In fact, just last night, Karolyi said if it was up to her, not even Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin would be locked in at this point. (USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny’s response to that: “Unfortunately, Martha can’t always have her way.”)

That’s why it was kind of shocking when Karolyi told the media that she felt like Chellsie Memmel, Samantha Peszek and Alicia Sacramone are all but on the 2008 team, barring injury or disastrous performances at July’s Selection Camp.

“If it would be today that we will decide, I’d have those,” Karolyi said of her current thinking, “and we’d just discuss the sixth spot. But I want to see the situation in three weeks. I hope will be the same, but you never know.”

If it IS the same, that leaves seven gymnasts—Jana Bieger, Chelsea Davis, Ivana Hong, Mattie Larson, Corrie Lothrop, Bridget Sloan and Shayla Worley—fighting for a single slot (not counting the three alternate positions).

And, with specialist Sacramone already almost locked in, that one spot will have to go to someone strong on bars.

By the numbers at Trials, the best bet would be Bieger, who finished third behind Liukin and Memmel on that event, scoring a 15.65 and 15.7, respectively, on each day at Trials.

While Bieger was most consistent, Sloan and Worley have the highest potential totals, with Start Values of 6.7 each, versus Bieger’s 6.6. (Worley has a potential 7.0 set, but hasn’t debuted it, and she’s got a 6.8 start already if everything is done perfectly.) Both Sloan and Worley fell on night two, but scored 15.6 and 15.4, respectively, on their day one efforts.

“We’re talking about maybe trying to add a little something, a little something new,” Worley said of her set. “Three weeks [until the Selection Camp] isn’t a lot of time, but we’ll see. I know it’s huge. I know it’s important. We’ll see what I can do. And I gotta get my execution score up.”

Some—like Guillermo Alvarez, David Durante, Sean Golden, Yewki Tomita and Sean Townsend—have said they’re almost certain to retire, while others are less sure.

Raj Bhavsar, 27, went back-and-forth even in the same interview yesterday, at first saying he’s definitely done, and then opting for a more wait-and-see attitude.

A dejected David Sender, the 22-year-old U.S. National Champ who couldn’t compete due to an ankle sprain, told coach Thom Glielmi he’s “unsure” if this is the end of his gymnastics career, or if he’ll feel like continuing.

While others, like Sasha Artemev, 22, who was talking about 2012 just a few days ago, now says there’s a “50/50 shot” he’ll retire. “Well, see what happens. I have to talk to my dad, because we’re a team,” a dejected Artemev said minutes after learning he was an alternate. “I haven’t really had a chance to talk to him at all, actually. Not since they told us.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, for those who did well, the sky is suddenly the limit. Justin Spring, 24, who thought he was going to retire just last weekend after ending up in the emergency room due to a back spasm, suddenly has his sights set on 2012, and maybe even beyond.

“My girlfriend is absolutely hoping that Chicago doesn’t get the 2016 Games, because then I’d have to keep going for that one too,” Spring laughed. “I mean, how fun would that be? An Olympics at home.”

With emotions riding high, split second decisions, and comments made in haste, should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

Memmel’s dad-coach, Andrew, admitted to the media last night that they’ve been so busy preparing for Trials he hasn’t bought his daughter a present. “I’m still working on that,” he laughed when asked again this morning. “She wants to go for ice cream, I know that much, and then we’ll probably go shopping. Oh, and she gets the day off.

“I know,” he concluded with a grin, “I’m getting off easy. But Chellsie’s always been easygoing.”

“I put out a mass text message to pretty much everyone,” Tan said. “Everyone wanted to know, and that was the fastest way [to tell them]. It just said, ‘I made it.’ I’m an Olympian.

“It’s just unreal,” Tan said of his new status. “This is THE Olympic Games. This is the big one.”

“I’ve got a boyfriend, yes, but I’ve also got tons of guy friends,” she confirms. “Yep, guys love me.” (She’s joking. Kind of.)

Sacramone, the eldest of Team USA’s ladies, is jokingly called “Sassy” by many, in reference to her quick wit and sometimes salty comments. (She’s been known to curse, albeit in a whisper, during interviews.)

“Sometimes I speak before I think,” Sacramone laughed. “Who am I kidding? I do that most of the time.”

Like her classic comment about giving the Trials line judge a “death glare” on day one, or referring to herself as a “bada**” on NBC. Or perhaps her now legendary pre-floor pep talk at 2007 Worlds.

No question, Sacramone is not your I-just-want-go-out-and-hit-all-my-events kind of interview.

Last night, after finals, Sacramone once again said exactly what she thought. “Damn, I wish I was one of the guys,” she answered when asked about the pressure inherent in the wait to find out whether or not she’ll be an Olympian. A wait that’s now over for the U.S. men.

He’s recently been featured in “Vibe,” “Men’s Health” and “Men’s Vogue,” among others. (And he also graced the cover of the September/October 2007 issue of Inside Gymnastics magazine!)

