For Chow, Karolyi, Results Hurt So Good

Women’s gymnastics, a non-contact sport?

My eye, Amy Chow will tell you.

Still not impressed?

Then how about those paw marks on the back of Martha Karolyi’s sweatsuit jacket, courtesy of husband Bela “Excitable When Photographed” Karolyi?

Push came to shove and keeping an eye on the balance beam took on new meaning at Sunday’s optional round of the U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastic trials at the FleetCenter. Chow made the team after landing a balance-beam back-flip on the side of her face--not a part of her usual routine--and Kerri Strug qualified with a floor exercise so spectacular that her coach, Karolyi, was moved to deliver a pair of exuberant high-fives into the back of his unsuspecting wife.

Afterward, Chow and Martha Karolyi were well enough to talk about it, although Chow did so while pressing an ice bag to the raspberry alongside her right eye.

Both were compensated for the wear and tear. Late Sunday, USA Gymnastics President Kathy Scanlan named Martha, not Bela, coach of the U.S. women’s team. Mary Lee Tracy, who coaches 1996 Olympians Jaycie Phelps and Amanda Borden, was named assistant coach.

“I am surprised,” Martha said. She and Bela have formed Team Karolyi for the past 33 years, but previously, Martha has always chosen the background.

The selection of Martha Karolyi and Tracy gives the U.S. women’s team an all-female coaching staff for the first time since 1956. Bela will still be permitted on the arena floor during Olympic competition in his role as personal coach for Strug and Dominique Moceanu.

“Because [the Karolyis] have an athlete who is unable to compete here because of injury, and because she needs some really intense training before the Olympics, we thought it was in the best interests of the team to have Bela work exclusively with Dominique,” Scanlan said.

Moceanu, along with Shannon Miller, previously qualified for the Olympic team by way of an injury-waiver procedure. Declared physically unable to compete in the trials, Miller and Moceanu were permitted to submit their scores from the national championships in lieu of trial results. Three weeks ago at the nationals in Knoxville, Tenn., Miller scored 78.38 and Moceanu 78.22--marks that placed them 1-2 when matched against the field in Boston.

Behind them, the rest of the seven-woman team will be Dominique Dawes (who scored 78.157 at the trials), Strug (78.108), Phelps (77.736), Chow (77.267) and Borden (77.162).

Chow’s bid was the most anxious of the evening, as she scuffed her face on a frightening fall off the balance beam, her last event of the competition.

Spinning out of a tumbling pass, Chow lost her footing between her second and third back-flip, slipped, and smacked the right side of her head on the beam on the way down.

Dazed for a moment, Chow climbed to her feet as the FleetCenter crowd gasped, then hopped back on the beam and gamely completed a routine that earned her a score of 9.275--good enough for a spot on the U.S. team by .776.

“I knew I had to hit it if I was going to go anywhere,” Chow said, referring to her routine, not her face. “I didn’t feel dizzy or anything. I just hit the side of my face. I’m OK.”

Chow’s support team wasn’t quite as sure initially.

“That’s as bad a fall as I have seen on the beam,” said Chow’s coach, Diane Amos. “I’ve never seen her fall like that in practice. She’s hit her side before, but never her face.”

“I was worried at first,” said Chow’s mother, Susan. “Then I saw her jump right up there and do this terrific job to finish the routine. She deserves a medal just for being so courageous.”

Miller, Dawes and Strug will be competing in their second Olympics, a momentous achievement not lost for an instant on Karolyi.

“Yah! Yah!” Karolyi bellowed after Strug completed a 9.925 floor exercise.

With TV cameras trained on his every move, Karolyi pumped his arms, kissed the first person he saw--a meet volunteer--then raced 10 yards across the mat to shove his beloved Martha, with both palms, in the back.

“Wake up!” Bela yelled before engulfing a startled Martha with another of his made-for-prime-time bear hugs.

“That is Bela,” Martha said with a smile once her pulse rate returned to normal. “Anything he does, he puts all of his heart into it. I think that was a reaction of total happiness and relief for him.”

And his reaction upon hearing a different Karolyi in the family will be leading the American women in Atlanta?

Said Martha, with a smile: “He told me, ‘You better do a good job.’ ”