Karolyi

Choosing the U.S. Olympic team for women's gymnastics certainly had its share of politics, if not intrigue. And choosing the team's coach after the Olympic trials ended Sunday night at Boston's FleetCenter had more of both.In the 90 minutes that USA Gymnastics officials spent behind closed doors, rumors reverberated through the arena.Someone said he saw Bela Karolyi storm out of the meeting and leave the building in a huff. Someone else heard that Steve Nunno was going to pull Shannon Miller out of Atlanta if he did not get the head coaching job."

HOUSTON -- You expect to find some high-tech laboratory with hundreds of leotard-clad clones running around. Lithe little Nadias doing their flips and tumbles in one corner, muscular little Mary Lous doing their vaults in another. You expect to see this great bear of a man -- and certainly hear his booming voice -- the moment you walk in the door.But Bela Karolyi's gym is different from what you expect, mostly because it looks pretty much the same as hundreds of other neighborhood gyms across the country.

Dominique Moceanu is being hyped as the Mary Lou Retton/Nadia Comaneci of this year's Olympics. She won last summer's nationals at the age of 14, and turned in a solid, TC fifth-place performance in last year's world championships. Like Retton and Comaneci, she is coached by Bela Karolyi.But Moceanu may need dispensation from U.S. gymnastics officials if she is even to compete in Atlanta.Moceanu said yesterday that a 4-inch stress fracture in her right shin was discovered June 10, a few days after she finished third at the nationals.

NEW ORLEANS -- Bela Karolyi said earlier this week that he preferred his latest prodigy, Dominique Moceanu, not win the all-around title in the 1995 National Championships here at the Louisiana Superdome.She would be too young.It would mean too much pressure.Karolyi didn't get his wish, because Moceanu also was too good.In an inspiring performance that many believe served as a preview for next summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta, the 13-year-old wunderkind from Houston won the women's competition last night to become the youngest female national champion in the 33-year history of the event.

BARCELONA, Spain -- OK, so she's not Mary Lou Retton. She doesn't sparkle while tumbling. She doesn't smile on cue. She doesn't leap into the arms of a coach.All Shannon Miller does is pile up medals in a Summer Olympics without a boycott.Last night, the 4-foot-9, 73-pound gymnast who wears heart-shaped diamond earrings and performs with a grimace on her face took away one silver and two bronzes in the women's individual apparatus final.With a silver in the all-around and a bronze in the team competition, Miller finished with five medals, tying Retton's American record set in the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

BARCELONA, Spain -- Steve Nunno opened a tiny gym in Oklahoma City seven years ago, with 11 students, second-hand equipment and the goal of creating an Olympic champion.Last night, his dream almost came true. When Shannon Miller of the United States won the silver medal in the women's all-around final at the 1992 Summer Olympics, she didn't just gather fame for herself, she helped elevate a coach to the top of American gymnastics.Nunno became the first American-born coach of the top American-born performer since Bela Karolyi began creating tiny titlists in his Houston gymnasium.

Presenting the Olympics on tape does have its advantages. For example, take NBC's presentation of the women's team gymnastics compulsories during the early part of last night's telecast.Two marvelous features framed the competition in all of its heartbreak.Svetlana Boginskaya of the Unified Team was pictured as a tortured athlete, pursuing Olympic gold while living with the memory of the suicide of her coach. Though no one was saying so, the timing of the suicide, not long after Boginskaya's disappointing effort at the Seoul Games in 1988, points to the pupil's failure for the teacher's death.

BARCELONA, Spain -- He is tired of being the bad guy, of seasons without end, of a job that offers more headaches than perks, more heartaches than triumphs.Most of all, he is just tired of the controversy that swirls around him each time one of his little tumblers takes center stage at the Summer Olympics.Yesterday, U.S. Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi sounded and acted like aman preparing to back away from day-to-day coaching."I have no intention to abandon gymnastics and run away from the sport I love so much," Karolyi said.

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Declaring himself pleased with the fairness and correctness of a selection process he called a monstrous nightmare just a month ago, Bela Karolyi said yesterday that the U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team he will coach -- something else he wanted no part of a month ago -- was fit and ready to take on the former Soviets, the Romanians and the Chinese in Barcelona, Spain."