Paul Hamm won’t be going to the Beijing Olympics, after all.

The reigning Olympic gold medalist announced Monday that he is withdrawing from the U.S. team because his broken right hand is not sufficiently healthy enough for him to compete in Beijing.

He also hurt his rotator cuff in his accelerated recovery effort.

The U.S. men are scheduled to leave Wednesday, and competition begins Aug. 9.

One of the alternates — Sasha Artemev, David Durante and Raj Bhavsar — will take his place.

The news is a blow for Hamm and the Americans. Hamm broke his hand May 22 at the national championships, just 11 weeks before the start of the games. He had surgery five days later and pushed his recovery in hopes he’d be healthy enough to help the Americans get back on the podium and defend his gold medal.

Hamm’s withdrawal ends the career of one of the best gymnasts the United States has ever had. He is the only American man to win the world (2003) and Olympic (2004) titles, and he led the United States to a silver medal in Athens, their first at the Olympics in 20 years.

He appeared to be on track at a weeklong training camp two weeks ago, where he proved he was physically able to compete at a July 19 intrasquad meet. Hamm did portions of all six events that day, looking particularly good on floor exercise, and estimated he was about 90 percent healthy.

But he struggled with some of his skills on parallel bars and acknowledged he still had pain in the hand.

When he returned home to Columbus, Ohio, it was clear just what a toll the hard training had taken. Hamm struggled with practice and pain all last week, and he decided over the weekend that it was better to let a healthy athlete take his spot.

The Americans would have needed Hamm to compete on all six events in team qualifying, and likely would have put him up on all six in team finals, too. The scoring format in team finals is unforgiving, with three athletes competing on each event and all three scores counting. Make a mistake or struggle, and it costs the team dearly.

Despite taking 2½ years off after Athens — an unprecedented layoff in the sport — he had firmly established himself as a contender for another gold, winning every meet he entered this year, often by large margins. At nationals, he was practically perfect through his first five events before breaking the fourth metacarpal in his right ring finger in the closing minutes of his parallel bars routine.

Even with the injury, he still finished the night almost four points ahead.

 

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