San Jose, Calif. – While most of the anticipation in the arena was focused on the return of Paul and Morgan Hamm after a three-year hiatus in academia, two gymnasts with Denver ties made big impressions on the first night of competition Wednesday at the U.S. gymnastics championships.
Morrison’s Alexander Artemev and Green Mountain High School graduate Guillermo Alvarez put themselves in the thick of the competition for the all-around title and selection to the team that will compete in the world championships, Sept. 2-9 in Stuttgart, Germany.
Midway through the competition, Artemev is tied for first with David Durante of Garwood, N.J., and Alvarez is third. The men’s competition concludes Friday night, with scores from Wednesday carrying forward. The women begin competition tonight.
“The first day is the hardest,” Artemev said. “You’re the most nervous the first day, everybody is a little shaky and they don’t know what to expect. Getting through the first day safely is the most important thing, staying on the equipment.”
Artemev stood third after five of six rotations but elected not to play it safe on his last event, the vault. Attempting a risky triple-twisting maneuver, he over-rotated and stumbled but still managed to land in the lead.
Competing for the first time since the Athens Olympics, the Hamm twins entered only two of the six events, taking the conservative approach to their comeback after spending the past three years getting their degrees at Ohio State. Paul Hamm, the Olympic all- around champion, was No. 1 in floor exercises and 15th in pommel horse. Morgan was seventh in floor and 18th in pommel horse.
The results of this meet will greatly influence the composition of the teams the U.S. sends to the world championships, although discretion will be involved in both team selections.
Artemev, the defending U.S. all-around champion, is a 21-year-old native of Belarus who moved to the U.S. in 1984. He won a bronze medal in pommel horse at the 2006 world championships, making him the lone bright spot in an otherwise disappointing performance by the rebuilding U.S. men’s team.
Artemev was second in pommel horse Wednesday, third in parallel bars and fifth in high bar.
“Unbelievable, that’s all I can think of to say,” former U.S. national team gymnast Brett McClure said of Artemev’s sensational pommel horse routine.
Alvarez, 24, won a silver medal last month at the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He lives in Minneapolis and trains at the University of Minnesota, his alma mater. Alvarez and Artemev trained together in the mid-1990s at Gymnastika, a Lakewood gym now located in Arvada, before Alvarez left for college.
