RED, WHITE AND BLAND

Bela Karolyi won’t be hugging anyone in Sydney.

For decades, the Romanian-born gymnastics pedagogue has been tutoring, cajoling and willing young female gymnasts to their peak performances in the biggest competitions of their lives. Here he is quietly fuming, sitting in a Sydney Superdome press-row seat too far from the competitors to have any influence.

It is but a subdrama to what is happening. The U.S. women’s team advanced to the Olympic team finals despite a lackluster performance that left them clinging to sixth place after Sunday’s preliminaries. And Karolyi’s absence provided a glimpse into the unstable structure of the U.S. women’s gymnastics program.

A politically driven agenda, self-centered attitude and overall pettiness that somehow escapes the U.S. men’s program permeates the women’s side, influencing its grass roots development, its selections for national and Olympic coach and team and, ultimately, its athletes’ performances.

While the men develop mostly on the collegiate level and have no qualms with being coached here by Peter Kormann, who has none of his own athletes on the team, the women’s situation contrasts sharply.

The program has a perpetual undercurrent of tension that often affects the gymnasts. One recent example is Vanessa Atler, 18, considered to be the most naturally gifted women’s gymnast and the next fresh-faced hope for a gold medal.

Atler’s omission from the Olympic team capped a controversial U.S. trials in which the six-member team was determined not by its top six scorers at the meet, but rather by a vote of a four-member selection committee. The decision was made to ensure that the most talented team would go to Sydney and protected the United States against having to leave home its national champion because of one bad performance.

The result was second-guessing and jittery performances by gymnasts who said they were not sure what they had to do and whom they had to impress to make the team. It also led to more quarreling between athletes and coaches at odds on the process.

Shannon Miller, the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history, and her coach, Steve Nunno, left the trials in Boston complaining that the committee had not upheld its promise of sending its best gymnasts when Miller was left off the team after scratching from the competition because of an injury.

Atler was also left home after a sixth-place finish in the trials and fading performances in recent months. Atler did not question the decision, indeed saying she was relieved to go home and be rid of the pressure of the sport. Some say that pressure is caused by the system.

Karolyi’s Catch 22

After rejecting the harsh and aggressive approach of her former coaches earlier this year, Atler wanted to be coached by Karolyi. But she could not because that would violate the agreement that, as national team coordinator, Karolyi would not coach any of his own gymnasts.

That is not to say USA Gymnastics does not recognize Karolyi’s influence in the sport. He was brought in after the U.S. women’s team finished sixth last fall at the world championships, only three years after the U.S. won the gold medal under his direction at the 1996 Olympics.

Creating the title of national team coordinator, USA Gymnastics placated rival coaches by making clear that Karolyi would guide the team with a series of training camps but would do no actual coaching, so as not to interfere with the gymnasts’ individual coaches.

That issue has long been a bone of contention come Olympic time and, indeed, can be traced to Karolyi, who has long coached his own gymnasts at the Games–from Nadia Comaneci when he was still Romania’s coach, to medal winners Mary Lou Retton, Kim Zmeskal, Phoebe Mills and Kerri Strug after coming to the U.S.

It was always Karolyi’s assertion that a coach should be on the floor with his gymnasts, and in 1984 he was enraged when Don Peters was named the U.S. Olympic coach and he was left to coach Retton as he stalked the outer perimeter of the floor in Los Angeles.

It was then determined that the two Olympic coaches would be determined by how many gymnasts they had on the floor. This arrangement in turn antagonized jealous coaches who were denied chances to head the Olympic team and accused Karolyi of favoring his own athletes.

Coaches under fire

In Sydney the debate has come full circle. Karolyi sat steaming during the U.S. team’s poor performance in the preliminaries, suggesting that Kelli Hill, coach of national champion Elise Ray and Dominique Dawes, and assistant coach Steve Rybacki, coach of Jamie Dantzscher, failed to inspire the team.

