U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES 1991 : MEN’S GYMNASTICS : St. Pierre Is Still Short of His Goal

David St. Pierre grew up in Culver City, merely a stone’s throw away from the movie studios, so he is used to hits and flops, bad breaks and no breaks. And, oh, all those rising stars.

It’s that Hollywood mentality that helps St. Pierre keep dreaming for the chance to be on top again in gymnastics. Thursday night, he moved a little closer, but still fell nearly two points short.

In the men’s all-around and team Olympic Festival competition at Pauley Pavilion, St. Pierre, 24, considered a favorite to win the gold medal, overcame poor performances on two events to finish third. Jair Lynch, a 19-year old student at Stanford and last year’s national junior champion, won the gold medal with a score of 57.150. Dennis Harrison, 19, of the University of Nebraska, finished second at 56.250. St. Pierre’s score was 55.900.

It was a homecoming of sorts for St. Pierre, who competed for UCLA for four years before moving on to the club level in 1990. But the familiarity of the environment didn’t give him an advantage over the younger talent, who get more opportunities to compete.

“It’s been difficult since I left UCLA,” St. Pierre said. “I don’t get the opportunity to train that often, so three or four meets a year are not much. This year, the (U.S. Gymnastics Federation) is busy with the World Championships, so there aren’t many meets to be invited to.”

St. Pierre didn’t make the World Championship team. He did finish 17th at the championships in June to regain a spot on the national team. He has been training the last nine months with former Soviet coach Henri Venitsyan at the Broadway Gymnastics School in Huntington Beach. But the gym doesn’t have pits, used to help gymnasts practice more difficult moves, so he still goes to UCLA and practices his vault.

It was a poor vault Thursday night that put St. Pierre out of the running for the gold medal. Through the first two rotations, he was in first place, .30 ahead of fourth-place Jair Lynch. But St. Pierre fell attempting a difficult vault, a round-off onto the vault with two twists.

Meanwhile, in the same rotation, Lynch performed a slow, but solid routine on the horizontal bar and scored a 9.65 to take the lead. All of Lynch’s routines were solid, and his performance on the horse was exceptional--he scored a 9.85, the highest mark of the meet.

Lynch was in a tight battle for the gold medal with Harrison but going into the final event--horizontal bar--Harrison had a poor performance scoring an 8.70. Harrison had shoulder surgery recently and hasn’t fully recovered.

“I like competing with the younger guys and helping them,” said Lynch, a engineering junior at Stanford. “This meet definitely marks a transition for me from the juniors to the seniors.”

The real senior, St. Pierre, said he is obviously disappointed but is still concentrating on one goal--the 1992 Olympics.

“I’m just going to keep training until the Winternationals meet in February, which would be my next meet,” Pierre said. “I hope this is not the last time I compete at Pauley. I don’t want to go out like this.

“I still want to go all out for ‘92,” Pierre said. “And then I will retire.”