WORLD SPORTS SCENE : After Landing Awkwardly, He Bounces Back

When he fell from the high bar and landed on the mat in a most contorted way, Scott Keswick thought he was finished as a gymnast. But the thought was fleeting, he says.

By the time doctors told him later that the herniated disk he suffered could end his career, Keswick, the top male gymnast in the nation, didn’t believe it. Even when he couldn’t walk without help for 10 days, Keswick never doubted he could make a comeback.

“They always have to tell you it could be over, just in case it happens,” he says.

This week, Keswick plans to be back in the gym at UCLA, if only for strengthening and conditioning exercises. But during the past month, while he has been rehabilitating his back, Keswick also has re-examined his career.

“Now that I have been out of the gym for the first time in my life, it has given me time to think about it and made me realize I had taken everything for granted the last couple of years,” he said. “I almost didn’t appreciate it. The last time I went to the world championships, I looked at it kind of like, I’m going to just another worlds. I had let it slip for me of just how big an accomplishment that is.

“I have one more world championship and one more Olympics, then I will retire. And I have a new motivation and a priority on doing it right this last time.”

Keswick, 25, said he is recovering ahead of schedule and hopes to compete in the national championships in August.

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His parents thought it was merely a cold, but the illness that developed in Brodie Towle became bacterial meningitis, a disease that spread through his bloodstream and killed him.

Towle, 11, was the top gymnast at the Power House Academy of Gymnastics in Charlotte, N.C., which is owned by his parents. He died Feb. 8 of a pneumococcal infection, according to Chris Riegel, his coach.

Riegel, former junior champion and national team member, said Brodie died three days after he tried to compete in a meet but missed on his first warm-up attempt and slammed into the vaulting horse. Concerned about a possible rib injury, Riegel pulled him from the meet. The next day, Brodie woke up vomiting and was hospitalized.

“He had been to the doctor two or three times (before) and they had sent him home with a cold,” Riegel said. “The only way to test (for bacterial meningitis) is a spinal tap, and by the time he was tested it had gone into his bloodstream and attacked his brain.

“He went into cardiac arrest, and they put him on life support for a day until the doctor said there was no brain activity, so they took him off.”

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Armenian gymnasts here to compete recently at the Peter Vidmar Men’s Invitational were taken to Broadway Gymnastics School in Santa Monica to practice, and later had to be dragged out of the gym. Not even the lure of a pizza party with the other gymnasts could get them to leave their warm confines. Apparently, their gym in Armenia is about 23 degrees during the winter, too cold to work out. They also were happy to practice with foam pits.

“Before the breakup from the Soviet Union, the Armenians got all their equipment and supplies from Moscow, but that doesn’t happen anymore,” said Maureen Miller, the meet’s director. “So things like foam pits, the foam is disintegrating, and as their equipment breaks, they can’t replace it.”

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Surprising Israel is among the contenders for a berth in soccer’s 1996 European Championship in England. But Adidas was so sure that the country’s hopes would be derailed by France in a qualifying game last week in Tel Aviv that it ran the following full-page advertisement in the French sports daily, L’Equipe: “The consolation for Israel after the match tonight is that they won’t have to taste English cuisine next summer.”

Not so fast. The Israelis tied, 0-0, remaining ahead of France in their qualifying group.

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Allen Johnson, the high hurdler who upset world champion Colin Jackson of Britain in an indoor meet this year, will run in the April 15 Mt. SAC Relays at Walnut, but only in a relay.

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Figure skating officials met with Ukrainian Olympic gold medalist Oksana Baiul in Los Angeles last week in an attempt to persuade her to apply for reinstatement so that she can defend her title in the 1998 Winter Olympics.

But she declined, choosing the more lucrative option of remaining a non-eligible skater. Ultimately, everyone might be satisfied because, by 1998, the International Skating Union probably will liberalize its rules and declare everyone eligible.

Times staff writer Randy Harvey contributed to this story.