Trent Dimas

The American has one gold medal; the Belarussian has six. The American will appear on the "Today Show" this morning and, if everything breaks right, could become one of the Wheaties cover boys. The Belarussian is going home to a country where cereal is a luxury and the future is as uncertain as the next harvest. Sunday night, Trent Dimas of Albuquerque, N.M., and Vitaly Scherbo of Minsk soared higher than all the rest in the men's gymnastics apparatus finals at the 1992 Olympics.

The American has one gold medal; the Belarussian has six. The American will appear on the "Today Show" this morning and, if everything breaks right, could become one of the Wheaties cover boys. The Belarussian is going home to a country where cereal is a luxury and the future is as uncertain as the next harvest. Sunday night, Trent Dimas of Albuquerque, N.M., and Vitaly Scherbo of Minsk soared higher than all the rest in the men's gymnastics apparatus finals at the 1992 Olympics.

The Americans lost to the East Germans in a men's gymnastics meet here Sunday, but for U.S. Gymnastics Federation officials, not all was lost. They found a new star. Trent Dimas, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Nebraska, wasn't even invited to this meet. His coach at Nebraska, Francis Allen, pulled some strings to get him in. Then Dimas, unranked and unexpectedly good, beat the 10th-ranked gymnast in the world, East German Sylvio Kroll, to win the all-around title.

The Americans lost to the East Germans in a men's gymnastics meet here Sunday, but for U.S. Gymnastics Federation officials, not all was lost. They found a new star. Trent Dimas, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Nebraska, wasn't even invited to this meet. His coach at Nebraska, Francis Allen, pulled some strings to get him in. Then Dimas, unranked and unexpectedly good, beat the 10th-ranked gymnast in the world, East German Sylvio Kroll, to win the all-around title.

Many of the top male gymnasts in the country will compete at UCLA today and Sunday, attempting to advance to the U.S. Gymnastics Federation's national championships. The UCLA regional is one of three this weekend. From them, the gymnasts with the top 72 scores will advance to the national meet in Denver June 8-10. Among the 36 gymnasts competing will be Trent Dimas, a University of Nebraska freshman who recently won the all-around title at a dual meet between the United States and East Germany.

American gymnasts dominated both the men's and women's competition Friday at the McDonald's American Cup. U.S. women, led by defending champion Kim Zmeskal, swept eight of the first nine places in all-around qualifying competition and won all four individual events. U.S. men, following Trent Dimas and Chris Waller, who finished first and third, respectively, placed five in the top seven of all-around qualifying.

Mike Racanelli of Ohio State continued to dominate the individual portion of the NCAA men's gymnastics meet by winning medals in five of the six individual events Saturday night. Racanelli, a senior who won the separate all-around competition earlier in the day, won the floor exercise and placed in the top six--the requirement for All-American status--in the other five. Racanelli was the only gymnast to qualify for all six events during preliminaries Thursday night.

Chris Waller studied the final scores of the open senior men's competition he had just won at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships. "That's far too close," the UCLA gymnast said after seeing his 2.0-point compulsory lead dwindle to a winning margin of .14. Waller outlasted teammate Chainey Umphrey and Nebraska's Patrick Kirkscy, who tied for second. UCLA's Tom Schlesinger finished fourth, .20 behind Waller.

Kristie Phillips, the United States' new all-around gymnastics champion, Sunday won two more gold medals--as well as a silver and a bronze--in the U.S. individual event championships. Men's champion Scott Johnson collected two golds and two silvers, and John Sweeney, the 11th-place finisher in the men's all-around, won gold medals in vaulting and the floor exercise. Phillips, 15, of Baton Rouge, La., was the only competitor to qualify for the finals in all four women's events.

Betty Okino scored a perfect 10 on vault and Kim Zmeskal scored a 10 on floor exercise as U.S. gymnasts dominated athletes from 13 nations in the American Cup competition Saturday. Okino and Zmeskal finished 1-2 in the women's all-around competition and fellow Americans Trent Dimas and Chris Waller claimed the gold and silver in the men's all-around in perhaps the top U.S. international gymnastics success since the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

Kurt Thomas is milking his gymnastics career for all it's worth, which has turned out to be considerable. His career included two NCAA all-around championships at Indiana State, a place on the 1976 U.S. Olympic team, a berth on the 1980 team, three American Cup championships, a No. 2 world ranking and the Sullivan Award in 1979. Thomas even invented a trick on the the pommel horse that was immediately dubbed the Thomas Flair. Enough seemed to be enough. Thomas left amateur gymnastics in 1980.