“Somebody has to fire them up,” Karolyi said after the U.S. team finished second in its five-team session behind favored China. The U.S. later slipped behind Russia, Romania, Ukraine and Spain going into the team finals. The Americans only made the team finals because seventh-place Australia had two bad falls on the vault.

“Somebody has to generate this attitude: `Now, guys, now we are ready, let’s go.’ You must have fire, and we don’t have it,” he said.

Some of the American women were spotted yawning during the competition, and most did not display a great deal of support for their teammates while on the sideline.

“The kids like each other,” Karolyi said. “They have team spirit, but it’s not coming out of them. They need to say, `Now, come on, let’s eat them alive, let’s challenge them.’ I can’t tell you how frustrated I am.

“This is the Olympics, good Lord. You’d better eat your shoes, eat someone alive, ignite something. I was concerned about a lack of fire when I was kicked out of the ring.”

Originally, the more outgoing Mary Lee Tracy, coach of Dominique Moceanu and Morgan White and a Karolyi supporter, was to be Hill’s assistant. But when White scratched from the Olympics with a stress fracture in her foot last week, Tracy was replaced by Rybacki.

Karolyi sharply criticized the performance Sunday of Dantzscher, who is coached by Rybacki. And there has been carping that Tracy concealed White’s injury, thus disrupting the U.S. team’s preparation. Tracy also coaches first alternate Alyssa Beckerman, but after White dropped out, Beckerman was passed over in favor of second alternate Tasha Schwikert.

Karolyi was diplomatic in speaking of Hill, a longtime adversary on various issues, but left no doubt about his overall dissatisfaction.

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“Kelli is a very good coach, a very sharp person,” Karolyi said. “But she had too many things to do [during prelims]. She had to worry about [Ray’s] injury, about [possibly] scratching. There’s got to be two strong people to share things, to think fiery. Mary Lee was more experienced than what we’ve got now.”

Hill said her style simply differs from Karolyi’s. “It’s not my personality to be throwing my arms up in the air and yell and scream,” she said. “I tried to keep the kids focused.”

Grit yes, charisma no

This U.S. team is similarly sedate, the contrast between the U.S. team and the powerful Russians startling. The Russians’ top performers include the outgoing Elena Prodounova, who boasts of her tattoos and body-piercing, and the daring Svetlana Khorkina, who posed nude for the Russian version of Playboy magazine and who has two moves named for her on the unevens.

Seemingly lacking a truly charismatic performer such as Retton or Miller, or even the vivacious Amanda Borden from the ’96 team, the 2000 team also appears to lack leadership.

“Elise [Ray] has a leading personality,” Karolyi said. “It has to be something internal that comes through in desire, spirit, everything.

“You can’t watch the other performers or the [scoreboard] up there. You don’t care about anything else but your own athletes. You mind your own business and focus on what you have to do.”

While not quite in the same spirit of Strug, who performed in the vault for the ’96 gold medalists despite a severely sprained ankle, the 2000 team is not without grittiness.

Ray popped her shoulder slightly out of its socket on floor exercise Sunday, but continued on the event to earn a 9.225, and after having it popped back, finished the competition.

And Kristen Maloney, who fell to her knees on one of her vault dismounts, seriously bruised the same right leg in which she had a metal rod inserted to secure a fracture last October.

Nevertheless, not one U.S. woman qualified for the individual apparatus finals here. And while Ray, Amy Chow and Maloney qualified for the individual all-around finals, they appear out of the running at 12th, 13th and 18th places. Russia, Romania and China, by contrast, occupy eight of the top nine spots in the all-around standings.

Clearly, Karolyi’s influence–both with judges and with athletes–is missing in Sydney, and in the one arena in which he is at his best.

“I think about him, and I think he could have done what he does in any sport,” Comaneci said. “He’s a great motivator. He can definitely pump you up.”

Karolyi said he longed to be on the floor Sunday, “to take [the athletes] by the shoulders and shake them.

“I don’t have an athlete on the floor, and I have to follow the procedure at this point,” he said quietly. “But this is too frustrating to me, and I don’t believe I’ll do this experience again.”