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August 11, 2004 8:01 pm

Hamms see double gold

By Jill Lieber

USA TODAY

Right from the start, sons Paul and Morgan Hamm surprised their parents.

Twenty-one years ago, several minutes after Cecily Hamm gave birth to Morgan, she heard the nurse utter these startling words to the obstetrician: ``Oh, Don, there's another one.''

Another one?

``I thought I was delivering the afterbirth,'' Cecily recalls about that life-altering revelation in the delivery room. ``I pushed and out popped Paul.''

There's no overlooking the Hamms today - and certainly no mistaking them for anything but gymnastics superstars. On the eve of their second Olympics in a row, they are the youngest male gymnasts - and the only set of twins - on Team USA.

Paul, 20 minutes younger than Morgan, is the reigning world all-around champion and projected to win gold medals in all-around and floor and possibly in high bar.

If Morgan has his way, he, too, will bring home a gold, a ``twin'' gold. ``Our dream is to tie on the floor,'' he says.

The Hamms, members of the USA's 2003 silver-medal winning World Championship team, have an even bigger Olympics dream - helping the U.S. men win the gymnastics team gold medal. The only time the U.S. men accomplished that feat was at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. The Hamms say it will not be the last.

``If we have a strong day in Athens, I see us ahead of China,'' Paul says. ``I feel this is a special team, an amazing group of guys. We have the potential to win the Olympic gold medal and if we just have a good day, we'll be on the medals podium.''

Bob Colarossi, president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, says: ``The last time we were this strong and this good was in 1984. I'm absolutely convinced that these guys will challenge for the top of the podium.''

The last people to raise their eyebrows about the Hamms being poised to win gold medals are their parents, Cecily and Sandy. They know all too well their sons have always reached for their dreams.

``As children, they were always moving,'' Cecily remembers. ``They were very, very active climbers. You'd turn around and find them on top of the refrigerator.''

Or swinging from the rafters at the family's farm in Waukesha, Wis., 20 miles west of Milwaukee. Paul and Morgan called it ``the barn game,'' a combination of hide-and-seek and tag, Cirque du Soleil-style, including their even more dare-devilish older sister Betsy, now 24, the 1998 NCAA balance beam champion at Florida and a multiple All-America.

``The goal was to get from one side of the barn to the other, jumping from rafter to rafter and landing on a trampoline,'' Paul says. ``We'd be 20 feet in the air with only hay below us to cushion the fall.''

Morgan says: ``We even played it at night with flashlights. It was extremely dangerous. I'm shocked no one got hurt.''

In the hopes of keeping the twins in one piece, their dad signed them up for gymnastics classes at a local gym when they were 7 and a year later enrolled them in classes at the Waukesha YMCA. Paul started in gymnastics first, and Morgan, more reticent, joined him several months later.

``After the first lesson, the teacher said, `Who is this kid?' `` Morgan says of his talented and fearless brother. ``The teacher would show him a skill, and Paul would have it down the next practice.''

Paul says, ``I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do it.''

Their dad fashioned makeshift gymnastics equipment at home. A boulder in the field became a pommel horse until Paul scraped most of the skin off his legs. ``I worked so hard I bled,'' he says. That prompted Dad to hike into the woods and chop down a maple tree, crafting a pommel horse from a stump wrapped in foam padding. ``The sap was still seeping out of it,'' Paul says.

Parallel bars were created from two stair rails nailed to four posts embedded in the ground. A high bar was concocted from a metal rod salvaged from a chain link fence at a construction site. ``It was not safe at all,'' Paul says.

And finally, rings were hung in the attic.

``They were just grabbed by it, almost immediately,'' their mom says. ``Not just their bodies, their minds. They watched all of the greats and said, `I want to be like that.' ``

Paul says: ``Gymnastics became a part of me. Some kids throw themselves into comic books; for us, it was gymnastics.''

For their dad, keeping up with the twins was an Olympic event. He was constantly trying to play into their passion.

Like the time the 8-year-olds became mesmerized by ``American Anthem'', a gymnastics cult movie starring Mitch Gaylord, a 1984 U.S. Olympic gold medalist. Another gymnast in the movie was Stacy Maloney, who, by that time, was coaching at Swiss Turners, a club in West Allis, Wis., and moonlighting as a rock musician. The twins' father tracked down Maloney at Summerfest, a popular concert series on Milwaukee's lakefront, and asked him to coach his sons. Maloney agreed.

