Johnson wins all-around title

BOSTON -- The chase is on.

Shawn Johnson held on to her U.S. national championships all-around title Saturday by pounding out eight solid routines over two nights, but Nastia Liukin closed fast and with flash.

And the two Americans did nothing to discourage the sense that they are co-favorites to win the Olympic all-around gold medal in August.

Johnson, 16, of West Des Moines, Iowa, earned her win with resolute performances on every apparatus and cemented it with her athletic floor routine. She scored 127.500 in the two-day competition. Liukin had 126.500.

Liukin, 18, from Parker, Texas, kept pressure on Johnson with her dazzling uneven bars work and graceful dancing across the balance beam. She won individual gold medals on each apparatus while Johnson won the floor exercise gold and Alicia Sacramone the vault gold medal. And on Saturday Liukin’s total of 64.200 beat Johnson’s 64.050.

Mattie Larson, 16, of Los Angeles, a senior-level rookie, won a bronze medal for her two-night floor exercise performances and advanced to the Olympic trials June 19-22 in Philadelphia by finishing seventh overall.

The top 12 all-around finishers here as well as seven other gymnasts chosen by the U.S. Olympic selection committee will compete at the trials. A six-person Olympic team and up to three alternates will be named July 20 after a training camp at the Texas ranch of team coordinator Martha Karolyi.

“I’m really happy with how I did,” said Johnson, who had won every competition she entered last season. Johnson basically won these nationals in the very first event in which she and Liukin competed Thursday night. It was floor exercise, and Liukin had two major mistakes. But Liukin didn’t make another in her next seven performances.

“I think I did great,” Liukin said. “I was keeping pressure on.” Liukin achieved the two highest scores of the competition. She had gotten a career-best uneven bars score of 17.050 on Thursday and bettered that with her 17.100 Saturday.

Karolyi summed up the results as pleasing. “We’re exactly on the pace we want to do,” she said. “The majority of the contenders have their routines exactly as I want. We don’t want to have major mistakes. Now we just have to make those routines more perfect and shinier-looking and easier-looking and more precise-looking.”

That really is praise from taskmaster Karolyi.

If there was a bigger winner than Johnson and Liukin it was 19-year-old Chellsie Memmel. The 2005 world all-around champion has battled through shoulder surgery that kept her from making the 2007 world championship team. Memmel, from West Allis, Wis., finished third overall and punctuated her solid all-around score by winning a silver medal on the uneven bars.

“I think if I would have to say there was a great improvement from the last competition to this it was Chellsie Memmel,” Karolyi said. “Chellsie’s comeback has been step by step, and sometimes we were almost losing patience. But she has paced herself and charged in the right moment.”

Johnson didn’t have a major stumble in two days but said that it was a mistake to think all her landed tricks and the continuous smile meant she had no fears.

“I wake up every hour on the night before I compete,” she said. “I definitely have nerves even if I don’t show them.”

Liukin said she had some nerves on that opening floor exercise routine in which she scored only 14.250. Saturday she stayed inbounds and received a 15.850. Had she done the same routine Thursday as she did Saturday, Liukin would have beaten Johnson for the second time this year. “This is only the first step,” Liukin said. “I’m going to get better.” Five minutes earlier Johnson said the same thing.

diane.pucin@latimes.com

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The results

* Head to head: U.S. nationals champion Shawn Johnson finished ahead of runner-up Nastia Liukin in floor exercise and vault, the power events. Liukin beat Johnson in uneven bars and balance beam, events that reward pointed toes and grace.

* Overlooked: Steady Samantha Peszek, who finished fourth overall and who is a consistent and solid vaulter; Bridget Sloan, still recovering from a knee injury, got third place on uneven bars, an event where the U.S. has little depth.

-- Diane Pucin