U.S. Men’s Gymnastics Team Ready to Conquer Sydney

For years, the U.S. men’s gymnastics team wasn’t much of a team at all.

While the women have lived on the medal stand and on cereal boxes for decades, the men have produced little energy and even fewer medals.

Heading into the Sydney Games, however, the men believe they’re part of the scene again. Program director Ron Galimore has guaranteed the team will win a medal.

“We have every reason to think it can happen this time,” he said at a national team camp that ends this weekend at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. “But if it doesn’t, it’s going to happen soon. And it will continue to happen. Because a lot of things have been fixed and we’re moving in the right direction.”

The team is led by a tattooed, four-time national champion, a 30-year-old making his third run at the Olympics and a national coach who could make a living on the motivational-lecture circuit.

The program also has more money now. And thoughts of an Olympic medal that seemed almost laughable four years ago are now part of everyday conversation.

Galimore, a member of the 1980 U.S. team that boycotted the Moscow Olympics, is a big reason for the resurgence. When he came aboard at the end of the “Dark Decade” from 1985-95, he took over a fragmented group with no team unity or purpose.

In the ultimate test of team strength--Olympic medals--the United States was a failure during that time. It won just one, Trent Dimas’ gold on the high bar in 1992.

Just as telling an example of the team’s problems: “We held training camps and nobody showed up,” Galimore says.

“It was horrible,” national team coordinator Peter Kormann says. “Basically, we had six individual guys showing up at meets, competing, then heading their own way. That’s how you end up with horrible results.”

At this year’s final pre-Olympic training camp, Kormann has been overseeing 16 gymnasts and their coaches, trying to meld them into a team in a sport that is as individualistic as it gets.

Galimore’s decision to hire Kormann at about the same time he came on has been a key to the turnaround.

Even so, it was questioned because of Kormann’s touchy-feely approach, one long on motivation and short on technical advice. It wasn’t a method everyone warmed up to at first in a sport known for its egos.

“Do they all really like me? I don’t know, and I don’t really care,” says Kormann, who coached Navy and Ohio State before working with the national team. “I would hope they would. I respect them as coaches and I want them to coach. I’m not going to interfere with what they do with their individual athletes.”

What he is going to do is paint the bigger picture for the American men, and it is this: At the World Championships in China last year, the gap between second and 12th place was a mere seven points, meaning medals should be completely up for grabs in Sydney.

The United States finished sixth, one place below where it finished at the 1996 Olympics. The image frozen from that year was John Roethlisberger slipping off the pommel horse, and later breaking down in tears, as the team came up 0.923 points short of a bronze medal

“I was heartbroken when we walked off the floor,” Roethlisberger says. “But we did earn respect. We’re one of the best in the world now. Nobody can argue with that.”

But can the team get anyone to care in a country that has been fixated on the women’s side of the sport for so long?

USA Gymnastics, the organization that runs the Olympic program, has improved its fund-raising over the past four years. One major sponsor has added money to improve the training center in Colorado Springs and create a new one in Houston.

Thanks to the money, athletes no longer have to hold down a job to pay for living expenses while they train.

The United States also seems to have the personalities to draw attention.

Roethlisberger is 30--ancient for this sport--married and trying to join an exclusive list of U.S. male gymnasts to compete in three Olympics.

The national champion, Blaine Wilson, has tattoos, a shaved head (for now) and a freewheeling attitude that could sell to the public.

He’s also psychologically ready to handle the realities of a sport in which respect has always been hard to come by.

“It’s kind of harsh for me to say, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of support for men’s gymnastics until now,” Wilson said. “So, we’re just going to continue doing what were doing. If people are going to help us out that’s fine. If not, that’s fine, too.”

Support and recognition after the Olympics will probably flow freely should the country win a medal in Sydney. And while nobody outside of Galimore wants to make any guarantees, they know the framework exists where none did a decade ago.

“Everybody talks about medal, medal, medal,” Wilson said. “We know if we don’t win a medal, it’s not the end of the world. But the fact of the matter is, we have enough talent and enough time that we should be able to win that medal.”