‘Snarly’ Carly Isn’t About to Be Stared Down by Any Old Russian

Goodbye Mary Lou; hello heart.

America has a new tumbling queen today, two decades after the last one flitted across the landscape, only this one is no pixie.

“Snarly” Carly Patterson is more moll than doll, rough-hewn as a beam, resilient as a vault.

In a chalk-sweating night that came down to the last flip, Patterson became only the second American woman to win the Olympic all-around gymnastics championship Thursday, earning a medal that should be alloyed of equal parts glare and gold.

She beat Russian favorite Svetlana Khorkina. She beat a recent history of big-game flops. She beat the stereotype of precociousness and the reality of politics.

And she did it on a four-inch-wide piece of wood.

Trailing world champion Khorkina before the final two disciplines, Patterson jumped around on the balance beam as if it were a king-sized bed, soaring where Khorkina stumbled, taking a lead she held through the final floor exercise.

“Man, was she tough,” said Bela Karyoli, U.S. gymnastics guru.

So was Mary Lou Retton, who made a profitable career out of winning the first U.S. women’s all-around gymnastics gold medal in 1984.

But if America wanted to hug Retton, it will want to high-five Patterson, slap her back, give that shiny brown hair a noogie.

Other gymnasts have grace. Patterson has game.

During warmups before that final floor exercise, she was the last to leave the mat, giving her opponents a perfect tumbling pass to contemplate.

She then watched those opponents from a few feet away, stretching, staring, almost stalking.

When it was her turn -- she was the last to perform -- her coach, Evgeny Marchenko, knew.

“I see in her eyes that she is ready to do this,” he said.

Even though she is but 16. Even though she fell twice and finished third in the Olympic trials, then slipped earlier this week during the team competition.

“These big moments, she lives for them,” Marchenko said.

When she finished a nearly mistake-free exercise to clinch the victory, only then did she let those eyes fill up, weeping in Marchenko’s arms.

“This means a lot; this is something I’ve worked for all my life,” Patterson said, and OK, so she’s only 16.

On a night that ended in whining and finger pointing, she was also clearly the adult.

Khorkina, in probably her final major competition, was dressed in full childish diva. She looked like Uma Thurman and acted like something out of “Kill Bill.”

She scowled at the judges, stalked off the floor before Patterson’s final routine and changed into an advertisement-dotted leotard for the medal ceremony.

And then she really got ugly.

When the medalists’ news conference started, Khorkina proclaimed, “I am still an Olympic champion.”

And then she added, “The judges should comment on these points. Remember my performance in the team competition. Compare these scores to the team competition.”

Finally, when asked the compare herself and Patterson, she said, “There is a difference between me and the American. [Pause]. I am Russian. [Pause.] I am not from the USA.”

Then she pursed her lips and made a “phootey” raspberry.

“Just joking,” she said.

None of it was funny to those who thought she was trying to steal one of America’s finest gymnastic moments, or at least the finest since Paul Hamm had won the men’s all-around title 24 hours earlier.

“She has no respect for Olympic champions, and that is wrong,” Marchenko said. “When she won Olympics championship, people respected her. She needs to respect champions now.”

He added of Patterson, “She is young, but I know she is not appreciative of that kind of talk. It should be her night.”

Oh, but it still was. This was Snarly Carly’s coming out party as she took her place in a sports world that, until now, mostly knew only one thing about her.

Reportedly hanging on her bedroom wall was a poster of Mary Lou Retton.

“What?” she said late Thursday, those eyes narrowing again. “No there isn’t.”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.