Columnist Dean Juipe: Schwikert has to go it alone

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2002 | 8:53 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

The best thing a top-of-the-line athlete in any sport can have is a rival, an equal of sorts who spurs interest in the competition and drives each to give their very best. Such an arrangement is ideal in terms of both marketing and performance.

Tasha Schwikert needs a rival.

Wonderfully strong and talented, the 17-year-old Las Vegas resident won her second straight U.S. women's senior gymnastics national championship over the weekend in Cleveland.

She's this country's finest gymnast, no question about it, and she deserves our respect.

But, based solely on glimpses of the televised preliminaries and finals, whatever Schwikert achieves at least in the foreseeable future will be the result of her own motivation. That's because the young ladies who we might consider to be her peers simply don't seem too impressive.

And Schwikert, arguably, is negatively affected by their lack of prowess.

While everything I know about the proper technique of gymnastics can fit into a thimble, it was obvious that Schwikert was off her game during the prelims. Afterward, she admitted as much.

Words such as "sloppy" came into play.

Yet she held a substantial lead over the field, and when she turned in a sharper routine in the finals she won by a considerable margin.

But she wasn't prodded by her fellow Americans, and that's unfortunate because she will be under the gun at November's world championships and again at the 2004 Olympics in Greece.

Schwikert's current array of challengers in the U.S. are young and, given their most recent showing, susceptible to pressure and prone to mistakes. They were slipping, sliding and falling all over the place.

Their failures indirectly detract from Schwikert, as would be the case with any athlete in a similar circumstance. Tiger Woods has to deal with this to some extent, however erroneous the assumption that no one can give him a game.

Schwikert is dominating U.S. gymnastics and, unlike Woods, she doesn't have a Phil Mickelson for a foil. She has a girl of only 16, Tabitha Yim, finishing second to her in the standings while appearing as if she wouldn't beat Schwikert under any conditions.

Such a reality does the sport little good and leads to a situation like they had in Cleveland, where expensive courtside seats sat empty and an overall announced attendance of 6,131 seemed fake. We in Las Vegas may be taking a greater interest in gymnastics because of what Schwikert is doing, but the sport as a whole looks to be slumping and in something of a downward spiral.

Dare I say things seemed better in the old days? Granted, the U.S. is a late bloomer in women's gymnastics and didn't have an individual Olympic medalist until Mary Lou Retton at Los Angeles in 1984, but there were rotating crops of worthy competitors that linked Cathy Rigby to Retton to Shannon Miller and the sport prospered.

Almost all of this is outside of Schwikert's control, as she can only be held responsible for her own performances. But those performances might be more scintillating and exact if she were pushed a little harder by her competitors, and if she had to truly excel to come out victorious.