And the last-minute shuffling of the lineup sent jitters through the team. Alicia Sacramone stepped out of bounds during her floor routine. Memmel fell midway through her uneven-bars routine, and Nastia Liukin concluded hers by landing flat on her back.
The team's only rock was its tiniest member, Shawn Johnson, who at 4-foot-9 delivered high marks on floor, vault and beam. She was also first overall, scoring 62.725 points to advance to Friday's individual all-around final as the favorite for gold.
But the qualification was about culling eight medal-worthy teams from a field of 12.
And China, which desperately wants to win its first Olympic team title after a disastrous showing at the 2004 Athens Games, led all, scoring 248.275 points with a breathtaking display of acrobatics that was undercut by occasional bouts of nerves. A different Chinese gymnast delivered the team's high marks on each of the four apparatus - a strong statement of the team's versatility and depth.
The Americans, competing with only four able bodies, finished second (246.800). Russia was third (244.400), followed by Romania (238.425) and Australia (235.450). France, Brazil and Japan rounded out the qualifiers. The scores will be erased on Wednesday, and the eight nations will start from scratch.
It was Johnson, fittingly, who found the silver lining in yesterday's rough outing.
"We're human; we're not robots," she said. "It's the perfect time to make mistakes to get the nerves out. We have our world title from last year, and we feel like we are the world champions, and we want to show the world that."
The Americans got off to a shaky start. Sacramone, the team's senior member, incurred a costly deduction for stepping out of bounds after her second tumbling pass. The uneven bars proved a disaster, with Bridget Sloan missing a skill, Memmel falling, and Liukin botching her dismount.
