BEIJING — Rattled by an injury to one of their teammates moments before taking the competition floor, a jittery U.S. women’s gymnastics team overcame several mistakes Sunday to qualify for Wednesday’s team finals.
China had the best score of the day but the undermanned U.S. squad was only a hair behind them in second place. Americans Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin were 1-2 in the all-around scoring, ahead of China’s Yilin Yang and Romania’s Kseni Semenova.
Scores don’t carry forward into the team finals or Friday’s individual all-around competition, but it was encouraging for Team USA to know it was could be so competitive on a day when it was less than sharp.
“We showed the world,” Johnson said. “We were thrown curve balls, we were thrown huge distractions, our teammate went down minutes before we walked on the floor. We overcame a lot today and I think we did great.”
During warm-ups Samantha Peszek turned an ankle, which shook a team already having to overcome a week-old ankle injury to former world champion Chellsie Memmel. Because of her injury, Memmel could only perform on uneven bars.
When Peszek got hurt, rendering her available only for bars as well, that meant the team only had four competitors it could put up in floor exercises, vault and balance beam. It wouldn’t have the luxury of putting up five athletes on each apparatus and throwing out the lowest score.
“We had a little tension,” said women’s national team coordinator Martha Karolyi. “It gave a tiny bit of disturbance at the last moment to re-organize things.”
Alicia Sacramone, whose best friend and roommate on the team is Peszek, stepped out of bounds in floor exercises — an event in which she is a former world championships medalist. Memmel fell off the uneven bars and Liukin — who does one of the world’s hardest bars routines — uncharacteristically over-rotated on her dismount and fell.
“Our team was slowly dwindling,” Sacramone said of the injuries to Memmel and Peszek. “I definitely felt like I put a little bit more pressure on myself. I was joking with Martha, telling her, ‘We never do anything the easy way.’ She’s like, ‘You girls just love drama.’ ”
The drama of the day didn’t seem to bother Johnson, the reigning world champion, who looked terrific in all four of her routines her first time on the Olympic stage.
“It felt amazing,” said Johnson, 16. “People have been telling me to soak it all in, but I’m trying really hard not to think that it’s the Olympics and look at the Olympic rings on the floor. If you do, you get so much more nervous. When I was getting ready to march out, I did start to feel that. I started to think, ‘Oh my gosh, millions of people are watching and this is the Olympic Games.’ ”
Johnson is bidding to become the third American to win the women’s all-around at the Olympics, after Mary Lou Retton (1984) and Carly Patterson (2004).
“I think it was an excellent day for Shawn,” Karolyi said. “All four events for her were the normal, consistent and aggressive Shawn.”
Her team is bidding to become the second from the U.S. to win the women’s team gold medal at the Olympics after the Magnificent Seven of 1996. The U.S. won the team title at last year’s world championships.
“We have a couple days to fix what we did wrong,” Sacramone said. “We’re going to come back stronger than ever. Nastia’s going to be more motivated than ever to stick that dismount. Chellsie’s going to make that bar routine. I’m going to stay inbounds. We’re going to hit the routines we’ve been training every day.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