But, for now, Durante’s main focus is fulfilling his role as Team USA’s alternate. “Alternate is a difficult role,” he said. “I was the alternate at the 2006 worlds, and it’s a position I never wanted to be in again. But you take it, and embrace it, and make the best out of it you can.

“My primary goal is to make sure the team succeeds and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that happens,” Durante added. “If that’s by making my gymnastics better, to keep pushing these guys, that’s what I’ll do.

“You know, I was left out in 2004,” Durante concluded emotionally, “and these past four years, I’ve given everything I have to this sport. And it was worth it. Even if I’d not been named at all, for anything, this whole journey has been incredible. The people I met, the friends I made, the places I’ve been around the world, competing for the United States, has been such an honor—a thing most people will never have the chance to experience. Either way, it’s been a great ride, and … now I’m going to make sure I’m as prepared as possible, in case I have to step in. And we’ll see what happens from there.”

“After the meet, my main priority is getting back in the training room and doing my therapy, which takes a while,” she explained. “By the time that was done I’m always the last one on the bus anyway. So, it was just solely because I had to get my priorities straight.

Worley, 17, was also shocked to hear that several readers wrote in after watching the TV coverage to ask Inside about her appearance, saying she looked like she was in pain and/or tired.

“They think I look tired?” a laughing Worley asked. “Great! Talk about kicking me when I’m down. That makes me feel bad. I was made up on TV, too. I look tired? That’s like when someone asked me if it hurt when I fell off the bar and landed on my stomach.

“Really, I feel no pain,” she added. “When you’re competing on that level, and you’re in that zone, I don’t feel anything, really. … And I’m not tired, geez!”

A proposal to his longtime girlfriend, Tory, perhaps? “I think I’m going the Jon Horton route in the very near future,” Spring said, referring to his Olympic teammate, who also recently popped the question.

Tory was supposed to be on hand to hear Spring’s big news, but the two-hour delay in the team announcement meant she was already on her way to the airport when Spring found out he was on the squad.

“I texted her right away,” Spring said. “She was the first person I told, actually, and it sucks she couldn’t be there.”

In fact, while Spring was breaking the news to his gal, his coach, Jon Valdez, was spilling the beans to Spring’s family. “I was totally going to mess with them, walk out with a [sad] look on my face, shaking my head,” Spring laughed. “Freak ’em out a little. But, by the time I got out there, Jon had already told them. My mom just ran up to me and gave me this huge hug; she was just crying.”

“My husband jokes that we’re going to have rent one of those storage pods and park it in the driveway,” Teri jokes of how the memorabilia is piling up.

Johnson also talks about how surreal it is to see her little girl in national advertising, like viewing Shawn’s likeness on Olympic-themed Coca-Cola displays. “The first time we walked into our local grocery store and saw, like, the whole thing, [Shawn] just ran away,” Teri laughed. “She was like, ‘Mom, let’s go, I don’t want people to see me standing there looking at myself.’”

Teri makes every effort to keep Shawn grounded, despite her ever-increasing fame, something she says comes naturally, but also does her best to not take personal advantage of her daughter’s noterity.

Like Teri’s former boss, who offered his private plane to fly the Shawn and coach Liang Chow from Des Moines to Philadelphia after flooding screwed up airline and training schedules. “He offered to fly us home, too, but I said no,” Teri said, looking a bit embarrassed. “It’s just unnecessary and I don’t want to be greedy.” (The Johnsons got to Philadelphia by commercial air—and the whole family, along with Chow, returned that way.)

It’s the same reason she won’t ever drive Shawn’s snazzy Land Rover, which Teri describes as “Beijing red,” even though it’s far more upscale than her own five-year-old Suzuki. Donated by a Des Moines-dealer, Teri makes it clear the Land Rover is Shawn’s car, not her parents’. “Someone would see it and think her mom was [taking advantage,]” Teri worried, “so I’ll never do it (drive the car).

“People are just so nice,” she added. “We go in a restaurant and people say, ‘Oh, you don’t have to [pay,] and it’s just so embarrassing. I think it’s wonderful they want to help, but …”

“That is it, absolutely,” he whispered with a smile.

“I don’t even know what to say, I’m still in shock,” Hagerty added of how it felt to make his first Olympic team. “I think I did enough. I left the arena [yesterday] with no regrets and put it all in [the Selection Committee’s] hands.”

Durante’s older brother, Marc, is expecting to deliver the family’s first nephew on a day pretty special to Durante.

“My birthday is Thursday, and the baby is due on Thursday,” Durante said, laughing as he noted that naming the baby “David” in honor of him was out of the question. “They’ve already named him, and it’s [going to be] Lucas.

Justin Spring doesn’t do horse. Period. Which means that all five other gymnasts on the team must do pommels in prelims, including Jonathan Horton, who finished second-to-last on the event at Trials with a low 13.71 average (high of 14.05 for his 5.2 Start Value set).

