Paul Hamm

Associated Press, NBC Sports

Olympic champion Paul Hamm might be at the U.S. championships, after all.

Hamm said Tuesday there is a “small possibility” he could be ready to do a few events at nationals in August, which would be just seven months after shoulder surgery.

“I’m pushing to see if I could get ready on floor and pommel horse,” Hamm told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “I’m pretty far along on floor. I can do a lot of tumbling passes. I’m swinging some skills on pommel horse. … Vault, I mainly will just run down the runway and do layouts (over the vault). I’m not actually blocking off my arm, but I’m getting close to that.”

The U.S. championships are Aug. 17-20 in St. Paul. The world championships are Oct. 7-16 in Tokyo and are the main qualifier for the 2012 Olympics in London.

“It’s very encouraging,” said Dennis McIntyre, men’s program director for USA Gymnastics. “If he’s far enough along that he feels he can do routines, even if it’s just two or three events at the Visa Championships, that’s really good. Typically with Paul, he doesn’t decide to participate unless he feels he can be very ready to do it. So that is good news.”

It probably will be another six weeks or so before Hamm decides whether he will be ready to compete. He likely would have to petition for a spot at nationals, and Hamm said he would be willing to prove his readiness to USA Gymnastics officials.

But McIntyre said that might not be necessary.

“Obviously, he has a track record,” McIntyre said of Hamm, the only American man to win the world or Olympic all-around titles. “The fact that he steps up and says, ‘Hey, I want to be accountable and I’d be happy to do show of readiness prior to getting into meet,’ I think that says a lot.”

(read more)

Sharipov Names Paul Hamm and Saurez Assistant Coaches at OSU

Ohio State Buckeyes
June 6, 2011

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Casimiro Suarez and Paul Hamm and will join the Ohio State men’s gymnastics staff as assistant coaches, first-year head coach Rustam Sharipov announced Monday.

Hamm, an Ohio State graduate, is an Olympic gold medalist in the all-around, becoming the first American to win the title in 2004. Suarez, a member of the Cuban Olympic Team in 1980, comes to Ohio State with more than 20 years of coaching experience, most recently on the U.S. National Junior Team staff.

“I am really excited to announce the new assistant coaches,” Sharipov said. “All of the experience and knowledge they both bring to the program is going to be a great benefit to our gymnasts. We are looking forward to starting together as a team and producing good results.”

Hamm was the Olympic gold medalist in the all-around at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, becoming the first U.S. male to win the title. He is a two-time Olympian after also competing in the 2000 Games in Sydney and has two Olympic medals in addition to his all-around gold, earning a team silver medal and a silver medal on horizontal bar. He also claimed the world all-around and floor exercise titles in 2003, two of five world championship medals he earned in his career. Hamm, a nine-time U.S. champion, was the winner of the 2004 James E. Sullivan Award as the outstanding amateur athlete in the United States. He has participated in two gymnastics tours and has given numerous paid and volunteer motivational speeches. A native of Waukesha, Wis., Hamm graduated from Ohio State magna cum laude with a degree in accounting in 2007. He trained at Ohio State while preparing for the 2004 Olympic Games. Hamm plans to continue training for the 2012 Olympics. (read more)

Inside Gymnastics Magazine, Feb 2011

Inside Gymnastics got the exclusive inside scoop with Paul Hamm about his shoulder surgery, his 2012 Olympic dreams, and his life outside of gymnastics.

How did you hurt your rib and your shoulder, and can you give us an update on your injuries?

The way I see it is this series of events took place over the summer. This past summer I did a skill on parallel bars and ended up hurting my shoulder. And it was basically diagnosed as an AC sprain, and so I rehabbed that injury. It didn’t take that long, maybe a couple months, and then I started training again.

Towards the fall my rib all of a sudden just broke, kind of unexpectedly. It was a strange injury and no one really knew why. I even had my blood drawn because they were worried about a deficiency in some mineral or something like that, but nothing showed up. The whole time I continued training and preparing for Winter Cup, and I was making good progress coming back from the rib injury. I was hoping to compete in at least four events at Winter Cup, in the early stages. At one point I was hoping to do all-around, but I gave up on that, just because of the time constraint. And then I continued to train for Winter Cup, and gradually, over time my shoulder started to hurt more and more. I would say around to December it was starting to bother me enough to where I was reducing the workload on certain events.  Then it progressively got worse, to the point where I was not doing four, now all of a sudden I’m doing three, then two, then it got to a couple weeks before Winter Cup. I was saying to myself, “Man, my shoulder’s not feeling good, and I’m only doing pommel horse.” So I went and got it checked out; got an MRI done. The MRI showed that I had some problem- a SLAP lesion or SLAP tear of my labrum. The doctor also noticed that there was a small rotator cuff tear that he said I shouldn’t be overly worried about. So after that it was pretty clear that if I were to continue to do gymnastics and wanted to get back to an elite or Olympic level, I would need to get that repaired. So I had it done pretty much right away and gave up the goal of competing at Winter Cup. (read more)

Small as the gymnastics world is, Paul Hamm doubts anyone was all that surprised to hear he was making another (read more)