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 The rest of the field, well, that's where things get interesting.
Reigning world champion Shawn Johnson took the lead after preliminaries at the U.S. gymnastics championships on Thursday night with Nastia Liukin about a point behind her. But there are bigger things this summer, like the Beijing Olympics, and nationals are just the first step in earning spots on that team.
"I definitely want to keep my title. I think it's something that everybody wants to have," said Johnson, whose score of 63.45 puts her 1.15 points ahead of Liukin going into Saturday night's finals.
"But that is not the most important thing. This is just a test run."
The top 12 gymnasts at nationals, along with any chosen by the selection committee, advance to the Olympic trials, which are June 19-22 in Philadelphia. The top two at trials earn spots on the Beijing Olympic team, with the remaining four members chosen July 20 after a training camp at the Karolyi ranch.
Then comes the big one, Beijing, where the U.S. women will be favored to add the Olympic title to the gold medal they won at the world championships last year.
Because the scoring format changes for team finals at worlds and the Olympics, with teams sending three gymnasts up on each apparatus and having to count all three scores, national team coordinator Martha Karolyi isn't just looking for the best all-arounders. She wants gymnasts who can put up big scores and do it on a consistent basis.
So while Johnson and Liukin were impressive -- Johnson posted only one score below a 16 while the rest of the field managed four altogether, and Liukin got a 17.05 on uneven bars that was the highest mark for an American woman since gymnastics went to its new, open-ended scoring system two years ago
-- who was behind them was just as intriguing.
Chellsie Memmel, who in 2005 was only the third American woman to win the U.S. title, was impressive after missing much of the last two years with a shoulder injury, finishing third. And that was after doing an easier vault than the rest of the top women.
Memmel had the second-highest scores of the night on both balance beam (16.05) and uneven bars (16), and tied for sixth on floor exercise (15.1).
"She commanded the attention of the audience again," said Andy Memmel, her father and coach. "She showed them, `Hey, I'm still here. I can do this.'"
Samantha Peszek, a member of the world team last year, was right behind Memmel. She may not be the most spectacular gymnast on the floor but she puts up one solid score after another, finishing in the top six on all four events. Jana Bieger, the silver medalist at the 2006 worlds, was fifth while Ivana Hong was sixth.
Alicia Sacramone, who won the world title on floor in 2005 and has won medals on vault at the last three world championships, was her usual solid self on her three events. She put up the second-highest scores on vault and floor, even with a small mistake, and had the fourth-best mark on beam.
"I don't consider myself a lock" for Beijing, Sacramone said. "Tonight went really well. I'm pleased with everything, but I have room for improvement."
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And then there was Bridget Sloan. The alternate at last year's worlds, Sloan isn't competing the all-around here because she's still recovering from a torn meniscus. But she performed with confidence on uneven bars, where she trailed only Liukin and Memmel, and beam, where she was seventh.
Still, most of the attention was on Johnson and Liukin, whose friendly rivalry is expected to last all the way through Beijing.
Johnson, a 16-year-old junior-to-be -- she finished her exams last Friday
-- is so solid she makes every event look easy, rather than the gravity-defying challenges they are. On balance beam, she landed a series of aerial back handsprings as nonchalantly as if she was on a tarmac, not a 4-inch wide slab of wood that's 4 feet in the air.
And her vault? Merely one of the toughest in the world. She fell the first time she did it in competition, at American Cup in March, and said earlier this week it made her all the more determined to do it right. That she did. Though she landed slightly off-center and had to take a small step forward, those were minor flaws compared to its difficulty and judges rewarded her with a 16.
"I have been dreaming about that vault ever since American Cup," Johnson said. "I've dreamt about the feeling of landing it and showing everybody I could do it. I didn't even care about the step I was so happy."
Liukin got off to a rough start after a fall on floor exercise, and was down in 12th place midway through the meet. But few athletes close as well as Liukin, and she was finishing up with her two best events.
"It made me a little nervous, especially having fallen," she said. "But I felt really comfortable because training has been going so well."
Liukin's bars routine is ridiculously hard, yet she does it with a ballerina's grace and beauty. She appears to be floating as she moves from one bar to the other, and every last detail has been perfected. When she flips to a handstand on the upper bar, she comes to a dead stop with nary a wobble or wiggle and her toes pointed just so.
When the 17 popped up on the scoreboard, Liukin smiled and walked to her father and coach, Valeri, who grabbed her hands and gave her a kiss.
"We've been building toward it," Valeri Liukin said. "But yeah, it's history."
[Associated Press; By NANCY ARMOUR]
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