HOUSTON _ Olympic gold medalist Paul Hamm has a broken bone in his right hand, an injury that will take at least four weeks' recovery and will keep him out of next month's U.S. Olympic trials.
The men's competition at the Beijing Games begins on August 9, 11 weeks from now.
"He won't be able to do the Olympic trials," Miles Avery, Hamm's coach, said on Friday. "The course of action for that is to petition him to the team. And try to prove his readiness later in the summer, closer to the games."
USA Gymnastics officials would be almost sure to grant Hamm's petition, provided he is healthy.
Hamm is the only American man to win the all-around title at the world championships (2003) or Olympics (2004), and he has been dominant in every meet he's entered this year.
"For the Olympics, he has an excellent chance of being 100 percent," said Dr. James Bicos, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine at St. Vincent's Hospital in Indianapolis and was with Hamm when he had X-rays done on Friday.
"Someone who is not an elite athlete like him, it's hard," Bicos added. "But his motivation, he should definitely be ready for the Olympics."
Despite the fall on parallel bars that caused the injury on Thursday, Hamm finished preliminaries at the U.S. gymnastics championships with a score of 93.450, almost four points better than anyone else. The U.S. Olympic trials are on June 19-22 in Philadelphia.
Hamm was dazzling through his first five events at the U.S. championships on Thursday, taking a commanding lead. But as he flipped to do work on one rail on parallel bars, he missed catching the bar and jammed the fingers on his right hand.
Hamm fell, grimacing as he immediately grabbed his hand.
"I heard a small popping sound in the joint," Hamm said on Thursday.
The X-rays revealed he had broken a bone, the fourth metacarpal in his right hand.
Recovery time for the injury was four to six weeks, Bicos said.
"We're not worried about healing, it's just time," he added.
Hamm is able to petition directly onto the Olympic team because he was part of the 2004 squad that won the silver, the Americans' first Olympic medal in 20 years.
Hamm also won the all-around gold in Athens and a silver on high bar.
