GYMNASTICS / AMERICAN CUP : U.S. Flags Down a Pair of Victories

For the Americans, it appeared as though it would be a day of replacement gymnastics, what with Shannon Miller sitting in the audience and an injured Scott Keswick watching the meet on television from his hotel bed.

Kristy Powell, who replaced somebody, but nobody can remember who because there were so many substitutions, arrived at the Seattle Arena with her teammate, Doni Thompson, merely hoping to beat her in the McDonald’s American Cup. The only other time Powell beat Thompson was in Bulgaria, but because meet organizers could find only one American flag, they fixed the scores so she and Thompson tied.

When you have two American winners, you need two flags.

Saturday, at the cup finals, they had plenty of flags, and that was good, because not only did Powell, 15, beat Romania’s Ana Mario Bican to win the title, but an American man won as well.

John Roethlisberger, 24, decisively beat a strong field of Europeans that included two Olympic gold-medal winners from the 1992 Unified Team. Entering the fifth event, the parallel bars, Roethlisberger trailed Valeri Belenki, the meet favorite. But Belenki, formerly a Soviet but now a German citizen, fell. Roethlisberger did a clean routine, then put on his headset, turned up the volume on his music and headed for the high bar with the meet his to lose. He won the meet by more than half a point with a score of 57.237 to 56.675 for Russia’s Dmitri Vasilenko. Rustam Sharipov, from Ukraine, finished third.

“Throughout the meet I tried to keep my cool, but I was really nervous, really nervous before the high bar,” he said. “Last year, I choked major (on the parallel bars) and that cost me the competition.”

Late Thursday night, though, Roethlisberger’s mood wasn’t as cool. After winning the preliminaries, the three-time national and NCAA champion responded aggressively when asked if his winning performance might help change the continual criticism toward the U.S. men’s team.

“I think the criticism is a bunch of (bull),” said Roethlisberger, of Afton, Minn. “And I don’t think the performance tonight will change any of the criticism. We’re going to have it until we win an Olympic or world medal.

“People look at how many medals you’ve won, but over the last few years, we have been in the top six in the world, and at the world championships in Australia there were only three countries that had three men in the top 25--and we were one of them. I’m sick of it, I could really care less. I work my (rear) off. I have a college degree. Most of the guys on our team have college degrees. . . . If they don’t like how I perform, as Bobby Knight said, you can bury me upside down so everybody can kiss my (rear).”

Saturday, kisses of congratulations were planted only on Roethlisberger’s face. He also had a different answer to a similar question about the U.S. men earning respect. “I think (winning) will help,” he said. “When I go there (to another country) and do this, that is really going to help.”

The women, though, have no shortage of respect. Even without Miller, who fell off the beam and didn’t make the finals, the Americans finished first and third. Powell edged Bican, 39.261 to 39.087. Amanda Borden of Cincinnati was third.

“I think it’s neat to win because Mary Lou Retton was the alternate to the American Cup also,” said Powell, who trains in Colorado Springs, Colo.