At seven years old, he was already a compulsive perfectionist. He would draw steamships for hours, but eventually crumple each picture up and throw it off the table. His face beet red with anger, he would tell his mother, "Forget it, I can't do this, I'll never draw another one!" But minutes later, as she headed with an armful of paper for the trash can, young Vitali Scherbo would take her hand. "Don't, Mom, I'll work on them some more," he would say. For her son, recalls Valentina Scherbo, "there were no unsolvable problems."

Seventeen years later, Vitali Scherbo bops into the gymnasium of the Rings of Glory sports school in the Belorussian capital of Minsk, with a cocksure attitude bolstered by unrivaled artistry of another kind--at gymnastics. Scherbo, 24, is like a shiny metal ball ricocheting in a pinball machine, simultaneously greeting a coach with a hearty handshake, teasing a teammate or lip synching to a dance track on the gym's boom box. But beneath the gregarious exterior is a nearly uncontainable desire to win. After three years of splitting his time between a modest apartment in Minsk, Belarus, and a home in State College, Pennsylvania, his colleagues call him amerikanets, "the American."

We wish, U.S. gymnastics officials would surely say. Scherbo is the most successful gymnast in history. "His style, his showmanship and his intensity are unique," says Viktor Dailidov, the head coach of the Belorussian gymnastics team. "It will be almost impossible to match his record." In seven years Scherbo has won 30 gold medals in international competitions, including an unprecedented six golds at the 1992 Games. He is supreme in virtually every gymnastics discipline: the floor exercise, pommel horse, parallel bars and still rings. Scherbo is expected to add a few more golds in Atlanta. Then, he has declared, he will retire to spend time with his wife Irina and their 3-year-old daughter Kristina.

Tragedy rather than triumph is the motivation for that decision. Last December Irina was so seriously injured in a car accident on a snowy Pennsylvania road that doctors told Scherbo she would not live. He spent days at her bedside, trying to coax his comatose wife back to life. Nights were worse: with no training to motivate him, a despondent Scherbo began to drink. He was so distraught that a close friend wouldn't let him drive his own car. It took 30 days before Irina regained consciousness and began to recover. Soon after she started getting better, she urged him to get back in the gym and aim for Atlanta. "She told me that I didn't spend 31/2 years preparing for the Olympics so I could quit," says Scherbo matter-of-factly. "She asked me to come back, and I have."

Determined to fulfill his wife's request, and to satisfy his own lingering ambitions, Scherbo returned not only to gymnastics but also to Belarus itself. This small former Soviet republic (pop. 10.5 million) has been well represented on Soviet powerhouse teams since the 1960s. Despite the recent outflow of nearly half of the top gymnastics coaches from Belarus, the traditions of technical excellence and rigorous training methods remain.

Scherbo, for example, need only look across the gym to catch a glimpse of the current European all-around champion, teammate Ivan Ivankov, practicing with stolid concentration compared to Scherbo's outgoing exuberance. Ivankov, 20, is not only Scherbo's heir apparent but also one of his best friends. "Every time I see him, every training session we have together, even every conversation is like a mini-competition," says Ivankov. "Scherbo has a God-given talent that we won't see for another 100 years, so it's a great inspiration to be with him."

Back in his homeland, Scherbo says, he feels a respect for his achievements that the comfortable life in America cannot match. He and his family live simply in a Soviet-style apartment complex in downtown Minsk and avoid the city's flashy casinos and expensive restaurants, but the atmosphere surrounding his public appearances here is still special.

"I have power here," Scherbo boasts. I'm a big name who can get things done." He cites the time when the authorities, as part of state cutbacks, threatened to close down the kindergarten where his mother works. Scherbo had a chat with Alexander Lukashenko, an avid sports fan who also happens to be the President of Belarus. The school is still open. Scherbo cements his reputation as a formidable man by claiming that he maintains contacts with the local mafia of newly rich and influential up-and-comers in Minsk, which he desribes as a network for favors and "protector of order."

Scherbo's extracurricular love of the limelight, however, takes second place to his arduous training sessions and competition schedule. It is those solitary hours of repetition and practice that have honed Scherbo's performances into demonstrations of Swiss-watch precision. But as a timepiece, he is part Rolex, part Swatch: his technical perfection is leavened by an often spectacular creativity, such as his signature double twist in the floor exercises, which almost always helps him to earn a score of 9.6 or above. "He is a pure professional in every cell of his body," says Antonina Koshel, a 1972 Olympic gold medalist and now a coach of the Belorussian women's team. "He knows his moves inside and out, and can perform them with a presence no one else can."

How he got there is a matter of both nature and nurture. The son of acrobats, Scherbo was plucked as a prime gymnastics prospect from his kindergarten class by coaches for the Soviet gymnastics team. He spent the next dozen years in a sports system that churned out world champions as readily as harvesting combines--and more effectively. He won his first international competition at age 17, and two years later, in 1991, brought home four medals from the world championships, all silver and bronze. In Barcelona he won nothing but gold.

What about his prospects now, after a lengthy layoff? One problem is that, even after surgery, a chronic shoulder injury continues to hamper his practice. Yet Scherbo remains upbeat. "Psychologically I think I am stronger than other gymnasts," he contends. "There is no one or nothing that can keep me from hitting my target. Gymnastics starts from your head."

Scherbo uses that mental agility when he is not competing to burnish his relationship with judges, a vital element in the subjective sport of gymnastics. "I test moves out, see what they like," says Scherbo, who admits that he is often given an easy ride as a result. "Do they close their eyes at my small mistakes? Probably." Coach Koshel agrees with his protege, up to a point, "Scherbo does have some rapport with the judges that may give him an edge, but an old title won't stop a serious mistake from being marked."

Typically, the unshakably confident Scherbo has big plans for life after his anticipated Olympics triumph. He will become a professional gymnast, performing in exhibitions across the U.S. and endorsing sponsors' products. To that end, he has lined up a marketing agent. "It's hard to get rich without an image, and it's hard to have an image without being rich," says Scherbo. A few gold medals won't hurt in either department: Belarus pays any of its athletes who win Olympic gold $40,000 per first-place finish.

But Scherbo has a loftier goal than fortune. He wants to create his ultimate, perfect picture. "I have a dream," he explains. "To win again at the Olympics, the most competitive event in the world. I want to leave the spectators some beautiful view of gymnastics, and to leave my name on their lips, for a few hours or a few days." If Scherbo wins big in Atlanta, his name may linger there for much longer than that.