For the women, a 1-2 punch
PHILADELPHIA - The way the men pick their Olympic gymnastics team looks like an equation Will Hunting might have scribbled on the board at MIT. Twenty percent plus 20 percent plus 30 percent plus 30 percent equals 100 percent, except when they want to weigh things differently (100 plus 0, 33 1/3 plus 33 1/3 plus 33 1/3) or just let the computer decide. If you can figure out who should be the six guys who go to Beijing, you might get the Fields Medal for mathematical brilliance.
The way the women do it is blissfully, if brutally, simple. The top two finishers at the trials get guaranteed tickets. Everybody else is chosen behind closed gym doors a month from now after five days of something like what author Flann O'Brien once called "physical scourges, torments, and piteous blood-sweats."
The national championships at Agganis Arena two weekends ago merely served to eliminate four women from Olympic contention. The other 19 are here at the
They've been the country's two best competitors for two years now and after last night's first go-round. Johnson (64.00 points) and Liukin (63.500) were 1-2 ahead of Chellsie Memmel (62.250) and Samantha Peszek (61.850).
Johnson and Liukin will be the all-arounders in Beijing and one of them figures to make the medal stand. What the July camp will be about is picking the four others who can be mixed and matched around them to maximize chances for a team gold and a couple of medals in the apparatus finals.
That's what should get Alicia Sacramone on the team, no matter where she finishes in the all-around standings here. She was 14th last night because she skipped the uneven bars, but she nailed her vault and would have tied for second on floor if she hadn't been penalized three-10ths of a point for stepping out of bounds. "I didn't step out," the Winchester, Mass., native declared. "My big toe was out."
Sacramone won world medals in vault and floor last year and is a reliable beamer. She's also the team's Big Sister, Ivy League role model, social director, and pep talker in moments of crisis.
If the selectors want to, they can name Sacramone to the squad tomorrow, but team coordinator Martha Karolyi has been carefully vague about whether they would. "I can't say for sure," she said. "It could happen, but . . ."
Sacramone is sanguine about the uncertainty. "We know they can name more than two people," she said. "We're just going to keep doing our jobs. We're going to Houston, anyway."
Unlike 2000, when the Americans barely could find a half-dozen women to make up a competitive team in Sydney, they're awash in planetary medalists this summer. Memmel, who was the 2005 world champion, now at best is No. 3 here. "I can wait until the selection camp," she figured. "I think third in the country isn't too bad."
Jana Bieger, who was global runner-up two years ago, is sitting sixth behind Ivana Hong and is on the bubble. If Memmel and Bieger both make it, a third of last year's gold-medal team will be sitting home.
Even with the computer pitching in, the men's situation is baffling, with injuries to Olympic champion Paul Hamm and national titlist David Sender scrambling the calculus. If Hamm's repaired right hand remains intact once he starts grabbing bars and rings with it again, he's the team's granite cornerstone. If it doesn't, the Rubik's Cube goes out of alignment.
Sender, who sprained an ankle before Wednesday's practice, skipped Thursday's first round. If he can't go in this afternoon's finale, the selectors will have to decide whether to put him on the team.
As it is, the math is close enough to require software intervention. Halfway through trials, the top four men are Alexander Artemev (90.650), Jonathan Horton (90.550), Raj Bhavsar (90.500), and Joe Hagerty (90.350). But factoring in the results from last month's nationals, which count 40 percent, the order is Horton (63.255), Hagerty (63.165), Artemev (62.825), and Bhavsar (62.800).
If Hagerty, the only contender who's never made a world team, stays in second and claims an automatic spot, the six-event combinations become brain-frying. The numbers are decidedly simpler for the women. Two from here, and make sure not to miss the plane to Houston.
John Powers can be reached at jpowers@globe.com.
