Sgt. Bela's Boot Camp

At the recent camp Karolyi's instructions broke an otherwise eerie silence: "Attack it.... Must punch the horse.... Go straight your back. No sleeping your jump." Closed gym doors kept away unwanted spectators: Karolyi's antelopes, chickens, camels, emus, ostriches, turkeys, swans, llamas, deer and 25 dogs. Karolyi has relished the ranch lifestyle since 1983, when he persuaded his wife, Martha, the less visible member of the Karolyi coaching duo, to spend less time at their house in Houston, home of their first gym. "First she told me, 'You go your boonies,' " he says. " 'I'm staying shopping.' But she comes around."

Many rooms in the ranch house are decorated with hunting trophies, including the head of a 1,400-pound moose Karolyi bagged in Alaska. Caribou heads overlook his refrigerator, on which a magnet proclaims, EVERYBODY IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION. To understand how Karolyi still musters the zeal to tell his charges, "You are made to be vaulter," you almost have to watch him chase down a loose ostrich or coax a roving swan back into the lake he bulldozed by yelling, "Yours is the water. The water! You don't make the rules."

Later, as he pointed to a bear rug at his feet, he said, "This team can win a medal in Sydney, but we gotta be full of grrr." Above the fallen bear were trophies and pictures of smiling gymnasts with medals hanging from their necks. It's the law of Karolyi's jungle: Some with grrr can be champions. Others with grrr won't make it.