Olympics: Tearful Sacramone Misses Podium But Lands on Front Pages

Mixed zones are vicious little places at the best of times, as journalists jostle their way into a position to shove a recording device into an athlete's face before they leave on the team bus. But the swarm around Alicia Sacramone, the gymnast whose two falls in the beam and the floor may have cost the United States women's team a gold medal, was too much even for my elbows.

So I'm grateful to the Times' Owen Slot and the Mail's Des Kelly, who did manage to wriggle their way through, for telling me that Sacramone blamed an unusually lengthy delay before the beam for making her lose concentration. "I stood there in front of a blank screen," she said. "It felt like it was five minutes. Nerves got to me. It's an honor to win silver but I will have to live with my mistakes." Was the delay deliberate? That, apparently, was the implication.

Sacramone's face afterwards - eyes welling up, body appearing to hyperventilate - will probably make the front pages of the American dailies later. Gymnastics plays big Stateside. So big, in fact, that one reporter I spoke to claimed it would top NBC's Olympics viewing figures. I have my doubts - what about the basketball or the swimming? - but if the melee of Americans in the mixed zone is anything to go by, I'm probably wrong.

This was my first live experience of gymnastics, and much of it was compelling. During the 90 seconds allocated for the warm-up, for instance, every competitor seem to leap, spin or walk on their hands at once, creating a mood that was less gymnastics meet, more Cirque de Soleil.

Once the competition started, the crowd was tense and involved, but not excessively patriotic. When Sacramone fell, there was a sharp intake of breath, not applause. This was not Atlanta 1996.

Despite a brilliant routine from Nastia Liukin, who flew across the uneven bars as if auditioning for House of the Flying Daggers, China led the US by 143.1 to 142.1 going into the final event, with the rest of the field well back. In Athens, many judges' decisions were greeted with howling outrage and it seemed that we could be heading that way again.

Since then, the scoring system has altered so that marks are now given for both difficulty and execution, which includes presentation and artistry. With scores now in the 14-17 range there will never be another perfect 10. Of course gymnastics remains necessarily subjective, and what one judge may construe as a small error (losing 0.1 of a point) might be seen as a large (0.5 deduction) error to another.

In the end of course, there were no such concerns. Sacramone's second fall in a matter of minutes saw to that. As the crowd applauded the final Chinese routine, the cynical American hack next to me, who had earlier questioned some of their scores, agreed that the home nation were deserved winners.

Although I wasn't able to get close to Sacramone in the mixed zone afterwards, other blonde-haired Sindys in eye make-up and spangly suits did walk by. I knew they were little - that's hardly news - but this little? The minimum age to compete in an Olympics is 16, many of these wouldn't have been out of place in a year eight disco.

There is surely something inherently wrong with a sport where weighing less than eight stone is pretty much a prerequisite and seven often a positive advantage - and where bulimia and burnout are rife. Asking what to do about it is easy; finding the answer altogether more difficult.