MIAMI -- Danell Leyva dreams of flying, and when he releases the high bar and swings into space during his routine, he comes close. Suspended in midtwist or midflip, he's a skydiver savoring the split second before he pulls the rip cord.

Leyva knows exactly where he is in the air from instinct and from thousands of makes and misses, but the crowd tells him, too. There's a collective intake of breath the first time he lets go, an almost harsh yelp of relief when he catches the bar. Another inhale for his next trick and then a louder, happier cheer when he grabs hold again. When he sticks his double-twisting, double-flipping dismount, planting his feet on the mat in a cloud of chalk dust and spreading his arms wide for balance, hearing the chorus in the stands voice its appreciation "is the best feeling ever," Leyva says, his tone lowering reverently.

He listens for it. Always. He may be judged on decimal points, but Leyva competes for the love of an audience. Could he nail a near-flawless high bar routine -- like the one that helped him win the American Cup at Madison Square Garden in March -- in an empty hall? "Oh yeah," he says confidently. "It would have probably actually been better. Which is no fun at all. At the end of the day, regardless of how serious this is and how important it is, we're really just entertaining people."

The 20-year-old Leyva is one of the world's best on the high bar, although some fans were introduced to him through a spectacular fall from the apparatus at last year's world championships. He may be even stronger on the parallel bars; his mount is one of the most difficult in the world, and his precise yet fluid routine earned him an individual gold at worlds. Leyva, the 2011 U.S. champion, was edged out for that title by John Orozco earlier this month. Leyva is aiming to peak twice in the next six weeks -- once at the upcoming Olympic trials and again for the London Summer Games, where he figures to be a key part of the U.S. men's medal bid.

U.S. men's Olympic coach Kevin Mazeika thinks Leyva's most outstanding asset is his will. "As a younger athlete, he was very aggressive, which is a great attribute,'' he said in a recent phone interview. "What I've seen is, he's been able to balance that with an ability to compete in a very centered and calculated way and still have that aggression."

All gymnasts love to perform, and many of them hope to win Olympic medals, but Leyva may be the only one who aspires to collect Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony awards. Yes, all four. Fourteen people have done it, counting special lifetime achievement recognitions. "I saw the list recently," Leyva says toward the end of lunch with his parents at a Cuban-American restaurant near the family's gym in southwest Miami. He ticks off a few members of the club: Audrey Hepburn, Whoopi Goldberg, Barbra Streisand.

Leyva's vision may sound naive or grandiose, but considering where he came from and where he's landed, it might be perilous to bet against him. He entered life without a parachute. Born in Cuba, where kids are selected early for sports academies, Leyva was a chubby, asthmatic toddler who wouldn't have been anyone's pick.

It's easy to see where he got his conviction that anything is possible. Leyva's stepfather and coach, Yin Alvarez, defected on a trip to Mexico in 1992, stripping and swimming across the Rio Grande River with his clothes in a plastic bag. A year later, Leyva's mother, Maria Gonzalez, decided she had to get her sickly child out of Cuba and spirited Danell and his older sister to the United States alone via Peru and Venezuela. The two childhood friends and former gymnasts married in 2001 after working together in Florida.

"My goals for afterward, they're really big," Leyva says of life after gymnastics. "Very lofty. I've never said, 'Oh, I want to.' I've always said, 'Oh, I'm going to.'"

As dishes are cleared from the lunch table, Gonzalez, a petite, vivacious woman with cropped blonde hair and a contagious laugh that ends with a squeak, turns to her son and speaks rapidly in Spanish, asking him to translate.

"What she doesn't like -- and I don't like it either -- we don't like arrogant people," Leyva says. "But now I say, 'I'm sorry I have to say it this way, but' -- I have to envision myself making my goal."

'A freak of nature'

Monday is normally Leyva's day off, but earlier this spring, he spent most of a Monday at a shoot for a Citi campaign that includes several prominent past and present Olympians. It's one of the perks of Leyva's higher profile since last fall. Having never met a camera he didn't like, he's happy to oblige.

But he is dragging Tuesday morning at Universal Gymnastics, where he's scheduled for a two-a-day. "You'll have to excuse me," he said apologetically, carrying a chair over for a visitor. "I'm moving a little slowly."

Leyva has expressive brown eyes, olive skin, wide, sculpted sideburns, a beard that begins to darken his jaw again as soon as he shaves it, and a warm, open manner. His looks, panache and recent success landed him photo spreads in the July issues of GQ and Men's Fitness. Yet he has a bigger frame and a bulkier build than most of the men in his sport.

"I always tell people that Danell is a freak of nature who shouldn't be able to do what he does," Jonathan Horton, the 2008 Olympic high bar silver medalist and one of Leyva's best pals on the national team, told reporters in Dallas last month. "I make fun of him all the time, because he doesn't look like a gymnast.

"It has everything to do with his mentality. Danell is one of the hardest workers I've ever known. He makes us go a little harder, like, 'OK, keep up with Danell today.' The things he does with his body type, it's just phenomenal to watch."

With a typical gymnast's perfectionism, Leyva sees flaws every time he looks in the mirror. "My arms are too long, my butt is too big, my feet are too flat," he says. The length of his arms in proportion to his lower body puts him at a disadvantage for the pure strength required on the still rings, he says. Ever in motion, easily distractible, Leyva is also sure he has attention deficit disorder, although it's never been formally diagnosed.

"Yin saw that I had something further, what I needed, which wasn't something physical," Leyva says. "It was the heart and the determination inside. I don't know how, but he sees it still."

At the gym, Leyva and a couple of other men his age start doing strength moves on the pommel horse, leaning on it and chatting in between. Boys in T-shirts and shorts -- stick-figure versions of the older gymnasts, with wrist braces thicker than their biceps -- buzz around them, pulling mats into place, practicing skills on the various apparatuses. The little boys clearly admire to Leyva, but they aren't in awe of him....