Watch Out, World U.S. Gymnasts Set On Olympic Gold, Though National Championships Come First

It wasn’t all that long ago that the vaunted Soviet gymnasts, the little Natashas and sturdy Svetlanas, would routinely take control of any practice session that also included American kids. Before a big meet, for example, if both countries were allotted an hour on the vault, the girls from the Big Red Machine would take 45 minutes while the Americans meekly settled for 15.

But the mini-Marxists know their place these days - behind the Americans. The Romanians still own the world and Olympic titles, but the No.2-ranked U.S. girls look like they have a good chance to change that.

Attitude, Peggy Liddick believes, is half the battle.

“With our older kids, it’s no big thing now for them to get in a fight with the Russians over (practice) time,” says Liddick, who helps coach world all-around champion Shannon Miller. “If a Russian gets on their beam, they’ll go up and push them off.

“They’ve seen the Russians take advantage of their status, but now we’re the people to beat. Now it’s our time. And that’s what makes our older kids so determined to keep training.”

It used to be that “older kids” was gymnastics code for “over the hill.”

Not anymore. Not on this U.S. team. Elegance and performance are the buzzwords these days, while hot new tricks carry less of a premium.

It has been a dozen years since a female American gymnast has hung on from one Olympiad to the next, but now there are no fewer than four “spinsters” trying to make the leap from Barcelona (1992) to Atlanta (1996). They began their attempt Wednesday at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in New Orleans. The competition at the Louisiana Superdome runs through Saturday.

The Olympic veterans are Miller, defending U.S. champion Dominique Dawes, former world champ Kim Zmeskal and the well-traveled, often-injured Kerri Strug. The four of them - plus veteran Amanda Borden, who barely missed the ‘92 Olympic team - are the dowagers of American gymnastics.

Zmeskal is still coming back after a nasty knee injury, and isn’t competing in New Orleans.

But Liddick thinks Miller, Dawes and Borden, all 18, and 17-year-old Strug will be hard to dethrone. The coach is convinced they’ll emerge this weekend as the clear favorites for the ‘96 Olympic Trials in Boston next March.

“The average age of our Olympic team is going to be 18,” Liddick says, projecting a year ahead. “Shannon, Dom, Amanda and Kerri are better than they’ve ever been.”

Liddick’s scenario presumes that this gang has four Olympic spots nailed down - barring injury, illness or an out-of-the-blue growth spurt. That prognosis leaves three places for everybody else.

“And there’s probably 10 or 12 kids who have a shot at those last three spots,” Liddick says.

Any spot on the ‘96 Olympic team will guarantee a klieg light of attention for each gymnast, not to mention endorsements and other corporate possibilities. One promising youngster, 13-year-old Jennie Thompson of Wichita Falls, Texas, already has quite a presence in Atlanta: There are 40-foot-high cutouts of her on bank billboards all over town.

The competition will be fierce from now until March. An 80-pound Olympic gymnast has to have the heart of a linebacker. She can knock back a couple Advils, slap on a smile for the judges and rip off a tumbling pass that would make an astronaut lose his lunch.

“The gymnasts today are better in terms of performance,” 1984 Olympic gymnast Michelle Dusserre says. “You can’t afford to fall in a major competition anymore. Everybody’s so good, it makes the margin of error very small.”

All this dials up the pressure on all the gymnasts, and that pressure can create fissures over the course of a big meet like the U.S. Championships. The younger girls are the ones most vulnerable to those small cracks becoming major breaks.

“There are a lot of good little kids coming up,” Liddick says, “but they’re not going to be as composed in eight events (four compulsories, four optionals) up on a podium. At this level, you’ve got to have experience.

“Our older kids are very strong and they’ve never retired from competition. With our experience and with the Olympics being in Atlanta, we have a very good chance to win the gold medal.”