Liang Chow was a national hero when he reigned over gymnastics in 1990. He immigrated to America and hasn't been home in 14 years. Now, he's back - as the coach of the women's Team USA and the personal coach of Shawn Johnson, the favorite to win the Olympic gold medal over China in the competition that begins tomorrow.

He hardly recognizes Beijing. He left it a sprawling, struggling hulk. He sees it now as a teeming, vibrant metropolis.

"It is amazing," he said. "The scenery. The development. The improvements."

The politics?

"It's beautiful. Beautiful . . . I'm not talking about political things. We are simply [athletes]," Chow said. "I'm not a politician, myself."

Chow said he has paid only passing attention to China's development and the surrounding controversies: its booming economy, its human-rights record, its support of oppressive regimes, its pollution woes, its economic disparity, its product safety and worker issues.

After all, Chow, 40, has been busy fulfilling his dream: opening his own gym, in West Des Moines, Iowa, where he discovered Johnson. He's coaching her and a strong supporting cast.

"We won the world championships last year," Chow said. "We've had a whole year to train. We'll be up to the challenge."

Chow's challenge: preparing his charges for a frenzied crowd cheering for China, and keeping himself focused amid the lure of his continued fame.

He has not yet seen his grandparents, who live in Beijing. He has not seen much of the city outside of the Olympic Village and Olympic Green. He will not attend the opening ceremonies tonight, since the gymnastics competition begins tomorrow morning.

As for the crowd, Chow recalled an Asian Games competition held in China more than 2 decades ago: "It turns both ways. It can be an advantage, but there's also more pressure . . . Your friends' eyes are all on you. You can feel it."

Still, he said, there's no 12th man, or sixth man: "It's not like football or basketball."

No, it is much more focused, more personal than that. Chow's connection with his homeland made it that much more difficult to leave it.

"It was a very difficult decision to leave my hometown, but I felt like I was too young to stay in the gym and coach," Chow said of his certain fate - nursing the next generation of Chinese greats. "I wanted to discover more, outside of gymnastics. The world was too big, with too many opportunities."

An assistant coaching job at the University of Iowa allowed him to study English there, too. He eventually opened his own spot, where Johnson landed. The two connected and Johnson thrived in Chow's system, which stresses workouts that last half the time as usual workouts, which can be 6 or 8 hours a day.

Guiding the 16-year-old darling to the world championship in the all-around, as well as consecutive national championships, earned him the team's coaching title. So, he returns as much on top as when he left, only for another country.

Not surprising, here, he cannot escape his fame:

"In the arena, it seems like everybody knows you."

The way everybody would know Doc. *

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