GYMNASTICS : Moceanu Outlasts Miller in Strong Duel

He began his congratulatory stroll as soon as her score was announced, shaking hands along the way until he found his latest phenom. Dominique Moceanu, who trailed by one-thousandth of a point entering the final event, had just performed the best floor routine of her life to beat Shannon Miller--again--and Coach Bela Karolyi was exuberant.

This time, though, Moceanu did not win because Miller fell off the beam, as she did in the nationals, or because Moceanu was overscored, as some have suggested. Both Moceanu and Miller performed exceptionally well Saturday night in the optional competition at the World Championship trials at the Frank Erwin Center and, in a way, they both won.

“This sends a message to the world, very definitely,” Karolyi said. “It says, ‘Watch out, the Americans are strong. If Shannon is doing great and still getting squeezed by the very younger ones, it says the Americans are powerful.”

Moceanu, who turns 14 later this month, beat Miller, 18, by .021 points. For Miller it was a reversal of sorts, having been in the challenger position in 1992 against Kim Zmeskal.

Moceanu led until the third rotation, when Miller scored a 9.9 on the beam with an eloquent and difficult routine. With the scores weighted from the nationals, Moceanu needed a 9.925 to win. She scored a 9.950.

“I did not want to put pressure on Dominique and stress an over-importance of winning or making the team, so I let her go the whole night, “ Karolyi said. “But she was still watching the scores and she said to me after the third rotation, ‘Oh, I’m behind a thousandth.’ Many kids who are fragile may not have done well, but she went up on the floor and fought.”

It is an experienced team that will travel to Sabae, Japan, Oct. 1-10 for the World Championships, with five of the seven members having competed in the meet before--Miller, Jaycie Phelps, who placed third, Kerri Strug (fourth), Dominique Dawes (fifth) and Amy Chow (sixth).

Doni Thompson finished seventh and Theresa Kulikowski is the alternate. Katie Teft sprained her ankle warming up on the vault before the first event and had to withdraw.

The men performed better than they did during Friday’s compulsories, but the makeup of the team is shaky. Besides John Roethlisberger, who won the meet by nearly two points, only second-place Blaine Wilson and fourth-place Kip Simons had a good meet.

Mihai Bagiu, who finished third, hit on only three events. Fifth-place Jair Lynch scored a 7.550 on high bar and still made the team. His Stanford teammate, Josh Stein, finished sixth with two scores below 8.8. And beyond even his own reasoning, John Macready of Santa Monica, one of the most talented young gymnasts on the national team, finished seventh after what he called “the worst day of my life.”

Macready will battle eighth-place Brian Yee for a spot on the competition squad.