``He gave us private lessons at the Y and on the crappy equipment at home,'' Paul says.

Or the time the 9-year-olds became fixated on the gymnastics competition at the 1991 Goodwill Games. With the boys away on vacation that summer, their dad surprised them by having cable television installed so they could watch - and tape and replay - every last minute of it.

And when the 11-year-olds became enraptured by the skills of Russian gymnasts - Paul grew up with a poster in his bedroom of Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus, winner of six golds at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics - their dad really outdid himself.

In 1993 he brought in Scherbo for a clinic and exhibition at Swiss Turners and insisted Scherbo stay at the farm. After Scherbo left town, a second Russian wave was brought in - Konstantin Kolesnikov, a former member of the Soviet national team. Kolesnikov was hired to be an assistant coach at Swiss Turners, and he lived with the Hamms for a year.

``I'm from Wisconsin. I'm a nobody. I wanted the boys to see that they could be somebodies,'' says their dad, who manages Newsfinder, which distributes the Associated Press wire service to media outlets.

``I wasn't going to have them believe, `Oh, the Russians, we can't beat them.' Vitaly Scherbo ran around our house in his underwear. He was a famous person, yes, but a real person. That was important for the boys to learn.''

In 1996, during the Atlanta Games, the 13-year-old twins made up their minds that the Olympics were where they wanted to be. So they sat down with their father and plotted their course. They amended their Olympic plan two years later, when their dad hired yet another Russian gymnast, Andrei Kan, a 1996 Olympian from Belarus, to teach the boys more difficult skills. It was also decided that the boys would train twice a day.

``Paul and Morgan are products of the Russians,'' their dad says. ``That's why the international judges like them so much - they have the elegance, poise and grace of the Russian gymnasts.''

The twins say they have never felt pushed.

``Dad listened to us,'' Paul says. ``He could tell what our dream was. He would be the one to help get us there.''

Their father purposely tried not to push them.

``All I wanted was for them to reach their potential,'' says their dad, who still bankrolls their gymnastics careers. ``But I had no clue what that was.''

Since 1998, the twins have worked tirelessly together to win Olympic gold medals, separated only by injuries and a bedroom. (They stopped sharing a bedroom when they were 15; Paul moved to the basement.)

In 2001, Paul broke his right ankle, had a screw inserted and missed six weeks of training and the U.S. Championships. In 2002, Morgan suffered what was feared to be a career-ending nerve injury in his left shoulder. He was sidelined for five months and has never fully regained strength in that shoulder.

``The longest time we've been apart is what, two weeks?'' Paul says. ``Gymnastics is something that has kept us together. I wanted (Morgan) to get well. I wanted us to be together.''

Adds Morgan: ``We aren't as happy training or competing by ourselves.''

In December, believing it would be beneficial for their Olympic quest to train side-by-side with Blaine Wilson and Raj Bhavsar from the 2003 World Championship team, the Hamms moved to Columbus, Ohio, where they are coached by Ohio State coach Miles Avery. Wilson, 29, is on the Olympic team, his third. Avery was named the team's assistant coach. Bhavsar is an alternate.

``We needed to have other athletes push us,'' Paul says. ``One of the things this country is missing, unlike Russia or China, is a centralized training facility. In Columbus, we coach each other all the time. There's a comfort level on the floor. The four of us are all very close. I feel like I've made definite improvement since last summer's Worlds.''

After the Olympics, the Hamms plan to establish residency in Ohio and in January enroll at Ohio State. Paul wants to get into health and fitness management; Morgan is leaning toward physical therapy.

For all the surprises the twins have given their parents over the years, they admit there have been times when they have surprised themselves. For instance, whenever they stop and think about how far they have come - something that happened recently while they were reminiscing about their road to Athens.

``It does seem kind of funny that we have gotten this far on all that crappy equipment,'' Paul says.

Morgan says, ``The number of things we did to get here, I almost feel like a different person today, like that's not me out on the boulder, learning pommel horse.''

Paul says, ``I almost feel like the dream has taken me away, that it has come true and I'm living it. It's incredible.''

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