As expected, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team will be among the eight squads vying for a medal in tomorrow’s team event. But yesterday’s qualifying round was not a complete confidence builder. Despite a few promising performances, the fact remains: The U.S. is shaky in its weakest event, vault.

Although national all-around cochampions Carly Patterson and Courtney Kupets qualified for Thursday’s all-around final, the day was marred by their teammates’ mistakes. The miscues, if repeated 48 hours later, will almost certainly cost the U.S. a medal in the team final.

Even USA Gymnastics President Bob Colarossi admitted to the Associated Press that the team “didn’t come here to win preliminaries.”

Fortunately for the squad that entered Athens as the reigning world champion, all scores from yesterday’s qualifying will be wiped clean.

Leading up to the Games, the U.S. had its deepest talent pool ever from which to choose the six women on the Olympic team, but the nation somehow lacked strong vaulters. A triumverate of coaches and officials were left to determine the roster; one of the few discernable elements of the clandestine selection process was that two women – Annia Hatch and Mohini Bhardwaj – were clearly added for their potential contributions to the vault score. Yesterday in Athens, both faltered.

Hatch, a former world bronze medalist on the apparatus, mustered no better than a 9.387 for the team. Bhardwaj, expected to be the second-best American vaulter, fared even worse, and her score was dropped from the team total. (Teams are alowed to drop a score in qualifying, but not in the final).

Both women have won national vault titles but are relatively rusty on the world stage. Hatch has not competed in a major international competition since 1996 and Bhardwaj hasn’t competed at a major world meet since 2001.

The U.S. should shine in the final on the bars and beam. It should also perform well on the floor, although both Terin Humphrey and Courtney McCool went out of bounds yesterday, mandating a one-tenth deduction.

Unlike the qualifying round, which featured five women on each apparatus with the lowest score dropped, only three women will compete on each apparatus in the final.Though the lineups won’t be announced until this afternoon, it is almost certain that Hatch will be one of the vaulters.

It is also conceivable that the linchpins of the team, Patterson and Kupets, will contest everything. In the final, each athlete will do one vault, and the scores are averaged; in other words, one performance like the one Hatch turned in yesterday and the team’s hope for gold takes a big hit.

It won’t be the first time the vault has been a focal point for drama at the Games.

During the women’s all-around competition at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the vault was set too low and several of the first athletes crashed, including gold-medal favorite Svetlana Khorkina of Russia. Khorkina was so shaken that in the next rotation, she fell in her signature event, the uneven bars. Once the mistake was discovered, the athletes were offered a chance to re-do their botched vaults. By then, Khorkina’s gold had been lost and she declined.

Perhaps the most storied vault in American minds occurred at the 1996 Atlanta Games when victory was seemingly jeopardized by three consecutive falls on the apparatus. Kerri Strug then popped a one-legged landing after injuring her ankle in her previous vault and the U.S. captured the gold.

Often lost in the Strug legend: The team didn’t need her score to win. But come Tuesday every score will matter.

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Qualifying also determined the eight women in each apparatus final as well as the 24 contenders in the allaround. Patterson and Kupets qualified for the all-around to be contested on Thursday.There also will be at least one American in each of the apparatus finals.