TEAM GYMNASTICS: When we think of women swinging on beams, somersaulting on bars, tumbling on carpets and soaring over vaults at the Olympic Games, we do not necessarily think of Pamela Anderson. We remember the grace, beauty, impudence and blinding bodily flexibility of Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim, Olga Korbut, Nadia Comaneci and Svetlana Boguinskaya.
When we think of Anderson, we think of other forms of beauty. But the one-time star of Baywatch was an unseen presence in Athens last night as the United States attempted to win the team award with the aid of her protégée, Mohini Bhardwaj, a 4ft 10in 25-year-old from Philadelphia with a Russian mother and an Indian father.
They failed, giving best to Romania, who repeated their victory of four years ago, but although, in the end, the competition lacked suspense, it did not lack quality and excitement, thanks in part to a large and enthusiastic crowd in an arena which had been less than half-empty for the previous nights.
Anderson, a gymnast herself until the age of 10, became involved in Bhardwaj's career with a $20,000 donation and has since set up a fund to assist her progress. Bhardwaj made an immediate impression last night when, after team-mate Carly Patterson had fluffed her landing in the lead-off vault, she earned the first 9.5 score for a six-member team so good that team co-ordinator, Martha Karolyi, was able to leave three current world champions on the sidelines.
The rules have changed since the last Olympics, and the women's team event now involves three gymnasts from each team performing each of the four exercises, with the results decided on a points aggregate. All scores count, none is dropped, and a single fall in the course of two-and-a-quarter hours can make all the difference.
First introduced to the Olympics in 1928, the team event was long dominated by the Soviet Union, which won 10 out of 11 gold medals from 1952 to 1992, missing out only in 1984, when their government boycotted the games in Los Angeles, allowing Romania to take the victory. By the time the United States won in Atlanta in 1996, the Soviet Union had disappeared.
Romania and Russia finished first and second in Sydney four years ago, with China edging out the United States for the bronze medal. And it was Romania and Russia who presented the greatest threat to the US team last night, Monica Rosu's 9.6 in the vault carrying them into the lead after the first rotation.
Svetlana Khorkina, with gold medals on the asymmetrical bars from Atlanta and Sydney behind her, and two silver medals in the team event, made her first appearance in the vault, and was lucky to be awarded a 9.375 after a terrible landing.
Khorkina (25), took part in each of the four disciplines last night, hearing the crowd chant her name as she surfed over the lower of the uneven bars to grab the higher one and initiate a routine full of power and panache, concluded with an unsteady touchdown. On the balance beam she was good enough for the crowd to boo the judges when they awarded her only 9.437, and they booed again when she was given 9.600 for the floor exercise, even though that seemed an excessive reward for a combination of shopworn Bolshoi routines with great springs and leaps.
If Korkhina goes into retirement after this week's individual competitions, there is no obvious heir to the lineage of gymnastics queens going back to Tourischeva and beyond. No doubt someone will emerge, probably from Romania, for whom Catalina Ponor finished off the competition last night with a floor routine of enormous zest and elegance after her team-mates, Nicoleta Sofronie and Oana Ban, a pair of tiny twisters, had buried the US hopes with routines full of startling changes of direction.
The US team had lost their last hopes a few minutes earlier, when Courtney Kupets began her floor exercise with elan but suffered a stutter midway through. Bhardwaj similarly suffered from a momentary loss of direction, while Patterson could not revive the effort with a phenomenal routine including one remarkable stop on tip-toe at the very perimeter of the exercise area.
Of the rest, the comparatively tall Ukrainian gymnasts did ice-maiden impersonations in their pristine white costumes, while the hard-trying Australians resembled little leprechauns in their twinkly emerald green leotards. The Chinese and the French both suffered from a spate of falls.
