With a comeback for the ages, Hamm becomes a champion

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Paul Hamm couldn't stand the view — lying flat on his back, staring at the lights in the ceiling.

Then he caught sight of something even uglier: the scoreboard. With one sickening stumble on a vault he had never botched before, Hamm dropped from first place to 12th with two events left in Wednesday night's Olympic all-around.

”I was very upset and depressed,” he said. ”I felt I let myself down.”

Champions rarely give up, and Hamm didn't. He strung together the two best routines of his life and, when he looked at the scoreboard at the end of the night, he had a much different view.

His name was on top.

Gold medalist.

Olympic champion.

It was, almost everybody in the gym agreed, the most dramatic comeback in the 108-year history of Olympic gymnastics.

”Totally unbelievable,” USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi said.

”I've never seen anything like it,” coach Miles Avery concurred.

”The greatest I've ever seen,” said Peter Vidmar, who won silver in 1984 and is now one of two American men to win a medal in the all-around.

Hamm added this gold to the one he won at world championships last year, along with the Olympic silver he and his teammates took Monday night. He joined Mary Lou Retton as just the second American to win gold in an Olympic all-around.

As with any great comeback, Hamm needed some help, and got it.

He followed the vault debacle, where he scored a 9.137, on the parallel bars. And after his straight-line routine there netted a 9.837, no fewer than a half-dozen of the gymnasts between him and first place faltered.

”You look around and watch what's happening on the floor, and you start to think about what could happen,” Colarossi said.

When Hamm got ready to close the meet on the high bar — his signature event — indeed anything seemed possible.

He went through the routine without a flaw, flying up and backward across the bar and grabbing it three straight times with ease. He needed a 9.825 to tie Kim Dae-eun of South Korea for the gold, but he didn't know that.

His score, another 9.837, flashed on the board. He hugged Avery, thinking he had secured the bronze, which was all he was really hoping for after the tumble a half-hour earlier.

”He looked at me and said 'You're an Olympic champion,”' Hamm said. ”I said 'Oh.' It was the best performance of my life.”

He defeated Kim by 0.012 points, the slimmest margin in the history of the men's all-around. The previous closest was 0.017 by Leon Stukelj of Yugoslavia over Robert Prazak of Czechoslovakia in the 1924 Games.

Another South Korean, Yang Tae-young, took the bronze.

Kim and Yang looked stunned sitting at the medalists' news conference. Maybe it was because, as they admitted, they didn't really think they would be on the medal stand at all on this night. Or maybe it was because, once they knew they would be there, Hamm came back and practically ripped the gold off their necks.

”I thought maybe I could get first,” Kim said. ”I'm rather disappointed and angry in a way.”

Those were the first two medals for South Korea in the men's all-around, but outside their own country, they'll be the answer to a trivia question, at best. Hamm's comeback was that special.

Another American, Brett McClure, also had a special evening. He was in third after five rotations. But he finished on rings, which is his weakest event, and wound up ninth.

”I took a picture of the scoreboard after five events, because I knew I was going to drop,” he said.

That scoreboard kept looking better and better for Hamm, who learned what it was like to win on a big stage last year at worlds.

At that meet, he needed a 9.712 on the high bar to defeat Yang Wei of China. Hamm came through under pressure that time, hitting the release moves on that same routine to get the score and win the gold.

”It has been a dream of mine,” he said after that one. ”World champion is as high as you can get, except for maybe Olympic champion.”

He's now both, thanks in large part to a decision to scale down a routine that used to include five release moves — four in a row, then another one a few seconds later. Avery and Hamm changed the routine to make it more dependable, and the change didn't diminish the value of the routine.

”He knows he's going to hit that high bar routine no matter what is going on,” Avery said.

Catching the bar three times is one thing. Nailing the landing is another. But Hamm did it, and Avery started jumping up and down, having watched his student come through under the most intense pressure.

The wait for the score was agonizing. This time, though, that scoreboard looked beautiful, nothing like it did after the vault. Hamm sat down, and a look of exhaustion — both physical and emotional — came across his face.

On the medal stand, he listened to ”The Star-Spangled Banner.” Usually stoic, tears welled up in his eyes. His twin brother, Morgan, looked on from the stands.

”I'm happy right now,” Paul Hamm said. ”Shocked, actually.”

He wasn't the only one.