The most dominant vaulter and tumbler of this decade has made a comeback from his most recent retirement.
In Beijing expect to see him in Vault finals for sure, and likely Floor finals as well.
Recall his superb first vault from the controversial Olympic Final 2004 in Athens. About.com Gymnastics called it one of the “10 Best Sticks in the Last 10 Years”. See the video.
Dragulescu has won multiple world and Olympic medals on his specialties, floor and vault, and twice has made the event finals on high bar at worlds as well.
In 2007, Romania slipped to 8th place as a team in Dragulescu’s absence. In fact their team score dropped four and a half points without their star specialist, and many wondered whether he planned on returning to competition for his third Olympic Games. That question was answered this past weekend when Dragulescu reappeared on his three specialties at the Romanian National Championships …
With Dragulescu’s return to the Romanian team, there’s no doubt they will at least be in the hunt for a silver or bronze medal with teams like the United States, Japan, Germany, Russian, and Korea. Although the Romanians are already strong on vault without Dragulescu, his efforts on floor and high bar (where they have always been weak) will help their team tremendously, and his presence will likely help lift the morale of this team in Beijing as well. …
see Gymnast.com for his scores and videos from Romanian Nationals
As much as I am happy to see this superb athlete back, it worries me that the Romanian team will once again be over-scored in Beijing, the judges trying to keep FIG Technical Chairman Stoica, from Romania, happy. That’s what went wrong in Athens 4-years-ago.
Related article: Romanian Nationals Begin – IG
8 comments ↓
Interesting that the USAG boy’s program put’s so much emphasis on the supposed importance of an arm circle when Dragulescu, arguably the most powerful vaulter alive, doesn’t arm circle.
Perhaps our code needs some revision.
Imagine how great of a vaulter he would be if he did arm circle…
My system is to require beginners to do an “arm circle”, but as small as possible to help keep the hurdle as low as possible.
But later (perhaps Level 8 and up) to allow the gymnast to “overthrow” the arms as we see inevitably at the highest level.
Once a gymnast is powerful enough, they can gain more by contacting the horse earlier than they lose by not using the arms on the board.
The arm circle tends to help the weaker gymnasts – after a kid “gets” vault after a few years the arm circle seems to become irrelevant (just my experience).
So why do we put so much emphasis on something which will, as the kids get better, become irrelevant?
There are many skills where the technique appropriate for young, weak gymnasts is different than for the elite.
Backward handspring, for example.
Young kids should do them long and low, the arms fairly close to the ears. As they get stronger, over the years, it can get shorter and higher. Eventually as short as Kyle Shewfelt. But the gymnast must be very strong and very fast to use that technique. When Kyle was younger, he was not strong enough so the most effective flicflac was longer.
Complete tangent here, but let’s follow it.
How can more power be generated from a shorter, higher BHS? This is something I’ve never heard of before.
The main reason to do a shorter ff is to stay in bounds on long tumbling passes.
But a quick gymnast can get good power too.
The landing position from the short ff is more upright. The gymnast is in contact with the floor for a shorter period of time. This means less force is absorbed in that “impact”.
However, the gymnast must be FAST enough to get to the optimal takeoff position even though he has less time on the Floor.
… I will put up a post on this Geoffrey which will perhaps better explain this “theory”.
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