Paul Hamm
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"Paul Elbert Hamm" is an United States/American artistic gymnastics/artistic gymnast. He is a World Artistic Gymnastics Championships/World Champion gymnast and Gymnastics at the Summer Olympics/three-time Olympic medalist. He won the all-around competition at the 2004 Olympic Games.

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I'm happy right now. Shocked, actually. To be in first place after that kind of mistake, I thought there was no chance to win.

He actually knew all about the Olympics. I was just so surprised that this person who is so worldwide known knows me. It was cool to actually get to meet him.

We figured we'd have to miss a lot of school for (training) camps, competitions like the world championships, which are usually two-week competitions, and it's very difficult to maintain a high level in school while you're gone.

Definitely I'm planning to come back, ... Right now I'm just focusing on school, trying to get that out of the way before the next Olympics. I'm planning on being back for the '07 national championships.

The fact that we don't know what's going to be the new gymnastics rules right now kind of lets us feel that it's OK to take a break. We realized there are other things in life that we needed to get accomplished.

It's helped us a lot. Just the fact that you have someone else there to kind of one-up each other, push each other to do new things.

I'm definitely enjoying the time, just being a student, ... I feel like even throughout high school, our school has been somewhat sacrificed for gymnastics. ... It's nice to now actually be able to get back and do some of those things that we were planning to do earlier.

I definitely have very fond memories of Athens for the most part. Just remembering the times spent with the team in the village and everybody working for that goal of the team medal. And also my individual performances, I remember those very fondly as well just because they're some of the greatest accomplishments I've had in my life.