Word: johnsonized
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...gold, also aggravated a fickle ankle on a tumbling combination. The second mishap's timing clearly rattled the team, which looked jittery on the first few events of the afternoon. In the end, the U.S. safely qualified for the team final Wednesday 1.475 points behind China, and Americans Shawn Johnson (the only member of the team to draw a chant of "U-S-A, U-S-A" with her balance beam routine) and Nastia Liukin sit in first and second place in the individual all-around competition - but getting there was a bit of a tumble...
...coveted team gold medal, which the Americans last won in the 1996 Atlanta Games with the Magnificent Seven. But without Peszek, all four of the girls' scores had to count, and thus there was no room for error. "It was a big shock to us," says Shawn Johnson, who nevertheless laid down four solid routines and now leads the point count for the all-around title. "It's something we weren't expecting. It threw us for a loop. It's more stressful knowing we only had four [gymnasts] and that it is four up and four [scores] count...
...Peszek was still able to compete on the bars, the only event of the four in which the U.S. used all five of its allotted athletes. The shock of Peszek's injury, along with Memmel's, clearly weighed on the remaining team-mates - Johnson, nine-time world medalist Nastia Liukin, Alicia Sacramone and Bridget Sloan, as they took to the first rotation on floor exercise - an event at which the U.S. generally excels. Sacramone, a former world champion on floor, unexpectedly stepped out of bounds, costing her a deduction and lowering her score by enough of a margin to keep...
...thank that odd job in Africa for producing the 23-year-old U.S. flag-bearer at this Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing. That night in Kenya, Lomong watched runner Michael Johnson win gold in the Sydney, and he was hooked. "It was so great to see somebody cheering for somebody running," says Lomong. "Running is something we did all our lives. It was our transportation." He told himself then that he'd be an Olympian. Now, just eight years later and a new U.S. citizen, he has not only carried the American flag in front of millions of television viewers...
...Montenegro, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, a South Pacific nation whose very existence is threatened by global warming. China's flagbearer Yao Ming, at 2.29 m (7 ft. 6 in.) the Games' tallest Olympian, loped along the same path as 1.43 m (4 ft. 8 in.) American gymnast Shawn Johnson. Four athletes from Iraq, which in July had been banned briefly from the Games because of a tiff with the International Olympic Committee, got one of the night's biggest cheers, after the hosts. Even China's historical rival Japan received polite applause. The Olympics may be composed of nations...