MELBOURNE, Australia -- The next generation of U.S. gymnasts is as good as advertised.
National champion Nastia Liukin and runner-up Chellsie Memmel
were 1-2 in the all-around preliminaries at the world gymnastics
championships Wednesday, and U.S. gymnasts booked seven spots in
the individual event finals.
"It went really well and I'm really excited just to get the
first competition finally under our belt," said Liukin, the
daughter of former Soviet Olympic gold medalist Valeri Liukin and
1987 world rhythmic gymnastics champion Anna Liukin.
And, this being gymnastics, there was another scoring
controversy. But the International Gymnastics Federation showed it
had perhaps learned from its mistakes at last year's Athens
Olympics, using a new video replay system to correct the error in
the preliminaries of the men's high bar competition.
The Americans didn't bring anyone from last summer's silver
medal team, and Memmel is the only holdover from the squad that won
gold at the 2003 worlds. But this new group isn't exactly a bunch
of rookies.
Great things are expected for Liukin, who routed the junior
ranks and would have been a sure bet for Athens if she'd been old
enough. The 16-year-old got off to a quick start Wednesday,
finishing with 37.454 points to edge Memmel, and qualifying for the
finals on uneven bars, balance beam and floor. She's the only
gymnast to make three event finals.
"Tomorrow's going to be a good training day and then I'll be
ready for all-around the next day," Liukin said.
Memmel said she'll be ready, too. She scored 37.412 in the
all-around prelims, and qualified for the bars and beam finals.
Memmel also finished among the top eight on floor, but she was
knocked out of the final because countries are only allowed two
gymnasts in each final and Liukin and Alicia Sacramone had higher
scores.
"I'm definitely pleased, it was a great first day," Memmel
said, adding that she felt "very confident" about her chances of
winning the all-around title.
The top 24 finishers from Wednesday's preliminary competition
advance to the women's all-around final on Friday. The top eight
finishers from each apparatus -- the balance beam, floor, vault and
uneven bars -- advance to the individual event finals on Saturday
and Sunday.
The preliminary scores do not carry forward to the finals.
Cheered by the home crowd, Australia's Monette Russo finished in
third place with 37.262 -- the highest qualifying result for an
Australian woman in an all-around competition. Russo also earned a
spot in the finals for uneven bars and balance beam, becoming the
first Australian woman to earn a spot in two apparatus finals in a
world championship.
On the individual events, China's Cheng Fei finished first on
vault after successfully landing a new move -- a backward 180-degree
turn with a forward 540-degree turn -- and scoring an average of
9.631 for her two vaults.
Sacramone, who beat the Olympic gold and bronze medalist at last
year's World Cup final, was second with an average score of 9.468.
On bars, the reigning Olympic champion Emilie Lepennec of France
finished in a disappointing 42nd place after missing a release move
and scoring just 8.525. Liukin was first with a 9.562, followed by
Memmel, the defending co-world champion.
Brazilian Daiane Dos Santos, the world champion on floor
exercise, finished first with a 9.550, charming the crowd with her
original blend of samba moves and powerhouse tumbling. Sacramone
and Liukin were second and third.
Olympic champion Catalina Ponor of Romania took the top spot in
the balance beam with 9.562, followed by reigning world champion
Fan Ye of China with 9.550.
The sport's latest scoring controversy was resolved much easier
than the one in Athens.
Andre Gueisbuhler, secretary general of the International
Gymnastics Federation, said Wednesday that judges had wrongly given
Russian Nikolai Kryukov a 10.0 start value for his high bar
routine. Kryukov's score of 9.650 in Tuesday's preliminaries was
sixth-best on the event, and earned him a spot in the finals.
But the German delegation protested. Using the video replay
system that was implemented after Athens, officials found Kryukov's
start value should have been a 9.8. That changed Kryukov's score to
9.450, dropping him to 15th place and moving Fabian Hambuechen into
the finals.
"[Video replay helped] establish the correct ranking, and to
guarantee that justice is given to the competitors," Gueisbuhler
said.
A similar dispute at last year's Olympics left the all-around
results in limbo for two months. South Korea's Yang Tae-young won
the bronze medal, but gymnastics officials later said he was
wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his second-to-last routine,
the parallel bars.
Add in that extra 0.10, and Yang would have finished ahead of
the gold medal winner, American Paul Hamm. But that assumes
everything in the final event played out the same way -- something
no one can say with any certainty.