ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – The idea of winning a national title inspires mostly yawns among America’s top gymnasts this year. Still, somebody’s got to win it, and defending champion Nastia Liukin has set herself up as the favorite.

Liukin took advantage of Chellsie Memmel’s watered-down vault routine Thursday night to capture the lead after preliminaries of the women’s Visa national championships.

Liukin finished the night with 62.6 points in the sport’s new scoring system to take a whopping 1.1-point lead over Natasha Kelley and move 1.55 points ahead of Memmel, the reigning world champion.

Not that anyone here is scoreboard-watching.

Memmel simply wants to nurse her ailing shoulder back to health in time for World Championships in October. Liukin wants to put the finishing touches on upgrades to three of her four routines, all designed to keep her on top for October, as well.

“I’m definitely not here to win nationals,” Liukin said. “It’s not my goal. My goal is to come here, try out the new routines, make the world team and get ready for world championships.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The Americans are the best in the world and succeeding on the biggest stages – including the Olympics in two years – is their main goal.

Memmel and Liukin dominated last year at worlds, finishing within .001 points of each other in the all-around.

Alicia Sacramone is the defending world champ on floor. She was in sixth place heading into Saturday’s finals and knows winning this week is probably out of the cards given her still-improving bars routine.

“I’d like to be a great all-around gymnast,” Sacramone said. “That’s definitely one of my goals.”

Memmel is already that, but when she hurt her shoulder warming up on bars before an event in April, she had to take a break.

She only got back to working on bars at the beginning of the month and she’s still taking it easy on vault, as well. It’s a tribute to her toughness that she’s even competing in the all-around this week. She was ahead after three events, but watered down her vault, only rotating once off her roundoff-back handspring.

That knocked her down into third place. Nobody seemed upset.

“I agreed with that” decision, said national team coordinator Martha Karolyi, who was encouraged to see Memmel perform so well on bars.

But does an athlete of Memmel’s stature cringe when she knows she’s intentionally doing things that could take her out of the running for a title?

“No, not at all,” she said. “I still want to go out and compete to the best of my ability. That’s all I think about.”

Among those who might really be excited to win this week are Jana Bieger, who was tied for third with Memmel, and Kelley, a newcomer on the senior scene who tied with Bieger for the title at a warmup event earlier this summer.

“It’s something you try not to focus on,” Kelley said. “But yeah, it would definitely be awesome.”

Regardless of this week’s results, nobody will doubt that Memmel and Liukin are America’s two best gymnasts.

Memmel’s bars routine was strong – her lines straight and crisp, her release moves perfect. She winced in pain after one grab, but other than a minor step back on the dismount, it was a great set – rewarded with a high 6.4 difficulty rating and an overall score of 15.5.

Liukin had a 16.4 on bars and a 16.3 on beam, the two highest marks of the night.

She and Memmel are remarkably different gymansts. Memmel is a powerful jumper who seems to want to simply get through the dance moves and pirouettes so she can show off her power game. Liukin is more the graceful ballerina, a technician with moves you’d more expect to see in Romania or Russia than the United States.

Style aside, they both have a knack for winding up in the same place at the end – on top – when the stakes are the highest. The biggest question is whether they’ll still be there for the Olympics in two years, when Memmel will be 20 and Liukin 18.

Much less important are this week’s results.

“I just wanted to come out and see where I am in my training,” Memmel said. “It’s a good place right now.”

Ropes and Mats: Others to watch in the leadup to Beijing are juniors Shawn Johnson, Bianca Flohr and Samantha Peszek. They competed earlier in the day and finished 1-2-3 in the juniors’ preliminary round. … Shayla Worley withdrew with a nagging hamstring injury. She’ll petition for a spot at the training camp next month, which marks the next major step in picking this year’s national team.

AP-ES-08-17-06 2334EDT