The U.S. will hope to count the team’s other four scores, which include Kevin Tan, who averaged a 13.98 between Trials and USAs (weighted totals), notching a high of 14.55 for his 5.6 Start Value set.

“I’m ready to do what they need me to do,” Tan said of potentially doing pommels in team finals, as he did in 2007. “If that’s what the team needs me to do, I will do it, and do it well.”

Joey Hagerty also has a potential 5.6 Start Value, but only attained that once in the four days at USAs and Trials, recording a high of 14.3 twice, and averaging the same as Tan (13.98).

Morgan Hamm is currently the team’s best pommels performer, averaging a 14.47 for his 5.7 Start set, with a high of 14.9. (Hamm, Hagerty and Tan all had falls that brought down their averages.)

The major question mark is Morgan’s twin, Paul. In his one performance at USA’s on horse, when he was totally healthy, Paul posted a 15.5 for his 6.0 set, the highest total in the competition.

Assuming Team USA can match their best scores in Beijing—and that’s a large leap—that’s a team horse maximum of 59.3.

So, is pommel horse a problem? Well, yes, but what the Selection Committee undoubtedly saw was that even though Artemev led the horse standings, even with three out of four falls, he also only averaged a 14.83—less than four tenths better than Morgan—with only a single score breaking the 15-mark for his lone hit, which went 15.65.

So, while Artemev could have theoretically added 1.35 to the team total, there was only a 25 percent probability of that occurring (based on his Nationals and Trials results), and a far better shot that he’d bring three tenths, or less, to the table, if he continued to struggle. The fact that Artemev was also wildly inconsistent on his other events, meant those were odds the Selection Committee didn’t want to bet on.

Now, they know how Britney Spears feels.

“I just got my dog on Sunday, actually,” Liukin gushed of the latest addition to her household. “On Father’s Day, my dad was like, ‘Let’s go get the dog.’ I was like, ‘We can’t [get] it today,’ so we were just going to look.”

Although she originally had her heart set on a Maltipoo, Liukin fell in love with a black toy poodle. “We stopped at the pet store where I got my other dogs and I got a little, tiny, black toy poodle,” she said. “She’s eight weeks old. I haven’t named her yet. I’m doing a contest on my Web site [nastialiukin.com]. I have a few in mind, but it’s fun to get the fans’ perspective and their ideas; so, hopefully, I’ll have a few suggestions when I get home.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll hate me again soon enough,” Williams responded with a laugh. Which prompted Horton to explain with a grin, “If you don’t hate your coach—at least a little—he’s not doing his job.”

“She doesn’t have that humongous strong ability like this Code of Points requires, strength-wise” he said. “She just has a lot of will power. I don’t know where she gets this. It comes from inside. She keeps up with these girls who have some legs.

“She keeps up with these girls, somehow, on the floor exercise,” Liukin added. “The same thing on the vault. She’s in the top three or four, and she’s a girl that doesn’t jump high. It’s just a lot of will power. She’s a tiger inside, I can tell you this much.

“The main point I want to tell you is that Nastia does gymnastics not to win the first place,” Liukin concluded. “She just loves the sport. It’s already been a long seven or eight years at the Elite level, and this is kind of tough, but she just loves doing this. And she plans to stick around.”

And where does Nastia’s strength of character come from?

“She gets this from her mom, I guess,” Liukin said, laughing. “No, seriously, gymnastics is our life. It’s not just a round-off, back handspring to us. It’s our life.”

“Yeah, I definitely heard a lot about that,” Johnson said. “It’s just what I do at a competition. It’s just to help me stay focused. If I sit in the group and talk and stuff, I lose focus easy. When I sit off and kind of visualize my routines, it helps me compete better.

“It’s not [me] being shunned, or anything like that,” Johnson added with a laugh. “We’re great friends and it’s just the way I prepare for a competition.”

Life for any 16-year-old girl is rough enough without throwing in Olympic expectations. So, how does Peszek handle the pressure?

“I think I do pretty well at balancing all of them,” she said, “and I really do feel like I get the best of both worlds, you know, going to school and going to gym. A lot of the girls don’t go to real school, and I feel really blessed that Cathedral High School [in Indianapolis] is always really willing to help me.

“This year has been so crazy,” Peszek added. “Coming back from Worlds, I’d missed a month of school. … It was pretty difficult to stay on top of my school work and on top of athletics and, at the same time, have some sort of social life and friends.”

“We have so many strong girls, it’s just amazing,” Johnson said of Team USA’s talent pool. “I think it’s going to make it really hard for the Selection Committee. I think our team is going to be unbeatable.”

“I think it’s good,” she said of the drawn-out process. “I think it makes us work even harder and makes us be at the top of our game. We want to be our very best at the Selection Camp, and I think that’s good. The more competitions we have, the more practice we have before the Olympics.”

According to Memmel, the more time she has, the better. “I am trying to constantly improve and I do want to build up my ‘A’ scores a little bit more,” she said. “I think I can do it.”