Spring confident of chances

PHILADELPHIA -- Two weeks ago, Justin Spring was in a Colorado Springs hospital emergency room bending over with agonizing back pain and hearing a doctor suggest he had a herniated disk and might be on his way into surgery.

Today, Spring will probably be named to the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team after he bounced his way through 10 captivating and imaginative routines in two rounds of Olympic trials.

As late as an hour before Thursday’s first round, Spring was uncertain about competing in floor exercise.

At last year’s national championships, Spring blew out his left knee while attempting a vault with such a high degree of difficulty that U.S. coaches and even other competitors had said he was taking too big a chance. “I’d do that vault again,” Spring said. His risk-taking defiance marks all of his gymnastics. He does big tricks and takes big falls.

Spring, 24, of Burke, Va., had reconstructive knee surgery and listened to whispers and rumors that he couldn’t be ready in time for the Beijing Olympics. “I heard so much stuff,” he said. “You can’t believe how much.”

As his knee got stronger, he began competing on each apparatus. Gingerly at first, but aggressively by last March.

In the process of recovering his gymnastics skills yet still protecting his knee, he sprained his right ankle. So he came to last month’s nationals with the need to be cautious.

“My ankle was sore,” Spring said. “My mind-set was to figure the Olympic selection committee knows I’m in the middle of a process and go from there.”

But Spring struggled at nationals. He fell off the high bar, an event in which he is capable of high scores. He tore blisters on his hands on the parallel bars. He didn’t compete in floor exercise to rest the ankle.

Next came the low point, his coach, Jon Valdez, said: “Justin was getting the reputation for being physically fragile. Then we were at the training center in Colorado Springs when Justin walked off the mat and said his back was killing him.”

The hospital trip ended happily, though. “It was just a back spasm,” Valdez said.

Spring came to Philadelphia as an underdog.

Despite his sore ankle and the spasms still fresh in his mind, he added floor exercise to his slate. With each of his 10 routines (two each on floor, rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar), he grew confident.

The process of selecting the U.S. team will be heavily based on a weighted series of numbers that include scores and points earned at four rounds of nationals and trials.

When Saturday’s final scores were posted, parsed and tabulated, Spring ranked first on parallel bars, second on vault, third on high bar, seventh on still rings and 10th on floor. Even defending Olympic all-around champion Paul Hamm listed Spring as a definite to make the Olympic team.

On Saturday night, Hamm and Jonathan Horton were named to the team. Hamm, despite having a broken bone in his hand, is a world and Olympic champion; Horton won the all-around competition.

The rest of the team will be named today. Some gymnasts spoke of a nervous Saturday night, but not Spring. “I’m going to sleep well,” he said, “and wake up expecting good news.”

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diane.pucin@latimes.com