Gymnastics nationals end, but women's team still up in air

HARTFORD - Darwinism survives in U.S. women's gymnastics, where 23 of the nation's elite concluded their 2010 national championships last night, still having to prove who is most fit for upcoming international competition.

There was a time, more than a decade ago, when finishing in the top seven at the nationals would have meant an automatic spot on the team that will compete in October's world championships in the Netherlands. No more.

What transpired in last night's nationals, here in the Insurance Capital of the World, offered no policy coverage beyond the fact that the top eight will advance to a world-team training camp - along with however many others a U.S. Gymnastics federation selection committee brings along.

And from there, the qualifying process will continue through a second training camp before national team coordinator Martha Karolyi is convinced just who is most capable of winning a medal.

That means that, to both 17-year-old Rebecca Bross of Plano, Texas, who outperformed the crowd here, and to 18-year-old Bridget Sloan, the reigning world champ from Pittsboro, Ind., who attempted only one of the four events while recovering from shoulder surgery, the nationals were merely "a piece of the puzzle," as Bross put it.

"I've got to get in and prove to them that I'm still here," Sloan said, calling it a "bumpy road" but a gymnastics reality. Unlike selection for the men's five-man world championship team, which was named Saturdaybased primarily on results here, the women's system is far more drawn out and dog-eat-dog.

In part, that is because the men - with more physically demanding events such as the high bar and rings - need more recovery time following a major competition. So the men's team for the Netherlands' world meet is set: Jonathan Horton, Houston; Danell Leyva, Miami; Brandon Wynn, Voorhees, N.J.; Chris Brooks, Houston; Steven Legendre, Flower Mound, Texas; and Chris Cameron, Winter Haven, Fla. (with Paul Ruggeri of Manilus, N.Y., as alternate).

Not so for the women. When the current system, since refined, first was implemented for the 2000 Olympics, even those who survived, Jamie Dantzscher recalled this week, felt like "guinea pigs."

It was just Wednesday that Dantzscher and her 2000 teammates - Dominique Dawes, Elise Ray, Kristen Maloney, Tasha Schwikert and Amy Chow - became Olympic bronze medalists after an investigation determined that the original third-place team, China, had used an underage athlete.

In thinking back on the experience, several from that team recalled an unending, all-business procedure that wasn't especially pleasant. Yet the system not only has endured, with minor adjustments, but also has been enormously successful: 50 medals won by U.S. women in global competition the past 10 years.

That medal total includes the last two Olympic all-around champions, Nastia Liukin and Carly Patterson, and three of the last four world champs - Sloan, Shawn Johnson and Chellsie Memmel.

Among others, besides Bross and Sloan, trying to make a strong early impression on selectors here were Mattie Larson, 18, Los Angeles; Alexandra Raisman, 16, Needham, Mass.; Chelsea Davis, 17, Austin, Texas.; Kytra Hunter, 18, San Antonio; Mackenzie Caquatto, 18, Naperville, Ill.; Vanessa Zamarripa, 20, O'Fallon, Ill.

They have known no other system and Alicia Sacramone, a member of the 2008 Olympic silver-medal team just back from a brief retirement, argued that it "made me a better competitor. You really have to be on point all the time. I wouldn't want to train any other way."

Anyway, she - and her peers - have no choice.