Atler Seeking Medal--and Coach

There will be a little scrambling going on along with the tumbling at the gymnastics world championships beginning Sunday in Tianjin, China.

Vanessa Atler, the 17-year-old from Canyon Country who is considered one of the top American prospects for Sydney, left her longtime coaches not long after her latest fall from the uneven bars and is looking for another coach even as she revamps her bar routine in hopes of putting her mental block behind her.

One of Atler’s former coaches, Steve Rybacki, will be nearby watching as he coaches Jamie Dantzscher of Palmdale, 17, a former training partner of Atler’s who made the U.S. team as an alternate after Alyssa Beckerman broke her wrist.

“I’m sure it will be uncomfortable not only for Steve but for everyone else,” said Beth Kline-Rybacki, who, along with her husband, coached Atler. “It’s hard. Vanessa leaving was a shock to us. You put six years of your heart and soul into an athlete. It feels like you’ve lost one of your kids.”

The U.S. women’s team for the biggest international competition before the Olympics has a decided Southern California background: Atler, Dantzscher and Jeanette Antolin of Huntington Beach, 18, make up half the six-woman team.

Antolin, promising enough to bring former U.S. Olympic coach Don Peters out of semi-retirement, has caught eyes recently with a difficult move on bars--a Yeager salto in a layout position--that no other woman in the world does.

Still, with the Olympics less than a year away, the American women aren’t considered contenders to medal at the world championships after winning gold in Atlanta in 1996.

The two veterans of that team who hope to make comebacks, Dominique Moceanu and Amy Chow, are out because of injuries, and two other gymnasts who made the team, Beckerman and Jennie Thompson, have been replaced by alternates because of injuries. (Morgan White, 16, of Cincinnati, took Thompson’s spot.)

China, Romania and Russia are the women’s favorites, with Russia’s Svetlana Khorkina and Romania’s Simona Amanar the top contenders in the all-around. Atler and U.S. champion Kristen Maloney, 18, should finish in the top 10, with Atler considered a medal contender in the vault.

The U.S. men are considerably further from contention for a team medal than the women. Four-time national champion Blaine Wilson, 25, and aging veteran John Roethlisberger, 29, lead the U.S. in a competition that will determine the 12 countries that advance to the Sydney Olympics next year.

China, Belarus and Russia are the men’s favorites.