KERRI'S LEAP OF FAITH

By RICHARD ZOGLIN/ATLANTA

Kerri Strug was known as the quiet member of the U.S. gymnastics team, overshadowed by media darlings like five-time Olympic medal winner Shannon Miller and 14-year-old phenom Dominique Moceanu. Strug, 18, is the sensitive one, the worrier, the one most attuned to the feelings of her teammates. She remembers birthdays and sends notes. When Amanda Borden was going through physical problems, it was Strug who perked her up by sending cards. She's a team player.

So it was fitting that Strug's moment of Olympic glory was the storybook climax to one of the most brilliantly managed team efforts in U.S. Olympics history. She played through pain, convinced that she had to for the team, risking a worse injury and jeopardizing her own chances for more medals. Maybe she shouldn't have done it; later it became apparent that she needn't have done it. But she did, and America got another electrifying moment to put into its collective sports memory bank.

Replay it once more. A close second to the Russians after the compulsories, the U.S. women's gymnasts had moved into first during Tuesday night's finals on the strength of six nearly flawless performances on the uneven parallel bars and another six strong ones on the balance beam. They held their own on the floor exercise, and with one event remaining, the vault, the first U.S. team gymnastics gold medal ever was all but assured, barring disaster.

That disaster almost happened. Moceanu, vaulting next to last, wound up short both times, landing ingloriously on her rear end. America's-sweetheart-to-be suddenly looked like what she was--a little girl--and her low scores put the pressure on Strug, anchoring the team in her best event. Strug raced into her vault and landed--shockingly, incredibly--on her seat as well. Worse, she came up limping.

Her mother Melanie turned to Kerri's father in the stands and said, "Oh, my gosh, something's wrong." Burt Strug tried to reassure her that it was just a charley horse. Strug's coach, Bela Karolyi--a camera-hogging cheerleader throughout the competition--shouted encouragement as Strug tried to shake off the pain. Actually, Strug's score of 9.162 was enough to ensure the U.S. victory, making a second vault unnecessary. But no one on the team knew that. "We had no idea what the score was," said co-head coach Mary Lee Tracy. "What we saw was a kid who was shaking her leg but who saluted and ran down the runway."

As the crowd of 32,620 held its breath, she ran, she jumped, and she landed--on her feet. Or foot. Instantly, she winced in pain and lifted her injured left ankle, hopping on one foot to face the judges before collapsing in pain. After her solid score of 9.712 was posted, two assistants carried her out of the Georgia Dome as the other girls were trapped between celebration and concern for their teammate. Strug returned to join them for the medal ceremony, carried in the bearlike arms of Karolyi, whose instinct for the theatrical proved as sure as his knack for controversy.

The spectacular team victory was the week's unmatchable high point. Because of Strug's injury--a severe ankle sprain--she was forced to withdraw from the individual competition two nights later. Moceanu took her place, joining Miller and Dominique Dawes as America's three entrants. Performing separately, they seemed more fragile, both physically and emotionally. Moceanu wobbled on the balance beam and was never in contention. Dawes and Miller, two stoic 19-year-olds, each made a major flub on the floor exercise and walked off sobbing, aware that their medal chances had vanished. That allowed the elfin Ukrainian Lilia Podkopayeva, the reigning world champion, to edge past three tough Romanians to win the gold.

Team spirit propelled the U.S. men temptingly close to a medal as well. Never as highly regarded as the women, they nonetheless performed better than expected, staying in the medal hunt almost to the end and finishing a respectable fifth. (Russia captured the gold.) In the individual competition, national champion John Roethlisberger pumped up the crowd with his intensity but couldn't match the grace of China's Li Xiaoshuang, who nudged out Russia's Alexei Nemov for the gold.

The men have more work to do; the women can savor the fruits of a building project four years in the making. Though the U.S. women won a bronze medal in Barcelona, the program was plagued by controversy. The coaches were fractious, the girls looked unhappy and undernourished, and criticism began to emerge that the program drove adolescent girls too hard in service of demanding parents and coaches. Much of the criticism was aimed at Karolyi, the former Romanian coach who brought the world Nadia Comaneci and later trained such U.S. stars as Mary Lou Retton and Kim Zmeskal.

One change for '96 was that Karolyi, head coach of the '92 team, was replaced by a duo: his wife Martha and Tracy. They were an effective team--Martha Karolyi the experienced technician, Tracy the supportive den mother. The group they assembled for the Olympics was older and more mature than the '92 group: three were competing in their second Olympics, and the average age was 18. Moceanu, the tiny 14-year-old who got the most advance press hype, was an exception that will soon be against the rules; for the 2000 Games, the minimum age for competition has been changed to 16.

The U.S. squad worked with single-minded determination in pursuit of a team gold. In Atlanta the U.S. gymnasts were housed not in the Olympic Village with the rest of the athletes but in a fraternity house at Emory University along with a small army of coaching technicians, sports psychologists, nutritionists and a chef. On noncompetition days, the girls worked out from 8:30 in the morning until 8:30 at night, returning to the dorm for a lunch break and a dose of their favorite soap, Days of Our Lives. "During the past year there's been some negative press about eating problems and everything like that," says Tracy. "This team is the opposite of that image. There wasn't any abuse here."

If the gymnastics program has acquired a healthier attitude, Strug is a perfect symbol of it. In contrast to the stereotype, she wasn't pushed into gymnastics by her parents (her father is a cardiovascular surgeon in Tucson, Arizona); in fact, they balked when Kerri, at 12, wanted to move to Houston to train at Karolyi's elite gym. "I was devastated," says her mother. "It was really hard because my son was leaving for college."

A straight-A student who graduated from high school a year early, Strug is determined and exacting in everything. "You open Kerri's closet and all the short-sleeved shirts are with the short-sleeved shirts, and the long-sleeved shirts are with the long-sleeved shirts," says her mother. "Her room is always neat; the bed is always made." Says Strug: "My drive comes from being a perfectionist. I got that from my dad. We put everything into whatever we do."

Did Strug put too much into that last vault? She insists that the decision to jump a second time was hers alone. So does Karolyi--though TV viewers could see the flamboyant coach urging Strug, "You can do it!" "I'm 18 years old now. I can make my own choices," Strug said later, adding, "I knew with Dominique falling on both vaults, the gold was slipping away...I let the adrenaline take over." And she defends Karolyi: "He is a tough coach. If he wasn't so successful, he wouldn't get criticism. It's not right how everyone tries to find fault."

By making that second jump, of course, Strug risked more serious injury. But it was the sort of gutsy, anything-for-the-team performance that elicits hymns of praise in other sports. Even Joan Ryan, author of the 1995 book Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, which is sharply critical of the U.S. gymnastics program, points out that Strug was more capable of making her own decision than a younger girl, and that she could hardly have decided otherwise, thinking a gold medal was on the line. "Kerri did what any of the 10,000 athletes here would have done," says Ryan.

Her vault has put Strug on the usual media-hero fast track: TV interviews, a call from President Clinton, the promise of lucrative endorsement deals. She had planned to start at ucla this fall, but now she's under pressure to turn pro and join the team on a 30-city exhibition tour. "Everyone has been telling me it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get the Mary Lou opportunity," says Strug. "It kind of slapped me in the face." Just as Strug has given us all a happy jolt.

--Reported by Susanna Schrobsdorff/Atlanta

With reporting by SUSANNA SCHROBSDORFF/ATLANTA