ST. PAUL — The last thing a gymnast wants to see when she's waiting to start a beam routine in a big competition is the training partner and teammate ahead of her dropping to the ground.

It doesn't even have to be the national championships. It can be a level-six intra-squad meet.

Whenever and wherever, it's bad luck. It puts the wrong thoughts in a gymnast's mind. The sport is difficult enough with only the right thoughts rattling around in there.

So it was Saturday night with Shawn Johnson and Gabrielle Douglas in the finals of the Visa National Championships, most assuredly not a level-six meet.

Douglas was on the beam, looking great. Flipping back and forth, flying through the air, toes pointed, legs extended on her leaps, she was part ballerina, part high-jumper.

After almost 90 seconds of perfection, as Douglas was back-hand-springing her way to big numbers, she found herself slightly off course and slipped off the side.

She tried it again and stopped midway through. On the third attempt, she landed her dismount. Two attempts too many.

Standing only a few feet away, Johnson didn't see it. She was off in her own world, mentally performing her own routine.

But she heard it. She couldn't help but hear it. Right then she knew.

When a big chunk of the 10,000 Xcel Energy Center crowd gasps or groans, it can mean only one thing. Trouble.

"That was really hard," Johnson said afterward. "I've never had a teammate competing with me my whole life. Chow says you're not supposed to watch the other girls. You're supposed to focus. But she's like my sister. I feel for her. Whenever she falls I want to be there. But I was so proud of her. I told her, 'You made a little mistake, but you picked yourself up and finished. Martha likes to see that.'"

That's Martha Karolyi, the national team coordinator, and Liang Chow, who's been coaching Johnson in West Des Moines since she was knee-high to a vault table.

When Douglas was finished, Johnson clicked off whatever internal monologue was playing in her head, shifted into autopilot, completed another clean routine and earned a spot on the national team after a two-year absence.

"Being selected," she said, "it brought back tears. Being back on that team means so much. It's real now. I kept saying it's just a test run, but it's real now."

Johnson and Chow are now ready to plug some upgrades into her routines.

"I have a few that are ready," she said. "We put them in during practice, but we played it safe here. Especially with the knee. We just wanted to come here and hit clean routines."

But here's what's equally amazing. Douglas fell at least five times over the two days - and still finished seventh in the nation.

Subtract a point for each fall and the 15-year-old from Virginia is battling Jordyn Wieber for all-around honors. That's a testament to Douglas' skill, if not her consistency.

Chow didn't quite see it that way. He isn't an ifs-and-buts kind of guy. "We have to correct that," he said afterward.

And don't even mention the hip problem. To repeat, no excuses.

Karolyi was on the same page. "Douglas is totally a newcomer," she said. "She needs some more maturity. She's physically excellent. She has the potential but she needs to get to the point where she also believes she's good, where she trusts herself and can perform in stressful situations."

It was just the opposite for Johnson. Afterward, people wanted to know whether she was going to start raising the difficulty level.

Karolyi was glad to hear that. "Shawn proved she's a great competitor," she said.

"When she's prepared for something, she'll do it, but her start values are a little low."

Johnson more than survived her Saturday night in Minnesota. She didn't take herself out of the running for anything, including a flight to Tokyo for the World Championships in October.

And the Olympics? When you leave your sport for almost three years, you just hope you can hang on to the uneven bars, stay on the beam, land right-side up on vault and keep from sitting down on floor exercise. And do so with at least some measure of grace, style, skill and poise.

While she hit clean routines, Johnson wasn't exactly all over the medal stand the way she was in 2007 and 2008. Johnson's top finish Saturday night was fourth on beam, her favorite and best event.

In Beijing, she stuck her dismount and bounced all the way to the top of the medal stand. Just as she'd done the year before at World Championships.

But this isn't the Olympics. This isn't the Worlds. It's the Comeback, and it's only just begun.