The Comeback Kids

By Sean Gregory/Athens

At 3 o'clock in the morning, after Paul Hamm won the first individual all-around gold medal in the history of U.S. men's gymnastics, after he waved the hardware for the cameras and took a long, drawn-out drug test, he finally talked to his parents from the athletes' Village. Mom was not in a coddling mood. "Paul," said Cecily Hamm, who raised three gymnasts, including Paul's twin brother and fellow Olympian Morgan, "you put us all through hell tonight." They had a laugh at that one. "Mom, listen," he responded. "I put myself through hell."

For a gymnast and his family, the depths come when you work your whole life for a single moment only to clang off the runway and into the scorer's table like a tipsy frat boy. During the all-around final on the most crushing apparatus in gymnastics, the vault, Hamm's weary legs couldn't support his landing, and he stumbled off the mat. A lousy 9.137 score dropped him to 12th place in the competition, with only two events to go. "I thought maaaybe I could win a bronze," says Hamm.

But did he really earn the silver? The evening's penultimate gymnast, South Korea's Yang Tae Young, could have put the gold out of reach. But while gripping the bar, Yang turned one hand the wrong waya "mixed grip"--an error that opened the door. Hamm swung through it, whirling through the routine of his life, soaring high off the bar three times before nailing the dismount. Hamm's winning margin, .012 points led South Korea to file a protest, and the International Gymnastics Federation admitted that a scoring mistake probably cost Yang the gold. But unless the Court of Arbitration for Sport rules otherwise, Hamm's medal is safe, since, unlike in figure skating, judges' scores can't be overturned.

There were no doubts about the winner the next night. Russian diva Svetlana Khorkina, the three-time world champ, wobbled on the balance beam and was more ballerina than athlete on the floor exercise. But Carly Patterson, 16, whose klutziness in the team final let Romania beat the favored Americans to gold, scored strong 9.7s on those routines, giving her the first U.S. women's all-around gold since Mary Lou Retton's in 1984. It was America's first individual sweep. For Patterson, the "new Mary Lou" label is inevitable. But she may lack the perkiness factor that has kept Retton in the public eye. The '84 champ hasn't stopped smiling since Los Angeles, but Patterson barely showed any enamel when a group of cameramen asked her to flash her medal and shine after the victory. "Mary Lou was an open book," says Bela Karolyi, who coached Retton and whose wife Martha put together this year's women's team. "Carly is a little more stubborn." Stubborn enough to keep winning meets and--unlike many young, burned-out women's champions--perhaps defend her gold in four years. But don't expect a new temperament. "I don't know what I'd change into," says Patterson. "I'm going to stay the same Carly. It seems to be working."

While we're used to lauding the pixies, success for the U.S. men is less familiar. Just compare the reactions: after the U.S. men's team won its first team medal--a silver--in a nonboycotted Olympics, the guys were bumping chests. Second place. Wow! At the end of their team final, the silver-medalist women sat glumly on the bench, glaring at Romania's Catalina Ponor as she shimmied for her clapping teammates, knowing the gold was a lock.

Within 24 hours of Hamm's individual performance, his agent, Sheryl Shade, got calls from 10 companies asking about endorsement deals, including one that phoned her 20 minutes after he stepped on the podium. "That's unheard of for a male gymnast," says Shade. "I've got a lot of new best friends right now." But Hamm, who grew up on a farm in Waukesha, Wis., enjoys a low-bar profile. "He's not going to turn into a marketer," says Sandy Hamm, Paul's father. "His job is to compete, not promote." Although next time, he could do his mom and the judges a favor by staying on the mat.