Did you see French gymnast Youna Dufournet? Her horror show Floor Exercise routine at European Championships:
… It’s not disastrous. It’s SCARY. Youna SHOULD NOT be competing those tumbling passes, and it’s downright irresponsible of her coach (who looked nothing except angry at the end of the routine) to let her do so.
She’s going to get hurt — and hurt badly — if she continues like that. I’d love to see the French Gymnastics Federation or the FIG sanction her coach. …
Looks like it may not have been a one time disaster. In podium training and competition at American Cup she was very dangerous on Beam dismount.
I can’t bear to embed either routine on this site. Click through if you want to watch them.
I did send an email about those two routines to Keith Russell of the FIG. Unfortunately his Scientific Commission has no authority to sanction coaches or athletes.
Is the new code pushing this gymnast to do more difficulty than she can safely manage?
photo 2006 – Youna Dufournet
UPDATE: Ellen in the comments mentions a third meet where Youna had problems with her beam dismount. And Ellen, too, blames the coach.
15 comments ↓
New code, shmew code.
She has done these skills as a junior without the current problems.
maybe her coach’s idea of dealing with puberty is “keep doing it until you land on your feet, damn it!”
“maybe her coach’s idea of dealing with puberty is “keep doing it until you land on your feet, damn it!—
I bet it is. I wouldn’t blame this on the new code. It’s her coach’s fault and her parent’s fault. Because if her coach can’t do what’s right, they need to move her to someone who can.
The other thing to think about is that perhaps she just falls to pieces completely once she’s made one mistake? Like at the Scam Cup she was doing well until the beam rotation, then she fell countless times… it was like she just lost it completely. Perhaps the same happened on floor at Euros? Yeah the double layout was incredibly scary, and so were the passes following it, but perhaps the rest were only as bad as they were because she just lost it after the double layout went so wrong.
I suppose it is completely possible that these are skills she’s been doing successfully in practice and for whatever reason struggled with them in competition. Perhaps it was nerves, perhaps she was having a bad day, or whatever.
But with landings this scary, that seems doubtfull.
I absolutely think this coach should be facing sanctions from the FIG, and I think if that girl’s parents had any sense whatsoever, they’d get her out of that gym as fast as possible.
I think her coach is really irresponsable.
Youna did an competition at Holland where i helped.
And at beam she also had to do her beam dismount, but she was scared of it at the podium training.
Later she did her dismount but only a layout, but it went wrong because her toenail broke off, and in her flesh of her toe she had a big cut, and it was bleeding like hell.
Then here coach almost didn’t do anything about it, and someone else helped here with a bandage.
Her coach said she had to go on with the competition, but she had a lot of pain on her toe.
Her coach said to her that they would go to the doctor the day after the competition, but the flesh of her toe almost cut completely off.
I thought it was really irresponsable.
I was at the American Cup earlier this year where Youna’s coach SMACKED HER shoulder after her disasterous beam routine where she almost landed on her head on her dismount. Clearly she is not able to handle the difficulty at this time. If her coach is that verbally abusive towards her in public at competition, I’m terrifed to think of how he treats her in private during training. I am very glad you posted about this on your blog as I’ve been very concerned about this gymnast already. I think someone needs to intervene on her behalf before she gets seriously injured.
well, I’m not sure if the reason for the second splat on floor was because she couldn’t do the skills
she was off on the 1-1/2 and nearly did the round off on her elbows
plus her double layout, which looked like she really shouldn’t have been doing, could have scared the crap out of her and affected the rest of the routine
her coach still needs to be hurt
she got the double back at the end no problem. So I think she can do double pikes. the DLO…I donno. either she just can’t do that skill or needs to learn to cheat and pike it down like some of the girls.
her beam from last year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjplhF_MIUg&feature=related
and floor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSAkIKn-9I4
her Onodi there was quick, so I’m sure it’s a growth issue she’s dealing with here
God, even to someone who knows nothing of gymnastics, those falls are downright scary. She’s really lucky to walk away unscathed.
It also just hit me the other day when I rewatched the Euros AA that she must have hit that FX routine in prelims to qualify for the AA finals. think she’s struggling with a growth spurt and is probably finding the DLO a lot harder, and I think that fall put her off the other passes. Also it looked like she landed the DLO and crunched her ankle pretty badly which might explain the lack of power in her other tumbles.
Still, a good coach would recognise the struggle due to a growth spurt and should be adapting her tumbling passes accordingly.
your rediculous. Youna has changed her routines and has been very successful (5th AA and 3rd on vault at worlds). She just turned 16 in October. let the girl get her career started, my god.
WTF happens in there. You people are scared. What is gymnastics? that’s just normal if people fall sometimes. Didn’t happen to others gymnasts before? it did. She just got bad days like korkina at the Olympics on vault when she completly scratched and she was one the most great gym in the world. You need to think before saying stupid stuff like this…
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