Magnificent Seven? Well, No, but They’re Not Bad

Seven American male gymnasts spent 2 1/2 hours in the Georgia Dome on Saturday afternoon and did not once fall off an apparatus, trip over a chalk bin, get thrown from the pommel horse, ask Vitaly Scherbo for his autograph or get elbowed out of the way by Dominique Moceanu’s entourage.

Contrary to reputation, the U.S. men showed they could vault their way out of a wet paper bag, and then some--finishing a surprisingly efficient compulsory round second in their group to Belarus, a.k.a. Team Scherbo, and fifth overall behind Russia (287.258), China (286.283), Ukraine (285.359) and Belarus (285.222).

The Americans had no falls in 36 routines, only one score under 9.2 and completed the day with a team score of 284.634--more than four points better than their compulsory showing in the 1995 World Championships. They stand 2.624 points behind first place and are .725 out of third.

U.S. reaction?

“Awesome”--John Roethlisberger.

“Almost perfect”--Coach Peter Kormann.

“Awkward”--Chainey Umphrey.

Umphrey’s was the lone dissenting blurb in a chorus of hosannas that began with a standing ovation from the Georgia Dome partisans and crested with USA Gymnastics President Kathy Scanlan broaching the idea of a possible team appearance on the medal stand.

Umphrey, a premed student at UCLA, sat out the high bar, his best routine, and the vault in a coach’s decision that sat none too well with him. Umphrey was a casualty, in part, of an Olympic rule change. In the past, seven gymnasts qualified for the Olympic team, but only six competed--the seventh was an alternate. This year, all seven compete but only six per apparatus.

This meant Kormann had to draw up six lineups--one per apparatus--with someone riding the bench each time. Along with Umphrey, Mihai Bagiu and Kip Simons were also held out of events, rendering each ineligible for medals in those events and excluding them from the individual all-around competition.

“My biggest Olympic dream was basically shot when I found out about the high bar,” said Umphrey, who placed fourth in that event in the 1994 World Championships. “That was my chance at an Olympic medal.

“I feel I should have been out there. I still feel I should be out there. But, you make the sacrifice. I’m a team player. I feel like it’s a big sacrifice. I’m still struggling with it.”

Umphrey never openly accused Kormann of favoritism, but Kormann’s choice for the last spot in the high-bar lineup, essentially, came down to Umphrey and Simons, who competes for Kormann at Ohio State. And Umphrey’s load didn’t lighten when he watched Bagiu take his turn on the high bar, fail to hold two handstands and receive the Americans’ lowest score of the day--8.55.

“It was an awkward competition for me,” Umphrey said. “I didn’t quite feel myself out there. This is the first time in my 16-year history in gymnastics that I had to sit out some events.

“I did the best I could with the four events I had, and then I pulled for the other guys. . . . Personally, this has been devastating for me. But if the bottom line is that I have to sacrifice my dream for the team to win a medal, I can live with that. It’s been a long time since USA men’s gymnastics has brought back serious Olympic hardware.”

Sixty-four years, to be exact, if you’re counting only non-boycott Olympics. Excluding the Soviet-boycotted Games of 1984, the United States’ last team medal in men’s gymnastics was the silver in 1932.

At the 1995 World Championships in Sabae, Japan, the United States finished ninth--after placing third in compulsories. In the optional round, where virtuosity and degree of difficulty carry more weight and the boys are separated from the medalists, the Americans finished 11th, or next to last.

“People say we screwed up the optionals in Sabae, but we really didn’t,” Bagiu contended. “We only had a few misses. What we didn’t have was enough difficulty in our routines.

“Now we do. Everybody on the team has upgraded his routine.”

Two, Roethlisberger and Blaine Wilson, completed the compulsory phase with individual scores among the top 11 in the field. Roethlisberger (57.524) was third behind Alexei Nemov of Russia (57.862) and Scherbo (57.823). Wilson, the current U.S. national champion, was 11th at 57.012.

“That was an almost perfect meet for us,” Kormann said. “You can watch gymnastics for 10 years and not see a perfect meet. . . . I don’t think [the U.S. men] have ever had a perfect meet, even in Los Angeles when we won the gold. I think we had one or two misses in compulsories.

“In ‘92, we had three falls on the pommel horse. In ’88 we had a lot of misses. Today, we only had one. This was a great performance, better than Sabae.”

Having said that, Kormann felt he was on firm footing with his non-Chainey high-bar alignment.

“It’s just like a basketball coach deciding who goes in and who comes out,” Kormann said. “When a guy makes the Olympic basketball team, I don’t think he tells the coach how many minutes he’s going to play and who he’s going to guard.”

Excluding the Dream Team, no, it never happens.

“I took a lot of time with the lineups. Too much time,” Kormann continued. “I watched videos, went through the scores. I looked at it from every angle. I didn’t just throw up some cards and come up with it.”

Scanlan called the U.S. men’s performance “great and wonderful, but I don’t think we’re stunned. We always contended we had a shot [at a medal], that if we got into the final six heading into the optionals, we have a shot.”

After compulsories, the U.S. men are fifth. If they can make up .726 in the standings by the end of Monday’s optional competition, they will walk out of the Georgia Dome with bronze medals around their necks.

Chainey Umphrey will have one too.