Golden Oldies Spinning Again

It is obvious now, six months after the fact, that the U.S. women’s gymnastics program learned a hard lesson at the 1999 World Championships, where Team USA finished a desultory sixth place:

If you can’t beat ‘em with what you’ve got, start dragging bodies out of retirement.

First came Bela Karolyi, setting aside the elephant gun and hunter’s camouflage to return to the fray in the newly created position of “national team coordinator.”

Now comes a comeback so dramatic--cue the string music, please--that it is positively cinematic.

The Return of the Magnificent Seven! (Minus three.) Shannon Miller, 23, the most decorated American female gymnast in the history of the sport . . . is BACK!

Amy Chow, 21, 1996 individual Olympic silver medalist on the uneven bars . . . is BACK!

Dominique Moceanu, 18, and Jaycie Phelps, 20, veterans of the 1996 Olympic gold medal team, also have returned to the gym, sights set on another berth on another American national team in another Summer Olympics.

With the exception of Chow, they are longshots to qualify for the six-person team that will represent the United States in Sydney.

Miller had been out of regular training for nearly two years before reuniting with her longtime coach, Steve Nunno, in January.

Phelps spent the last year coaching and the last three out of competition because of a knee injury.

Moceanu, who has grown 10 inches since 1996, has been struggling to acquaint her new body with old routines, bouncing back and forth between the A and B teams Karolyi invites to monthly boot camps at his ranch outside Houston.

Still, Karolyi welcomed them royally last week on a conference call announcing their return to the U.S. program.

“I know one thing,” he said. “The general prestige of this team around the world has just gone up to a different level than what it was without them. Obviously, the outcome is going to be much more positive with them [in the U.S. program].”

According to Karolyi, “the returning former Olympians will bring a more balanced force out on that floor. They would bring back the memories of the specific effort of uniting the team. This is one of the reasons our team did not compete very well at the past two World Championships. Because of a lack of unity. The united effort was missing.

“Now in ‘96, we had a united, strong, well-balanced and extremely, extremely dedicated young team on the floor--and the result was obvious. So these are the great benefits.”

Not counting perhaps the most important immediate benefit: publicity.

“I have to emphasize the importance of this year from the media standpoint,” Karolyi said. “You guys are much more interested now in our team than before. Because there’s going to be a beautiful rivalry. There’s going to be a beautiful challenge out on the floor. There’s going to be--oh, gosh--I mean, so colorful.

“Seeing a Shannon Miller, seeing an Amy Chow, a Jaycie Phelps, a Dominique Moceanu, competing against these fiery young ones. Hey, that’s going to be beautiful. It’s very colorful and spectacular.

“So these ingredients are very, very important. That’s why I am so much excited about the particular return of the four Olympians.”

THE EASY LIFE, INTERRUPTED

Miller, whose Olympic career dates to her all-around and balance beam silver medals at the Barcelona Games in 1992, attended the 1999 World Championships as an athletes’ representative.

“It was an interesting competition,” she said. “I really don’t think [the Americans’ poor showing] had any effect on my decision [to return]. The major thing that had an effect on my decision was just physically being back in the gym and returning to a sport I really love to do.

“At one point I was just, like, ‘OK, I need to try some other things for a while so that I don’t get burned out of the sport.’ And I thought that was about it for me. But I always thought I would go back and do the [post-Olympics] tour again, and once I got back in the gym, it was just kind of a homecoming. It was just very natural for me to go in and work out five hours a day. . . .

“I think whether the team got sixth or whether they got first, I think I would still be trying to make the team and do the best I can. Because the main thing is putting the best team we can for our country out on the floor.”

Miller acknowledged some nervous reluctance before broaching the idea to Nunno.

“It took me a couple days to get up the nerve to go in and ask him, because I knew I was out of shape,” she said. “I just figured I would ask him to train me and he would laugh and that would be it. It would be, like, the worst feeling ever.

“And he didn’t. He took me totally seriously. He talked to me for a very lengthy time about, ‘Do you know what this means? Do you remember how hard it was? I expect you to be in here every day on time. I expect you to focus on training.’ He went down the list. And then he kept asking me why I wanted to do it.

“And every answer I threw at him wasn’t good enough. So he kept asking me and asking me. And finally, after all the reasons I threw out--which are still very important reasons--I said the one he was looking for. And that was to win a team medal. And that was, to us, always the point.”

Nunno agreed to take her on, putting Miller on a rigorous regimen in January because, at her advanced age, “I have to be in better shape than I was even in 1996,” she said.

Now married, Miller laughed when asked how her husband was coping with the kind of training schedule that dominated her life in her teens.

“It’s been quite a little lesson for him,” Miller said. “I’m a little bit different person now than I was a year ago, because everything’s more focused. I have to eat certain things. I have to do certain things at certain times in the day. I have to go to morning workouts and I have to go to evening workouts, so I’m not there when he gets home.

“So there are all these other things to work with. But he’s been really supportive.”

SYDNEY GAMES GAFFE OF THE WEEK

Last week, it was runaway weed growth in the racing lanes of the new $42.7-million kayak course.

This week, Sydney Olympic organizers were dealing with the embarrassment of having printed souvenir tickets too big for the turnstiles at most Olympic venues.

Following the example of the 1996 Atlanta Games, Sydney organizers printed oversized souvenir tickets while forgetting two important fundamentals:

* Tickets cannot be so big as to not fit into turnstile slots.

* Tickets must come equipped with bar codes so they can be electronically scanned.

Both details were ignored by the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, resulting in millions of tickets that cannot be scanned at turnstiles--and cannot be canceled or replaced at this late date.

“The magnitude, sensitivity and potential for errors in this complex process should not be underestimated,” SOCOG President Michael Knight told the New South Wales parliament last week. “Consequently, [the tickets] have to be treated with much greater security.”

The error is the result of SOCOG’s having switched ticket distributors earlier this year. UPS, a worldwide Olympic sponsor, has the technology to scan the oversized tickets, but the company elected not to renew its contract to distribute tickets within Australia. The new domestic distributor, TNT, lacks the required technology.