Hilton HHonors teammates Jonathan Horton and Danell Leyva have a unique working relationship. They love to tease about their friendly competition -- razzing each other before competitions, swearing to beat each other. But at the end of the day, while gymnastics feels like a personal sport much of the time, the pair realizes the individual battle takes a distant second to the most important goal: improving U.S. gymnastics.
On Friday at the Xcel Energy Center in the finals of the U.S. championships -- a major landmark on the way to the 2012 Olympic games in London -- Horton and Leyva demonstrated in front of a crowd of 4,614 that the U.S. men's team will indeed be something to reckon with next year.
The two were neck-and-neck all night until Horton uncharacteristically slipped up on the high bar -- his best event - setting up Leyva's first national all-around title with a score of 183.8.
"I'm not going to say it's just words ... it is another level of accomplishment and it's just an amazing feeling," Leyva said. "I'm just taking it all in.
"Everybody is getting better -- it's not just us two. It's the whole U.S. We're just stepping up to that plate. It's awesome to see people do what they're supposed to."
Leyva started the evening with a healthy, two-point lead over Houston-born Horton and was consistently good on his first three events. Meanwhile, Horton was making up ground.
Horton slightly watered down his first two events, the pommel horse, because he fell off during the preliminaries, and the still rings, because his tweaked right shoulder is still bothering him. But while each event Friday was not indicative of his capability, Horton improved in both, and scored more than a point higher on the horse than he had two days earlier.
That cautious approach set him up to hit the last four events sprinting. After his third-rotation vault, on which he scored a strong 16.7, he trailed Leyva by just a tenth of a point and looked to pass him when the Miami resident stepped out of bounds on his vault dismount. But on Horton's first release move on the high bar he lost his grip and tumbled to the mat below, paused and let out a breath in disappointment.
