If the roar of the packed crowd at the La Victoria complex did not tell them, there was a quieter, more subtle moment which informed Bermuda's four-strong gymnastics team they were now in the sport's big time.

It came when a tiny, deep brown-eyed Venezuelan girl shyly approached Laura Murphy, Christina White and Leila Wadson shortly after their exertions on the second evening of their individual challenges in the all-round event.

The girl, perhaps seven or eight, but speaking no English, proffered up a small book and indicated that the trio -- along with the youngest team member Sasha Christensen -- should add their autographs to her collection.

It was a fair enough request: the three had proved, over a tiring four consecutive days of competition, that they could live with some of the region's best gymnasts.

And it was confirmation that they should go to next month's Commonwealth Games with their confidence enhanced by their experiences at what was their first major international competition.

Coach Walid Mustafa agreed afterwards: "It has given us confidence; and a reality check as well. We know where we're weak and we know where we're stronger than we thought we were.'' Murphy and White, in particular, confirmed their ability. Their performances in the team event at the weekend put them in the top 19 qualifiers for the all-round individual event, which finished late on Tuesday night.

Sixteen-year-old Murphy did enough in her two best disciplines, beam and floor, to push her placing up from 16th overnight to a final 13th. Scoring 6.90 on beam despite overbalancing as she attempted the front tuck mount, and 7.60 on the floor, she boosted her overall score to 27.875.

White also scored well on the disciplines with a 6.80 and 7.025 which, combined with the vault and assymetric bars, gave her 17th position with 25.787. Wadson, who got her chance in the individual event after another girl pulled out with injury, scored 5.900 and 6.300 to end on 23.062 and in 18th place.

To give some idea of the level of competition, Mexican Brenda Magana won gold with 35.962, while Cuba's Leyanet Gonzalez claimed silver with 35.387. Eddylin Zabaleta pipped her Venezuelan team-mate Melissa Cesar to the bronze.

And it is worth remembering that Bermuda's competitors were all docked a point in the vault owing to ignorance of the rules of individual competition.

In the event, that would have made no difference to Murphy's final placing, but would have lifted White to 15th.

And all this in a competition where good scores were not the primary goal.

Mustafa pointed out: "If this had been a meet where we were going for a score instead of the experience of preparing for what we consider the more important event -- the Commonwealth Games -- we would have done a lot of things differently to increase those scores.

"As far as performance of new skills goes, though, I'd rate the event as an eight out of 10 for our girls because we did a lot of new skills in all these routines.

"I was to some extent surprised by the girls'performances; I mean, I was expecting a lot worse because it was not only the first time at such a meet for them, but for me too. There were a lot of things I expected to go wrong that didn't.

"It seems like there was always a silver lining to everything we did.'' In fact, it was only the training facility that proved a sore point for Mustafa.

"We came here not only to compete, but also to train,'' he said. "They have pits, which we don't have, but they took down the bars over the pits and they took away the vault that was into the pit.

"We had been told by the head organiser that we could come here and train as much as we wanted. When we got here that wasn't the case. We got here two days early for nothing.'' GYMNASTICS GYM