Chinese teammates Yang Yilin (right) and Xiao
Sha placed sixth and seventh, respectively.
the past two weeks. If you are injured and have
a bronze medal, I think it’s not bad.”
Barbosa surprised many by holding the lead
after each of the first three rotations. Sixth in
qualifying, the 16-year-old threw the most difficult vault of the all-around final ( 21⁄2-twisting
Yurchenko, crossing one foot over the line). On
bars, she clipped her foot catching a toe-on-full
pirouette to Tkatchev, and took a step backward
on her double layout dismount. Barbosa hit
beam well (roundoff, layout mount; two flip-flops, whip; double pike dismount), but her
power waned on floor, where she fell short on a
piked full-in as a third pass.
The mistake dropped Barbosa from first to a
tie for third with Ferrari, an admirable feat on its
own. Barbosa’s all-around medal was the first for
a Brazilian woman in worlds history. (Daniele
Hypolito, who also competed in Stuttgart, was
fourth at the 2001 Ghent worlds.)
Two years ago at the Melbourne worlds,
Nastia Liukin of the U.S. came within 0.001 of
winning the all-around; a year ago in Aarhus,
hampered by an ankle injury, she competed on
bars only. Liukin’s Stuttgart all-around began
safely ( 11⁄2-twisting Yurchenko vault). She quickly
pulled into a tie for the lead after an exquisite
bars routine in the second rotation (inside
Stalder, Higgins, el-grip Endo, Ono-half,
Gienger; inside Stalder, Tkatchev; Stalder,
Higgins, full pirouette, Pak; double-front half dis-
mount with a step).
A fall from beam in the next rotation effectively eliminated Liukin’s medal bid, however.
Pausing after an aerial, she fell on the last element of the subsequent pass (flip-flop, layout,
whip). “I tried to straighten myself up, and it didn’t happen,” explained Liukin, who ended up
fifth. “In that situation you don’t know what to
do—whether you should go for that 0.10 connection, or if it’s going to cost you 0.80 like it did
tonight. I was just trying to save every little tenth
I had, so when I was a little off I wanted to try
and save it and still go for the connection. I probably should have stopped after the aerial and lost
the connection bonus.”
Once an upstart like Johnson, the 17-year-old
Liukin graciously acknowledged Johnson’s
