Make it three. At the 2003 Nationals, Hamm won his second consecutive all-around and pommel horse titles and also won on high bar. His first U.S. all-around title in 2002 ended Blaine Wilson's attempt to become a six-time national champion. In 2002, he also claimed the national titles in vault.

Paul Hamm became the first American man to win the individual all-around world title last year at the 2003 World Championships in Anaheim, Calif. Trailing China's Yang Wei in the final rotation by less than .05 points, Paul Hamm completed a difficult high bar routine and stuck the landing to pass Yang for the title. It was the first all-around Worlds medal by an American man since Kurt Thomas won silver in 1979. Paul Hamm also tied Bulgaria's Jordan Jovtchev for gold on floor and helped the U.S. men to their second consecutive silver in the team event. Now Paul Hamm can add a third all-around title to his resume.

He reflected his all-around title in the 2003 World Championships at the Olympic games in Athens by becoming the first American to win a gold metal in the all-around finals. The last American to enter the metal contention before Paul was Peter Vidmar in the 1984 games where he claimed an Olympic silver in the mens all-around.

Hamm won his first world championship medal in 2002 where he had originally finished fourth on floor at the 2002 Individual Event World Championships. However he was moved up to third place when FIG, the sport's international governing body, announced that silver medalist Gervasio Deferr of Spain tested positive for marijuana and stripped him of his medal. At the 2001 Worlds, Hamm had the highest U.S. finish in the men's all-around (seventh) and contributed to the team silver, only the second world medal for the U.S. men in the team event. (The first was a bronze in 1979.) Silver seems to be a team favorite.

The USA mens team took silver in the team finals in Athens, Greece at the 2004 games. Also while in Athens, Paul pulled off the impossible when he rallied from 12th place and took gold in the men all-around. Two days later a contravercy over a scoring error on Korean Yang Tae-young's parallel bar routine would threaten Paul's Gold. One month after the games ended on September 27, 2004, Paul traveled to Switzerland to testify on behalf of his gold. Three weeks later the CAS sided with Paul and decided that he could keep his gold.

Paul's success has come slightly ahead of Morgan's. That's right! Paul made the national team in 1999 after an 11th-place finish in the all-around at Nationals. Morgan was not named to the national team until February 2000. But former coach Stacy Maloney recognized that the twins both had potential. By age 11, Paul and Morgan were working out five days a week at Swiss Turners. Morgan says Paul is daring about trying things, adding,
"Paul is a gymnastics genius and he's almost always the guinea pig in the gym."
In return, Paul says Morgan is more of a thinker and has a much better memory than he does.

Did you know that the Hamm brothers left former coach Maloney in October 2003, just two months after Paul won the all-around world title? In November, they announced they would move to Columbus, Ohio, to work with coach Miles Avery and train alongside their World Championships teammates Blaine Wilson and Raj Bhavsar. Paul says
"We didn't seem to be getting as much done in the gym [with Maloney]."
"We needed a spark, an atmosphere to train in that's very motivating. It is motivating to train with Blaine Wilson. He's a very high-energy guy."
The decision to leave Maloney two months after Paul won the all-around world title and less than a year before the Olympics raised eyebrows in the gymnastics community, but both twins have performed well since the move.

It was in the genes. Their older sister, Betsy, was a 1998 NCAA champion in balance beam (for Florida, before transferring to Iowa State) and their father, Sandy, was a nationally ranked diver. The twins grew up on a farm in Waukesha, Wis., and used makeshift equipment to train on. Sandy built a pommel horse from an old maple tree and foam and leather from automobile upholstery; rings were hung in the attic; a stairway railing was made into parallel bars; and they set up a trampoline in the barn.