updated 11:06 p.m. ET June 4, 2004

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Paul Hamm made gymnastics look as easy as slipping another gold medal around his neck.

Barely pushed by the rest of America’s best, Hamm won his third straight national gymnastics title Friday night, his first step en route to the Athens Olympics, where he hopes to win an even more significant championship.

“I won’t celebrate as much this year,” Hamm said after a 1.7-point victory, a blowout by gymnastics standards, over Brett McClure.

In fact, the real drama at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships had little to do with Hamm, and lots to do with the other 31 athletes, all vying for one of 14 spots at the Olympic trials, June 24-27 in Anaheim, Calif.

Hamm’s twin brother, Morgan, ensured his spot by finishing third and Todd Thornton was fourth. All of them were looking up at Paul Hamm, who took control of this meet during preliminaries and never left much doubt that he would win.

“He’s amazing. It’s hard to believe sometimes that he’s my brother,” Morgan Hamm said.

Sean Townsend, the man Hamm supplanted as national champion in 2002, also advanced to trials, along with Raj Bhavsar, Stephen McCain and Alexander Artemev.

Scores from nationals will be combined with scores from trials, and the top two finishers will be guaranteed a spot on the six-man Olympic squad. The other four spots will be determined by a selection committee. In the running for those will be Jason Gatson, who missed nationals with a back injury, and five-time national champion Blaine Wilson, who is letting his surgically repaired left biceps heal. Both will petition directly into Olympic trials.

The 29-year-old Wilson extended his career because he badly wants a shot at his third Olympics. After winning a silver medal at world championships last year, Wilson knows the U.S. team is in great position to win an Olympic medal after two straight fifth-place finishes.

Likewise, Hamm is thinking more of the Olympics than the national title. He’s the defending world champion in the all-around, and at 21 hasn’t even reached his prime.

“There’s definitely room for improvement,” Hamm said. “Obviously right now, I’m hitting my routines. But there are a lot of little things that will make me look better than other guys in the world.”

Earlier in the week, his coach, Miles Avery, said Hamm was making things look ridiculously easy in practice. Nothing Hamm did on the competition floor changed Avery’s mind.

“Paul is the best gymnast in the world,” Avery said. “Obviously everyone else in the country is going to look up to him. Even coming into this meet, guys said, ‘I want to be second.’ Not many will come into this competition and say, ‘I’m going to win,’ because that’s reserved for Paul.”

McClure had no arguments. He was happy finishing second, and knows with Wilson and Gatson in the mix, second place might really be more like fourth.

“I had a good start, that’s how I look at it,” McClure said. “Now, I want to get a good finish.”

If there was an iota of doubt about who the winner would be Friday, it came when Hamm stood on the runway for his vault, the only routine he had trouble with Wednesday night in preliminaries.

But with a speedy sprint down the runway, a cartwheel onto the takeoff board, a spring backward onto the vault and 2½ twists through the air, Hamm looked anything but vulnerable. He scored a 9.675 and had a 1.3-point lead over McClure with three events left; that’s like a 20-point lead at halftime of a basketball game.

Two rotations later, Hamm approached the high bar.

His high-bar set is one of the most difficult in the world, but he mastered his signature move without a flaw, letting go and flying backward over the 8-foot bar three straight times, a harrowing five seconds during which he moved with the ease of a kid on the playground.

After he stuck a near-perfect landing, he pumped his fist to the crowd twice, sensing the title was sewn up. The crowd sensed it, too, letting loose with the biggest cheer of the night.

“It was one of my best sets, and I think the audience recognized it, too,” Hamm said.

He scored a 9.825, the highest score of the two-day competition — until, that is, he finished on the floor with a 9.85.

Also making it to Olympic trials, as event specialists picked through a complex scoring formula, were David Durante, Jonathan Horton, Dan Gill, Taqiy Abdullah, Clay Strother and David Sender.

Hamm, meanwhile, joined Wilson, John Roethlisberger, Kurt Thomas and a handful of others as a three-time national champion.

Ho-hum.

“Maybe I’ll shoot for Blaine’s record,” Hamm said laughing. “Five is a lot. That’s Blaine’s record. I’ll see what I can do.”

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