Despite silver medals, U.S. women had off night in gym

ATHENS, Greece — Impressions after two nights of watching the U.S. gymnasts strike silver:

Kelli Hill, U.S. women's coach: Talk about stiff upper lips. The American women expected to win Tuesday, probably should have won, and didn't. But don't make that suggestion to Hill or to any of the U.S. team members.

There was a standard response Tuesday, repeated by Hill and by her team members so often as to make clear it was rehearsed: "It's been eight years since we were on the podium." Eight years since the U.S. women's team last won a medal.

Don't knock silver. And don't knock the Americans for being happy with an Olympic medal. Just don't tell us, ladies, that missing gold was no letdown. Beneath the forced smiles and the stock answers, the United States didn't have a particularly good night, and everyone at Olympic Indoor Hall knew it.

China's men's and women's teams: At least nobody got hurt. The two Chinese teams were considered locks for some kind of medal. But each evening, there was one small catastrophe after another — a slip, a fall, a stumble, something that drew gasps from the crowd.

Very sad to see so many years of effort go into a few nights of competition and have the first two nights blow up because of slip-up sequences that were almost bizarre.

Beijing hosts the 2008 Olympics. It's a good bet the Chinese teams' bad luck will by then have reversed.

"We did our worst tonight," said Shunzhen Lu, coach of the Chinese women's team. "But I hope to build a dream team by 2008. We must make some changes by then."

A plan? Consider it more like a vow.

Octavian Belu, Romanian coach: Belu is a guy you root for. He has warmth and a substance to him that tells you convincingly that here is a good man.

His team reflects the coach. Much as when the Japanese put on an amazing, pressure-crammed performance to win the men's team gold on Monday, the Romanian women were stunning during Tuesday's showdown.

Crowds at Indoor Hall: Hmmmm ... Why were there scarcely more people for the women's event than had showed up at the men's competition Monday?

The so-called lower bowl was packed Tuesday as the women put on a show. But the upper tier was pretty much empty.

Tuesday was puzzling, given the worldwide popularity of women's gymnastics. But this is also Greece. It has no homelanders competing in this sport and it probably didn't help, either, that Athenians had other things on their mind Tuesday, such as Greece's opponent in basketball, the United States.

Kevin Mazeika, U.S. men's coach: He does a nifty job coaching a team that gets increasingly more challenging because of the dramatic drop in college gymnastics programs (79 to 29 since 1982).

He also handles the fact that women's teams, at least in the United States, get the front seat when it comes to celebrity. What is it about the women? Is there something almost maternal about people and their feelings of endearment toward women gymnasts?

"There's such an inherent risk in the sport," Mazeika said Tuesday. "My daughters are gymnasts. And even I have this paternal instinct to protect them."

You've got to like that: A coach and a dad who understands there's something special, indeed, about that other gender.