ROB CARR | The Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA | Paul Hamm is so good, he can make the Olympic team without stepping on the floor.

The reigning Olympic gold medalist, who had to sit this week’s trials out with a broken hand, was selected for the U.S. team for the Beijing Games on Saturday, along with Jonathan Horton. The rest of the six-man team and/or a training squad will be announced today.

“It’s definitely a little bittersweet for me,” said Hamm, who still has to show he’s physically ready to compete at a July 22 training camp. “It makes me feel good knowing I’m officially on the team. Now I can just focus on my recovery and getting back in shape.”

The selection criteria for the men’s team is a convoluted mix of scores and percentages, designed to build a squad that will be consistent and put up blockbuster scores on all six events in team finals. The top two finishers in Saturday’s competition were guaranteed spots on the team – but only if they were in the top three on at least three events, too.

Nobody was.

That meant the selection committee could put whoever it wanted in the two spots that had to be announced after the competition ended Saturday, and Hamm was a no-brainer.

He is the only American man to win the world title (2003) and Olympic gold medal (2004) and, despite a 2 1/2-year layoff – unheard of in elite gymnastics – had firmly established himself this year as a favorite to defend his title in Beijing.

Even after breaking the fourth metacarpal in his right hand May 22 in the closing seconds of his parallel bars routine at the national championships, he finished the day with an almost four-point lead, a huge margin in a sport where medals are decided by tenths and hundredths of points.

If he’s healthy, the Americans can count on him for world-class scores on all six events, a luxury few other countries have. And though he’s only three weeks removed from surgery where a titanium plate and nine screws were inserted to repair the break, no one doubts that he will be healthy in time for Beijing.

Posted in: Gymnastics, Paul Hamm, Press |