By Jo-Ann Barnas, Detroit Free Press –
LONDON — Now it’s onto beating the Russians.
That’s the mantra for Jordyn Wieber and the rest of the U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team going into Tuesday’s team final at North Greenwich Arena, where the Americans hope to capture the gold medal for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta Games.
It will be a challenge, with the biggest question being whether Wieber — the 17-year-old defending world champion from DeWitt, Mich. — can rebound after failing to advance for Thursday’s all-around final during qualifying over the weekend.
Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics, said he believed Wieber, who finished third behind Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas (only the top two per team advance), will come out fighting on Tuesday.
“I think Jordyn has a lot of character and I think she’s going to sit back and assess what’s happened,” he said. “She knows how important that team opportunity is, and she’s going to come out fighting like a dog to make sure this team gets what it wants. I think you’ll see the best of Jordyn Wieber with what she has left at the Olympics.”
One thing for certain: Team USA is counting on her.
In the nail-biting three-up, three-count team final, Wieber will be called on to compete on three of the four events. The one that she didn’t get picked for is a bit of a surprise considering she’s the reigning world bronze medalist on that apparatus: balance beam.
Asked why Wieber wasn’t selected for the beam, John Geddert — who’s Wieber’s personal coach as well as the U.S. Olympic head coach — told the Free Press in an e-mail that it was because she had the lowest score (14.700) in Sunday’s team qualifying.
Douglas had the highest score on the beam (15.266), followed by Raisman (15.100) and Kyla Ross (15.075).
Geddert said Wieber would use Sunday’s setback as motivation. Asked for a time when Wieber had to dig deep to overcome adversity, he recalled an incident when she was trying to qualify as a Level 10 gymnast for nationals. She was 10.
What happened? Wieber began the meet by falling on the first apparatus.
“I gave her the Shannon Miller story, of how if she had made a mistake she could dig down deep and make the next events all that much better,” Geddert wrote in an e-mail. “She brought it and rocked the next three events to qualify. I think she used that advice many times throughout her career, although I would have preferred she not dig a hole in the first place.”
The Americans were silver medalists behind China at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, but have emerged as the front-runners after winning the team gold medal at last fall’s world championships in Tokyo. Four of the five members of that team are on this year’s Olympic team: Wieber, Raisman, Douglas and McKayala Maroney.
Expect a two-way battle for the gold between the U.S. and Russia, although the U.S. men showed Monday that being the leader of the pack in qualifying means little: The Americans finished out of the medals, struggling to fifth place.
On Sunday, the U.S. women posted the top qualification score (181.863), edging the Russians by more than 1 ½ points (180.429). China took third, followed by Romania and Great Britain.
Russia is led by a pair of experienced international gymnasts: Victoria Komova and Aliya Mustafina. Komova finished first in the all-arounders qualifiers Sunday with 60.632 points, just ahead of Raisman (60.391). Mustafina, the 2010 world champion, had the fifth-highest score (59.966), just behind Wieber (60.032).
Wieber is the only U.S. gymnast who has beaten Komova and Mustafina in the past 1 ½ years; she defeated Komova for the world title last fall and, in early 2011, stunned Mustafina at the American Cup in her senior international debut.
“This is going to be a dogfight,” said Penny of USA Gymnastics. “The Olympics are always a dogfight. There’s always something that pops up and changes the perceived outcome. But, you know, everybody has this expectation, and something happens and it changes it. That’s the Olympic Games.”
NOTEBOOK: What happens after Tuesday? The men’s and women’s all-around finals are Wednesday and Thursday. The individual event finals begin Sunday. Wieber will compete in her lone event final — floor exercise — next Tuesday.
