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LOWELL, Mass. (Apr 5, 1998 - 0:07 EST) -- Shannon
Miller edged fellow Olympian Amy Chow on Saturday night to take
a slim lead after the first day in the Women's Professional Gymnastics
Championship.
Miller's 9.9 in the final event of the night
-- the floor exercise -- gave her a total of 39.85 after four
events, while Chow headed into Sunday with 39.75 points.
The two-day event features eight women, including
five from the U.S. 1996 Olympic gold medal squad -- Miller, Chow,
Dominique Moceanu, Amanda Borden and Dominique Dawes. American
Kim Zmeskal, a 1992 Olympic bronze medalist, was joined by 1996
Olympic silver medalists Svetlana Bahktina
and Eugenia Rochina of Russia to
round out the field.
Each gymnast participated in four events -- the
vault, the uneven bars, the balance beam and floor exercise. Zmeskal
enters the second day in third place and is followed by Moceanu
(38.95), Rochina (38.50), Dawes (38.40), Borden (38.05), and Bakhtina
(37.70).
Zmeskal scored a 9.7 on the uneven bars in her
first competitive performance in that event since the 1992 Olympics.
It was her lowest score of the night. Sunday's scores will be
weighted as 60 percent of the two-day total.
Miller -- the most decorated gymnast in American
history, with a combined 16 Olympic and World Championship medals
-- recorded perfect scores in the vault and uneven bars. Miller
received a 9.95 on the balance beam, the event in which she won
the gold in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Chow recorded a trio
of 9.95's on the evening after receiving a 9.0 on the vault to
begin the meet. Borden, the team captain, began the competition
with a 9.7 on the vault and earned a 9.8 on the bars before slipping
to a 9.55 on the beam. She concluded with a 9.0 on the floor exercise,
dropping her to seventh place.
Both Bahktina and Rochina were not only competing
in the United States for the first time, but it was also the pair's
first visit to the country.
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