Then there was Max.

To be sure, as mentioned several times, "the old guard" made their veteran presence at this Winter Cup one of the meet's major highlights. It made one wonder when the next young generation of elite American male gymnasts would appear — the next Sakamoto, Crosby, Hug, Thomas, Conner, Vidmar, Wilson or Hamm.

On Thursday night, during warm-ups for the second qualification session, one very young, very talented and very tough gymnast showed up to rock the house and steal the show that night: Maximilian Mayr, all 13-years, 4-foot something and 70-pounds of gymnastics dynamite and potential was in the building.

One could not help but be drawn to watch Max as warm-ups progressed ... the assignment at Winter Cup was to give an early season overview of Olympic preparation and potential but Max had commanding presence, personality and a ton of moxie.

Max reminds one of 2003 in southern California for world championships when the German men's team showed up with a "bespectacled Harry Potter clone" — a very young and talented Fabian Hambü'chen ... the current world all-around silver medalist and high bar gold medalist. That gymnastics crowd in Anaheim immediately recognized Fabian's gymnastics potential, and so did this Las Vegas crowd soon realize that Max Mayr is a gymnast to watch in the near future.

Max went out and nailed six routines in Olympic order. The Winter Cup crowd watched every one of Max's routines, and when they saw him struggle a couple times on high bar one could feel their collective will to help him get through that high bar set and complete a truly startling evening of six-for-six hit routines. And, yes, that last event had errors and was rough, but Max strong armed his mistakes and gutted through for a no-fall routine ... to a huge roar of crowd approval and amazement.

Max swung big pommel horse, still rings (with strength skills), parallel bars and high bar, tumbled great (squeaking in a tucked full-in). Arguably, his weakest event is vault — after all, Max can still walk underneath the vaulting table, and he needs a mini-tramp to vault rather than some new board with 10 new springs to try to bounce and block and flip and twist and land on his feet safely.

When the chalk cleared at session's end, Max had finished Winter Cup all-around in a 30th place tie ... scoring an 80.500. His average A-panel score was 5.010 and his B-panel average was just 8.40 (mostly because of a 6.750 on high bar). Giving Max a high bar execution score of 8.00 would have lifted his all-around score into a 23rd place tie, and amazing result for a 13-year-old.

Max trains in Miami at Universal Gymnastics with coach Yin Alvarez. He has been a highly competitive junior gymnast for several years, but his gymnastics was new to many at the Winter Cup.

"You know with the name 'Max Mayr' he is part German like Fabian," Alvarez said. "He trains hard. He loves gymnastics and loves to compete. He is tough and confident, and his goals are high. He is a special athlete to coach, and a pleasure to work with."

Max is nearly 14 and Blaine is 32 ... which speaks quite well for the future of U.S. men's gymnastics. Not just because of Max's potential, but also for the longevity, motivation, dedication and competitiveness of the old guard. We have never seen anything like this in American gymnastics.

Freelance writer Ward Black, a former gymnast for the University of Michigan, lives in Las Vegas.

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