Orozco adds Winter Cup title to resume

LAS VEGAS — If anyone needed a change of luck in Vegas, John Orozco was the man.

The three-time junior national champion, a victim of illness and injuries every time the schedule brings him to this small arena just off the Strip, won the Winter Cup Challenge on Saturday night, one of the first key tuneups on the road to the London Olympics.

Orozco, a native of the Bronx who finished fifth at last year's world championships, finished with 180.7 points — 5.5 ahead of Stephen Legendre. Brandon Wynn, the gold medalist on rings at the Pan-Am Games, finished third, followed by reigning national champion Danell Leyva, who fell off parallel bars and high bar to start the evening.

Chris Brooks was fifth, a spot ahead of David Sender, the 2008 national champion who was denied a spot on the Olympic team after being injured during practice the day before trials.

Orozco has had his share of bad luck, most notably a torn right Achilles he suffered during preliminaries at his first senior national championships, in 2010. He has slowly recovered from that and says he's close to being all the way back. Yet it wasn't that turn of bad luck that was on his mind coming into Las Vegas this week.

"I've had the worst luck at this meet the last few years," Orozco said, rehashing the times over the past five years he's either fallen ill or not been able to compete at all in Las Vegas because of injuries. "This meet, I just tried to get over all that and I said, 'Nobody can change it but me.' I said I'm just going to try to change it, and start on a new note."

Orozco was the class of this meet, which began with buzz about the return of 2004 Olympic champion Paul Hamm, but ended without him even in the building. Hamm struggled in the opening round Thursday — his first meet in four years — and wasn't among the top 42 who returned for finals. Hamm's name was not among those called when the 15-man national team was announced — an unsurprising development that won't kill his chances at an Olympic comeback, but will make the road tougher.

"I had a very rough first meet," Hamm said on Twitter. "Not too happy right now. Thanks for all of the support guys."

Fashioning a different kind of comeback story was Sender.