US Olympic Gymnastics Team 2012: Danell Leyva Must Redeem Himself in All-Around

Team USA’s collapse continues.

Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte and Jordyn Wieber have all experienced nightmarish starts to the 2012 Summer Olympics. U.S. gymnastics star Danell Leyva joined the party on Monday with a letdown in the men’s team all-around finals. After coming to London with sky-high expectations, he must make up for his gaffe in individual competition.

Before the Olympics, Leyva claimed that he was aiming for four gold medals. Well, so much for that.

Team USA finished first in the qualifiers from the team all-around. Their performance was so dominant that they looked like favorites to take home gold in the finals. Instead, they finished fifth.

As the most talented gymnast on the squad, Leyva’s struggles stood out. He advanced to the finals after finishing with the best individual score in the qualifying round. In the team competition, though, he failed to continue that momentum.

Juliet Macur of the New York Times reported that, following his early success, Leyva stressed the importance of maintaining focus after a strong performance. He said:

“Stay grounded, stay humble. It’s the Olympics. You can’t be too confident. If you are, you’re going to slip up and do something that you don’t want to do.”

Only Leyva knows if he became too confident, but he ended up doing exactly what he wanted to avoid.

Leyva was a favorite to win gold on the parallel bars and horizontal bar going into the games. On Monday, he finished 10th in the parallel and fourth on the horizontal.

Individual competition begins on Wednesday. While Leyva is still capable of winning three gold medals, he’ll have to perform much better than he did on Monday to win one, let alone a trio.

Hopefully for Team USA’s sake, he steps up his game because John Orozco performed even worse than he did. Leyva is simply their best shot at gold.

David Daniels is a featured columnist at Bleacher Report and a syndicated writer.

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