SAN JOSE — At this stage, with fewer than 30 days remaining before the Rio Olympics get under way, the goal of Martha Karolyi, the all-powerful national team coordinator of U.S. women's gymnastics, isn't to nurture or encourage.
It’s to ferret out any weakness among the teenage sprites and young 20-somethings vying for a spot in Rio.
The five-woman team will be named Sunday night following Day 2 of Olympic trials. Karolyi’s expectation is all 14 gymnasts competing are fully fit and have etched their routines into muscle memory. All that remains, then, is this final test to see who cracks when everything is at stake.
“It’s extremely important to prove themselves,” Karolyi, 73, said following Thursday’s 90-minute workout at what will be a sold-out arena. “The pressure this time will be so much bigger: more attention given to each gymnast, more media, more cameras. Everything is more.”
Rio Olympics: U.S. gymnastics hopefuls
These athletes — photographed at the Olympic media summit in March — will compete to represent the United States at the Rio de Janeiro Games.
Karolyi’s eyes danced with delight as she described the pressurized cauldron that the Olympic trials represent.
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“The whole environment itself creates more stressful situation, and this will be very important because we will meet the same situation [in Rio],” she continued. “We have to see which individuals are the ones who are able to handle better this kind of situation. ... It’s a question mark: Who stands up under higher pressure?”
Only one, the event’s all-around champion, will automatically lock up an Olympic berth based on her performance at trials. And barring calamity, that will be Simone Biles, 19, the three-time all-around world champion who won her fourth consecutive all-around national title in commanding fashion just two weeks ago in St. Louis.
The four other members will be named by a three-person selection committee, with Karolyi’s judgment holding sway. The selections need not strictly follow the finishing order at the trials.
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That’s because the priority of U.S. gymnastics heading into Rio is to win the team gold. The American women have managed the feat twice, “the Magnificent Seven” at the 1996 Atlanta Games and “the Fierce Five” in London four years ago.
In the team competition, each country must choose three gymnasts to compete on each apparatus (balance beam, floor, uneven bars and vault), and all three scores count. That means a gold medal contending country can’t afford a glaring weakness on any apparatus. This crop of U.S. gymnasts is strongest on floor and vault; the bars are its weakest event, which means Karolyi may choose a bars specialist to round out the squad rather than the fourth- or fifth-best overall gymnast.
Two “Fierce Five” veterans are expected to join Biles on the 2016 squad: Reigning Olympic all-around champion Gabby Douglas, 20, a Virginia Beach native, and Aly Raisman, 22, who won gold in the floor exercise at London.
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Rio Olympics: Athletes who will represent the United States
Most of these Olympic hopefuls have turned into Olympians since they were photographed at the media summit in March; some teams have not yet been named.
Nonetheless, Karolyi wasted no energy Thursday on hiding her disappointment that Douglas has decided against performing the sport’s most difficult vault, the Amanar, here at the U.S. Olympic trials. The Amanar, which few female gymnasts are capable of executing, dramatically raises the degree of difficulty and, as a result, increases a gymnast’s score if properly performed. Karolyi said she has stressed the importance of mastering it to Douglas for months.
“We give her enough time, and we talked about that the whole year ... but it looks like mentally she is not ready to do it,” Karolyi said. “Supposedly at the home gym she is training it. But when it comes [time] to go up on the podium and present it, she has some doubts. So we don’t want to over-push for safety reasons. It has to be their decision.”
Douglas, for her part, insists she will have plenty of time to perfect her Amanar in the weeks that follow Sunday’s Olympic team selection. “It’s ready; it’s ready,” Douglas said Thursday. “It’s just here, I have to be a little bit more prepared.”
Her plan this weekend is to compensate for any perceived deficiency on vault by doing exceptionally well on the beam, bars and floor.
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“For me, I just have to know my body,” Douglas said. “Everybody is telling me, ‘Just stop worrying and stop stressing out there and just go out there and do your normal. Do you! And everything will be all right.’ That’s what I really have to focus on, not be stressed out and not be divided against myself.”
Douglas also has a track record of excelling under pressure. Just eight months after returning to competition after taking a nearly two-year hiatus to pursue the business and marketing opportunities that followed her triumph at the 2012 Olympics, Douglas claimed silver in the all-around at the 2015 world championships.
Assuming Douglas satisfies Karolyi this weekend, that would leave two spots to be filled by first-time Olympians.
Based on performances in St. Louis just last month, the favorites to round out the squad are Laurie Hernandez, 16, an exuberant all-around gymnast who’s in her first season of competing at the senior level, and Madison Kocian, 19, of Dallas, who tied for gold on the uneven bars at the 2015 world championships.
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