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COPYRIGHT 2004 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Any reuse, distribution or alteration without express written permission of Newsweek is prohibited. For permission: www.newsweek.com
Byline: Mark Starr
What Paul Hamm did was unprecedented. No, not what he did in Athens last week, but what the gymnast did a year ago after he became the first American man to win the all-around World Championship. On the cusp of the Olympic season, Hamm quit his lifelong coach and moved with his twin brother, Morgan, from Milwaukee to Columbus, Ohio, a gymnastics hothouse for the U.S. men's team. And right away Paul and his new coach, Miles Avery, made a critical decision: to change his daring, signature high-bar routine. "I was at best 75 percent with that routine and I knew that wasn't going to cut it at the Olympics," Hamm said. They created a stylish new opening with a pair of one-armed passes, cut the nerve-racking blind releases off the bar from five to three and produced an exercise that Hamm thought he could execute 100 percent of the time. "The only part that's risky is the releases," he said, "but, because it's less than I used to do, it actually feels easy."
Even if Hamm truly believed that the routine would be easy as he approached the high bar in the Olympic Indoor Hall in Athens on Wednesday night, the situation still must have seemed almost impossible. After breezing to a lead through three events, Hamm was suddenly in big trouble. Though his vault "felt good in the air," it was a disaster on the ground. The landing was lopsided and he toppled off the...
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