If it’s possible to try too hard in the Olympics, that may have been Kim Zmeskal’s problem in the women’s all-around gymnastics competition. The tumbling floor is 17 meters from corner to corner, a distance Zmeskal covers in approximately two heartbeats, flipping across the mat like a magician’s playing card before landing, quivering but upright, in the heroic posture of a 55-inch-high hood ornament. Last Thursday in Barcelona, in the third and final corner-to-corner pass of her bravura routine, she flipped just a bit too enthusiastic boundary line. It was only by a couple of inches, and for barely a second, but it was enough to cost her a crucial 10th of a point and her chance at one of the most coveted medals in sports.
Zmeskal’s loss–she finished 10th overall, out of 36 competitors–marked the end of an era, which happens every four years anyway in this sport. Olympic gymnasts rarely get a second chance; they have to turn at least 15 in the year they compete, and very few athletes can stave off the beginnings of a bosom for four more years after that. The 1992 Games may have also marked the last appearance of Zmeskal’s (and the American team’s) coach Bela Karolyi, the controversial Romanian defector who over the course of 11 years almost singlehandedly built America into an Olympic contender. Karolyi, who on Tuesday had announced plans to retire, stalked off the floor without his usual post-competition harangue to the press. His likely successor–whom he anointed after a hug, saying, “Handle it. I’m gone. Take the reins”–is Steve Nunno, who coached Shannon Miller to a close second-place finish in the overall, the first all-around medal ever won by an American in Olympic competition against the former Soviet Union. This was also, of course, the farewell appearance by the Soviet turned Unified Team, which has dominated women’s competition for most of the last 40 years. When 15-year-old Tatyana Gutsu stood on the podium for the gold medal, she heard the anthem of Ukraine.
Miller and Gutsu were both regarded as strong contenders before the Games, but the real competition was supposed to be between Zmeskal, the current world all-around champion, and the previous world champion, Svetlana Boginskaya. The matchup was fueled by an unusually personal animus: Boginskaya had refused to shake Zmeskal’s hand after losing to her in last year’s championships. And it pitted competing styles: Zmeskal, 16, reminiscent of Karolyi’s other great protegee Mary Lou Retton in the way she explodes off the mat like a soda bottle in a bonfire; Boginskaya, old at 19 and tall for a gymnast at 5 feet 3 inches, an exotic Belarussian beauty whose routines are said to be marked by an almost balletic grace. This is not necessary a compliment. Increasingly, Olympic judges reward the difficult and demanding over the graceful. “Boginskaya was a very nice and beautiful page in gymnastics history,” Karolyi said, acidly. " But you have to accept what is reality today."
In any case, the matchup almost never took place. Gymnasts qualify for the all-around event based on their individual scores in the two-day team competition, which takes place earlier in the week. (As expected, the Unified Team won the gold medal, followed by the Romanians and the Americans.) Thirty-six athletes are allowed to qualify, but only three from each national team. On Zmeskal’s very first move in Olympic competition–a lift into a back handspring on the balance beam that she has probably practiced 10,000 times in her life–she appeared to move through it too quickly, tottered and fell to the floor. So unexpected was this catastrophe that Zmeskal herself wasn’t sure it had even happened. “When I got back up,” she said, I thought, ‘Maybe I didn’t really fall off’."
But she had, and her score for the segment–9.35 out of a possible 10–was both humiliating and a potential threat to her eligibility for the all-around. Karolyi barked at her. “There’s nothing lost yet. Go for it!” When Zmeskal scored a 9.95 on the vault, her final routine of the second day, she edged out teammate Kerri Strug and became the third American qualifier. Ironically, Zmeskal’s comeback somewhat overshadowed the remarkable performance of Miller, who posted the highest individual score in the team competition. The other American to qualify was Betty Okino, the daughter of a Romanian mother and a Ugandan father.
Strange things were also happening on the Unified Team. Boginskaya qualified easily, with a score just behind Miller’s. But Gutsu, who had been touted by her coaches as a gold-medal contender, fell off the balance beam and finished behind three of her teammates. In the old days of the Soviet Union, this would have been easily solved by arresting one of the women ahead of her. But the Unified Team doesn’t work like that, so the weakest of the three qualifiers, Roza Galiyeva, came down with a knee injury instead, and Gutsu took her place. Nunno, who might have been expected to take exception, merely grinned and said, " I think those days of lying and cheating are over."
Miller and Gutsu: as alike as Zmeskal and Boginskaya are different. Both are only 15, well under five feet (although Gutsu, at 4 feet 9, is several inches taller). They could pass for sisters: both very fair, sharp-featured, with blond hair pulled back in a bun. They both display an impenetrable taciturnity that is the despair of journalists assigned to interview them. After several proddings, Miller–a straight-A student in Edmond, Okla., where she attends high school–described the Olympics as “nice.” Gutsu, following her victory, said she was “thrilled and delighted.” In case that wasn’t sufficient, she added that she was “delighted and thrilled.”
Both are powerful gymnasts with extraordinary control. Hurling herself into a full twisting flip, Miller rotates like an artillery shell, her head pointed improbably at the floor. Gutsu spins down the balance beam in a blur of hands and feet and stops herself just short of the end as if she were on a string. In the competition, Zmeskal fell behind early after stepping out of bounds, and Boginskaya took a quick lead; Gutsu and Miller were close behind. In her last event, the vault, Miller took a good approach, sprang high and far and landed on her feet with the authority of a Buck knife stuck in the dirt. Her score of 9.975 put her in first, with Gutsu still to vault. Nunno thought she deserved a 10, which would have been the only one of the competition. “I guess they were waiting for some superhuman who doesn’t exist,” he said afterward. A few moments later, Gutsu, needing 9.939 for a victory, took her turn and scored 9.950. Not as good as Miller, but good enough to take the gold.
Still, it was a remarkable performance by Miller, who went on to capture a silver and two bronze medals in the individual–apparatus competition. With only .012 separating her score from Gutsu’s, Nunno chose to treat silver as good as gold. " Shannon," her coach announced grandly, " is the epitome of the great female athlete." And so she is: poised, self-confident, smart and tough. And going on 16.
