Gymnastics

BEIJING -- In a gymnastics meet that has been littered with controversy about allegedly underage gymnasts, a 33-year-old woman, the oldest by a decade in the Olympics, won a medal Sunday. Oksana Chusovitina, a veteran of five Olympics who won a team gold medal in 1992 with the Unified Team of athletes from the former Soviet Union, earned an individual silver medal Sunday when she did two sturdy vaults. Her 9-year-old son, Alisher, is in recovery from leukemia, the illness that brought Chusovitina to Germany six years ago. It is because of that illness that Chusovitina competes for Germany instead of her native Uzbekistan.

Since she won four medals at the 2008 Olympics, including a gold in the balance beam, Shawn Johnson has retired from her sport, written a book, won the mirror ball trophy on "Dancing With the Stars," torn up her knee while skiing and had reconstructive surgery. Oh, yeah, and she's doing gymnastics again. Johnson, 20, who came to the Beijing Games as defending world all-around champion and Olympic favorite, accepted her silver all-around medal, one rung below American teammate Nastia Liukin, with both a smile and tears.

The NCAA has denied the University of New Mexico's request to reinstate the eligibility of Mexican gymnast Luis Lopez, who said he received a $500 monthly stipend from his country's national gymnastics federation.

The winner cried, astounded that her two mistakes on uneven bars and floor exercise didn't relegate her to second place. The loser cried too, after she finished her final event, floor exercise, with a routine that was done with some bent knees and maybe a turn that wasn't quite completed. The U.S. captured the second major women's gold medal awarded at the 2011 World Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo on Thursday when 16-year-old Jordyn Wieber of DeWitt, Mich., won the all-around gold medal by edging out 16-year-old Victoria Komova of Russia, who won silver.

McKayla Maroney is the daughter of a former Purdue quarterback, Michael Maroney. She is 5 feet 2 and gets her size from her mother, Erin, not her 6-foot-2 dad. But Maroney has some athletic talent from her father. The 15-year-old from Laguna Niguel will compete for the U.S. at the 2011 world gymnastics championships in Tokyo, to be held Oct. 7 to 16. It is the competition where the top eight teams will earn spots at the 2012 London Olympics and where international judges will get a sense of who will be most competitive for the Games next summer.

Former U.S. Olympian Dominique Moceanu, who at 14 was part of the 1996 gold-medal team, said Tuesday night that USA Gymnastics team coordinator Martha Karolyi once grabbed her by the neck and slammed her face into a phone, and that former coach Bela Karolyi twice berated her about her weight in front of national teammates.

It was apparent from the very first apparatus at the World Gymnastics Championships in Tokyo that the United States women had something special going. First Aly Raisman did what she described as her "best vault ever. " U.S. all-around champion Jordyn Wieber followed with a nerveless and technically well-scored vault that was marred only by a tiny bobble on the landing. Finally, in the three-up, three-count format of the team finals, 15-year-old McKayla Maroney completed a huge amanar (a difficult move requiring 2 1/2 twists)

McKayla Maroney is the daughter of a former Purdue quarterback, Michael Maroney. She is 5 feet 2 and gets her size from her mother, Erin, not her 6-foot-2 dad. But Maroney has some athletic talent from her father. The 15-year-old from Laguna Niguel will compete for the U.S. at the 2011 world gymnastics championships in Tokyo, to be held Oct. 7 to 16. It is the competition where the top eight teams will earn spots at the 2012 London Olympics and where international judges will get a sense of who will be most competitive for the Games next summer.

"Captain of the Team" (Gymnasts #8) Elizabeth Levy The Pinecones, a gymnastics team, won't stop their jokes and nonsense. Coach Patrick and Darlene are sick of it. She wants to tell the team that they need to behave because of the competitions coming up. But she can't figure out how to go about it. When Darlene gets to be team captain, things are different. Will she succeed in getting her team to behave? I like this book because I am in gymnastics and my team always wins.

It was at the 2007 USA gymnastics championships where Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson marked themselves as rivals on the same team, as the two women most likely to star for the U.S. at the 2008 Olympics. A similar battle might be expected this week at the 2011 USA nationals, which begin Wednesday in St. Paul, Minn. Although Johnson and two other 2008 Olympians, Alicia Sacramone and Chellsie Memmel, are back in the competitive mix, it's possible a similar American one-two punch could be on its way between 18-year-old Rebecca Bross and 16-year-old Jordyn Wieber.

Alyssa Kitasoe studied herself in the mirror, and the image was shocking. She had been standing near the bathroom sink, vomiting into a plastic container. When she looked up, through eyes blurred with tears, she was disgusted by what she saw. "It was like seeing a ghost of yourself, or a monster," Kitasoe recalled. "I remember just staring at myself. " A year earlier, Kitasoe viewed herself very differently. A striking young woman with long black hair and a radiant smile, she was strong and proud — the UCLA gymnastics logo on her clothes providing instant respect around campus.

James McClure Longtime U.S. senator from Idaho Former U.S. Sen. James McClure, 86, a conservative Republican who spent 24 years in Congress representing Idaho and while chairman of the Energy Committee fought to keep Idaho's wilderness areas controlled by the state, died Saturday at his home in Garden City, Idaho. The cause was complications from a series of strokes, his family said. McClure was elected to the House of Representatives in 1966 and served six years before being elected to the Senate in 1972.

Gold-medal-winning gymnast Shawn Johnson testified Thursday that she was so afraid of a Florida man who was allegedly stalking her that she considered quitting the popular TV show "Dancing With the Stars." Robert M. O'Ryan is charged with felony stalking and commercial burglary. Authorities said he traveled across the country and scaled a fence at CBS Studios in 2009 when the Olympian gymnast was filming the dance competition. "He was a stranger to me. To see somebody had that much kind of obsession, it made me really scared," she said, speaking in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

Dominique Dawes, Kristen Maloney, Amy Chow, Jamie Dantzscher, Elise Ray and Tasha Schwikert found out they were Olympic bronze medalists Wednesday. The award is 10 years late and bittersweet for the members of the U.S. women's 2000 Olympic gymnastics team that finished fourth overall and left Sydney, Australia, without a single medal — team or individual. On Wednesday, China was stripped of its team bronze by the International Olympic Committee because of evidence presented to the IOC that one Chinese gymnast, Dong Fangxiao, was only 14 at the time.