Incredible: Hamm wins gold

He's only the second American to win gold in an Olympic all-around competition.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Paul Hamm couldn't stand the view -- lying flat on his back, staring at the lights in the ceiling.
Then he caught sight of something even uglier: the scoreboard.
With one sickening stumble on a vault he had never botched before, Hamm dropped from first place to 12th with two events remaining Wednesday night in the Olympic all-around.
"I was very upset and depressed," he said. "I felt I let myself down."
Champions rarely give up, and Hamm didn't.
He strung together the two best routines of his life and, when he looked at the scoreboard at the end of the night, he had a much different view.
His name was on top.
Gold medalist. Olympic champion.
Unbelievable effort
It was, almost everybody in the gym agreed, the most dramatic comeback in the 108-year history of Olympic gymnastics.
"Totally unbelievable," USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi said.
"I've never seen anything like it," coach Miles Avery concurred.
"The greatest I've ever seen," said Peter Vidmar, who won silver in 1984 and is now one of two American men to win a medal in the all-around.
Hamm added this gold to the one he won at world championships last year, along with the Olympic silver he and his teammates took Monday night.
He joined Mary Lou Retton as just the second American to win gold in an Olympic all-around.
As with any great comeback, Hamm needed some help, and got it.
He followed the vault debacle, where he scored a 9.137, on the parallel bars. And after his straight-line routine there netted a 9.837, no fewer than a half-dozen of the gymnasts between him and first place faltered.
"You look around and watch what's happening on the floor, and you start to think about what could happen," Colarossi said.
Dramatic finish
When Hamm got ready to close the meet on the high bar -- his signature event -- indeed anything seemed possible.
He went through the routine without a flaw, flying up and backward across the bar and grabbing it three straight times with ease.
He needed a 9.825 to tie Kim Dae-eun of South Korea for the gold, but he didn't know that.
His score, another 9.837, flashed on the board. He hugged Avery, thinking he had secured the bronze, which was all he was really hoping for after the tumble a half-hour earlier.
"He looked at me and said 'You're an Olympic champion,' " Hamm said. "I said 'Oh.' It was the best performance of my life."
He defeated Kim by 0.012 points, the slimmest margin in the history of the men's all-around. The previous closest was 0.017 by Leon Stukelj of Yugoslavia over Robert Prazak of Czechoslovakia in the 1924 Games.
Another South Korean, Yang Tae-young, took the bronze.
Unexpected
Kim and Yang looked stunned sitting at the medalists' news conference. Maybe it was because, as they admitted, they didn't really think they would be on the medal stand at all on this night.
Or maybe it was because, once they knew they would be there, Hamm came back and practically ripped the gold off their necks.
"I thought maybe I could get first," Kim said. "I'm rather disappointed and angry in a way."
Those were the first two medals for South Korea in the men's all-around, but outside their own country, they'll be the answer to a trivia question, at best. Hamm's comeback was that special.