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ATHENS, Greece -- Twenty years later, the boys are back on the medal stand.
The American men's gymnastics program, long overlooked and often unappreciated, won Olympic silver Monday, capping a four-year rebuilding project to take home a medal for the first time since the boycotted 1984 Games.
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The United States men celebrate their silver medal together on the podium. (AP) |
After faltering in the middle two rotations, Paul and Morgan Hamm led a rally. The Americans hit their last six routines, on parallel bars and high bar, to push past Romania and finish with 172.933 points.
The Japanese went last and needed to average about 9.5 over three sets on the high bar to win. They did it with ease, winning by 0.888 points.
The Americans applauded the clutch effort, but they also celebrated their own.
"It doesn't get harder than that. It doesn't get more dramatic than that," USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi said. "To come back out and hit the last six routines like that is unbelievable."
This was only the third team medal for America, and its first at a non-boycotted Olympics since 1932, back when the club toss and rope climb were still part of the sport.
Yes, it has been awhile since the men were this good. They long languished in the shadows of the more successful women's program, to say nothing of so many other Olympic sports.
"A team medal at the Olympics is huge," said Bart Conner, a member of the winning 1984 team. "I know they wanted gold, but this is an enormous accomplishment."
The rebuilding project showed promising signs when the men won silver medals at the world championships in 2001 and 2003. Doing the same in the Olympic finals was anything but easy.
Guard Young and both the Hamms took big steps on their vault landings to cap a bad stretch on rings and vault, dropping the Americans from first to a precarious third.
The parallel bars changed that.
