Selecting U.S. Olympic gymnastics team a puzzle

PHILADELPHIA — After the hurrahs and the stumbles, now comes the hard part:

The algebra test.

For the USA Gymnastics committee that will pick the American men’s Olympic team, there are numbers to crunch. And, inevitably, there will be hearts to break.

At the end of the men’s two-day Olympic Gymnastics Trials on Saturday, only two gymnasts were named to the U.S. team — reigning Olympic all-around champion Paul Hamm of Waukesha, Wis., and Jonathan Horton of Houston and the University of Oklahoma.

And even Hamm still has some handstands to do. A broken right hand prevented him from competing in the trials, and he will have to validate his Olympic readiness in front of USA Gymnastics officials next month.

Horton, meanwhile, earned his place on the team the old-fashioned way, by compiling the highest all-around scores at the trials and U.S. championships.

Before today’s finals of the women’s competition, the men’s selection committee is expected to announce the remainder of the U.S. team. Six can compete in Beijing, and the committee likely will also include a small number of alternates.

It may need them. Hamm’s rehabilitating hand is a lingering issue, as is the health of David Sender, who won the U.S. all-around championship in May and then sprained an ankle here on the eve of the trials.

In the old days, circa Mary Lou Retton, naming the Olympic teams was painlessly easier. The top six all-around scorers from the trials made the teams.

The sport’s world governing body (FIG), however, has changed how the team scoring is computed. Five gymnasts compete in each event in the prelims, and only four of those scores are counted. In the team finals, only three athletes compete in all six events and three scores count.

"You have to do the math to pick the team," said Dennis McIntyre, the men’s program director of USA Gymnastics. "To select the best team we can, the team with the best chance of success in Beijing, we have to base it on performances."

Thus, while Raj Bhavsar of Houston and David Durante of Garwood, N.J., would seem to have an inside track to being named to the Olympic team today, by virtue of finishing third and fourth, respectively, in the trials all-around standings, the two probably sit instead on a very large bubble.

Under the new FIG system, specialists are welcomed. Houston’s oft-injured Justin Spring only competed in five of the six men’s events at the trials, yet he’s a solid contender for the team under the new scoring. So, too, is Kevin Tan of Fremont, Calif., who has a chance to medal in Beijing in his lone specialty, the rings.

The athletes themselves don’t envy the selection committee.

"I wouldn’t want to do it," Spring said.

One of the factors that the selectors considered here is how each gymnast ranked in each of the six events. A consistent performance that brings good, but not great, scores isn’t necessarily going to be rewarded.

"There’s never going to be a perfect selection process," Durante said. "Right now, this is the one we have.

"The object is to put the best team on the floor in Beijing. You don’t want to go straight by the all-around scores.

"You need to make the pieces fit to the puzzle."

Spring may be one of the most surprising puzzle pieces.

"I was in the emergency room two weeks ago," he said Saturday. "I had like shooting pains down my leg from trying to tumble. I already had a bad left ankle, and I’m eight months out on an ACL tear in my right knee. And since you can’t favor both legs, my back flared up.

"I woke up one day and couldn’t walk. I was freaking out."

Four days of muscle relaxers, Spring said, at least allowed him to get back into the gym. And now his trials scores — a 16.05 on the vault and 15.55 on the parallel bars, in particular — have him knocking on the door of the Olympic team.

"I have no idea what’s going to happen," said Spring, whose dad, Sherwood "Woody" Spring, was a shuttle astronaut.

He hopes his history of injuries won’t be held against him when the selection committee meets.

"I’d like to think that I’m over all the injuries," he said. "I’ve battled through four meets of competition, just like everyone else here has. I’ve had my ups and downs. But I know that in this last meet, the one closest to Beijing, I hit every one of my routines that I did out there."

Alas, that kind of common and traditional Olympic sense, we may learn today, no longer adds up.