Word: medalic
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...much media attention as Michael Phelps gets, there are certain things the world's best swimmer keeps to himself. He has never, for example, talked about his personal Olympic goals. Winning eight gold medals, he says over and over, is a quest that the media have concocted. Other than saying that he wants to win one gold medal coming out of the Games, nobody knows what kind of meet in Beijing would make him happy. His goals are between and U.S. coach Bob Bowman and himself...
...mindboggling 16.775, the highest score of the competition. Indeed, the Chinese ended up earning the highest scores on all apparatuses except floor. The Japanese tried to keep pace but couldn't match their hosts' technical difficulty and skillful execution. Meanwhile, the Americans - who weren't favored for a medal after the withdrawal of twins Morgan and Paul Hamm, two of the team's top gymnasts - found themselves, for a moment, in contention for the silver. But a 12.775 fumble on the pommel horse by Kai Wen Tan cost the U.S. team a possible second-place finish. The team went home...
...pulled out of the Beijing Games due to nagging injuries that prevented them from performing at their peak (Paul is the defending Olympic all-around champion, and Morgan is a 2004 veteran), working as a cohesive unit was the only way the U.S. was ever going to reach the medal stand. And Tan knew just the way to do that - by keeping his teammates confident and deaf to the doubters. Texan Jonathan Horton, the team's best all-around gymnast who came a few tenths short of an all-around individual medal at last year's world championships in Stuttgart...
...squad of six Olympic neophytes on the U.S. men's gymnastics team, two of whom are eleventh-hour alternates; with one, Alexander Artemev, getting the call to suit up just a day before the competition began. Entering the team finals, the U.S. trailed China, the leader, and eventual gold medal winner, by 9.475 points and occupied a medal-distant sixth place. Yet the unexpected does tend to occur at the Olympics, and the American men ultimately found themselves accepting bronze medals in the men's team finals Tuesday, behind the heavily favored China and Japan...
...rotation order, pulling one of their strongest events - the still rings - first out of the six. Tan, a national champion on the rings, helped the men to reach third place after that rotation. But it wasn't until they reached the high bars that the U.S. squad found its medal rhythm. Flowing routines by Jonathan Horton and Justin Spring, both of whom landed squarely to punctuate their determination, pushed the team to second behind the Chinese. "For a bunch of first timers, they did amazingly well" says Miles Avery, the Hamms' coach. "People felt without Paul and Morgan...