same one that will compete in September at the 1991 World Championships, making it more important to change the way Americans are perceived--and scored--by the international judging community.

“We have more depth this year than we have ever had,” said Robert Cowan, the director of the men’s program for the U.S. Gymnastics Federation.

“But the problem is 30 judges from countries with long memories remembering we were eighth at the World Championships in 1989. It makes them reluctant to give us high scores.

“Assuming we are as good as we say we are and we don’t miss on routines, we could finish as high as third place for a bronze medal at the (1991) World Championships.”

At the U.S. Nationals last month, Waller edged Nebraska’s Patrick Kirksey and Umphrey by four hundredths of a point to win the all-around championship. The University of Nebraska’s Tom Schlesinger, an alternate in the 1988 Olympics, finished fourth but suffered a shoulder injury and was replaced on the World Championship team by John Roethlisberger of the University of Minnesota, who finished eighth.

Keswick, who won the rings, vault and parallel bars at the nationals, tied for fifth with 1988 Olympian Lance Ringnald. Jarrod Hanks of the University of Oklahoma finished seventh for the last spot on the team.

“After 1984, the program hit the skids,” Cowan said. “We had a lot of good gymnasts, but most of them retired. The ones that didn’t were grown men trying to continue to be athletes, but at the same time they had to eat and pay for an apartment.

“This team (1991) could be a replica of 1979, when we finished third at the World Championships, our highest finish ever. On that team we had Peter Vidmar, Jim Hartung, Bart Conner and Kurt Thomas. Then came the boycott in 1980. Well, everybody hung in there, except for Kurt, and at the 1984 Olympics we won it all.”

In 1985, the men’s team was inexperienced, and the slide began. The men hit a low in 1988, when they finished 11th at the Olympics at Seoul. They did better at the 1989 World Championships, finishing eighth, but not good enough to change judging perception.

A major factor for the trend, officials say, was the lack of training in compulsory exercises, which count 50% toward the final score in World Championship and Olympic competition. Optional competition counts the other 50%.

Compulsory exercises are routines consisting of required skills, with each gymnast performing the same routine in each of the six events. In optional competition, the routines have certain requirements, but the gymnast has a choice of what to perform from a list of skills that range in difficulty.

In 1983, the NCAA voted compulsory exercises out of collegiate competition, which serves as a training ground for elite male gymnasts. A couple of years later, after lobbying by the USGF, the NCAA reinstated compulsories, but in a limited way. So the USGF toughened its own requirements for elite competitions.

“(In a major world meet), you have to place in the top six countries after compulsories or you won’t move up the second day in optional competition,” Cowan said.

“So in our own national competitions, we changed our emphasis by weighting the value of compulsories 60% and optionals 40%,” Cowan said. “Then we increased (skill) requirements to make them more difficult than international requirements.”

The men’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed. In a meet against the Romanians earlier this year, the United States won the compulsory competition by a margin of 2.9 points and the optionals by 2.6. In gymnastics, to win by 5.5 points is a rout.

“The Romanian coach came up to me and said, ‘We had no concept and were not prepared for how good you are,’ ” Cowan said.

While the international stature of the U.S. team is in flux, so is that of some countries that have undergone political upheaval. The recent changes in countries such as Romania and the Soviet Union will have an effect on their sports infrastructure, but the result of those changes and when the effect will be evident is unknown.

Shurlock, who has coached gymnastics at UCLA for 27 years, said that training together has helped Waller, Umphrey and Keswick. In 1983, Vidmar, Daggett and Gaylord trained together while competing for UCLA, then made the World Championship team and went on to star at the Olympics.

“At UCLA, the three are working in the same place, so they can’t rest because they can see their competition on the other side of the gym,” Shurlock said.

This week, the U.S. men will see their competition from the other side of the world. Their hope? That they, too, finally will be seen.