Entries from February 2011 ↓

Ireland is one of the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain), EU economies faltering and indebted.

So I take this as good news.

Ciaran Gallagher, CEO for Irish Gymnastics:

In the most difficult economic climate of our times this can only be viewed as an endorsement of all the good work and accelerated development Irish Gymnastics ….

The increase of approx €55,000, along with internal investment, is dedicated towards developing the Events, Public Relations (PR) and Marketing programme …

That comes via Full Twist.

Only 8 out of 57 sports got a raise. The rest were cut.

It’s possible.

It’s likely the Bruins will qualify as a team to Championships.

It’s possible they will HIT and make the Super 6.

It’s improbable, but not impossible, that with a near perfect meet, with Sam Pezek in the line-up, that they could finish 1st at Championships.

Miss Val would be talking Dynasty.

Aunt Joyce:

This has not been an easy season for the UCLA Bruins. While the Bruins were overscored at their last home meet, they displayed a stronger performance than they have. For once, they looked like a Super Six team. …

Bruins Rounding Into Form

That’s an honest, detailed assessment of the team right now. And a prescription on what the Bruins need to do to repeat as National Champions.

I’ve still not seen her new winning routine from Russian Championships. Difficulty 16.7 or 16.8.

But here’s some pretty solid speculation from Between The Olympics:

… she is competing a piked stalder shaposhnikova (apparently she wants a second Komova). She connected it to a pak salto, then performed the piked stalder shaposhnikova 1/2.

The score 16.0 (6.8/9.2) was flashed on the screen. That is probably the score before the bonus. I am curious to see what else she has done to get up to 6.8 in difficulty. …

Komova’s Russian Championships Bars

That’s based on a glimpse of her training on a Russian TV news report you can watch on Viktoria Komova Online.

Update – Scores and analysis of the Men’s Championships on International Gymnast.

Winner with a score of 87,900 points were Maxim Deviatovski.

On second place came Pavel Russinyak (87,000) followed by Nikita Ignatyev (86,100) on third. …

GymMEDIA

For the first time in 10yrs, the weather is a big problem in the hours leading up to our big meet in Idaho.

After nearly a foot of snow blanketed the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene areas, the National Weather Service has another treat in store. A blizzard warning is in effect until noon today for most of the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene areas …

Spokesman Review

That’s one of the boats being used for the athletes Cruise.

Update: The little girls from Omega in Vancouver have arrived.

FIG Men’s Technical Committee Meeting
Lausanne (SUI), February 19 – 21, 2011

The Committee’s President Adrian Stoica (ROU) was very satisfied with the meeting’s outcome, stating:

“With the new World Cup format and the modified qualifying system for the Olympic Games we have implemented important changes in 2011 and look forward to an interesting year. …

FIG

There are a lot of good minds on that committee. I’ve nothing but respect for Steve BUTCHER and Istvan KARACSONY.

Edouard IAROV is one of the 2-3 coaches that have influenced me most.

Sadly they’ll not make significant improvements to the rules on Floor and H Bar until after the Olympics. It’s too late in the cycle.

It was a busy week at the FIG offices. WTC met, as well. And the Sport Science Commission had a meeting of the minds on the effects of intensive gymnastics training.

Tickets go on sale June 1st, 2011.

October 7th Women’s Qualification-Day1
October 8th Women’s Qualification-Day2
October 9th Men’s Qualification-Day1
October 10th Men’s Qualification-Day2
October 11th Women’s Team Final
October 12th Men’s Team Final
October 13th Women’s All-Around Final
October 14th Men’s All-Around Final
October 15th Apparatus Finals-Day1
October 16th Apparatus Finals-Day2

2011tokyo.com

Amanda Turner summarizes what we know about the somewhat underwhelming AA competition in Russia:

… Dementyeva, the youngest member of Russia’s first-place team at last fall’s world championships, scored 58.050 to top two-time Olympian Anna Pavlova (56.200) and Alyona Polyan (55.150).

Dementyeva had the high score on floor exercise (15.100) and Pavlova had the top mark on vault (14.900). First-year senior Yulia Belokobylskaya, one of the contenders for Russia’s four-person squad at the European championships, had the high mark on beam (14.550).

World all-around champion Aliya Mustafina traveled to Penza and took part in podium training, but elected to skip competition to rest for the American Cup on March 5. The only other competing members of the world champion team, Tatiana Nabiyeva and Yekaterina Kurbatova, did two events each.

Youth Olympic Games champion Viktoria Komova competed three events only after spraining her ankle in December. Komova tallied a massive 16.700 on uneven bars but had problems on beam (13.750) and floor (12.900).

read more and see the results on IG

Couch Gymnast and Between The Olympics have a few more details.

Komova

Will Mustafina actually be in good shape for American Cup?

This guy will be:

@J_Horton11 – Had a killer workout today. I’m ready for the AT&T American cup next week!

Brandie Jay has a routine is quite different than most, using no true salto releases.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

Watch more video of 2011 WOGA Classic on gymnastike.org

Smart. … If you can get away with it.

Personally I feel that skill (VIDEO) is the most over valued in the Women’s Code. (G)

I’ve always called it Shushunova, since she was the first to do it internationally. Others sometimes call it 1/1 twisting Tkachev. That’s wrong – it’s nothing similar to the Men’s layout Tkachev 1/1. (Liukin)

Most accurately it’s Blind to Markelov, the same skill she does earlier in the routine.

This is a good example of a contemporary routine with decent start value, with too little variety.

(via Gymnastics Examiner)

eHow is an online how-to guide with more than 1 million articles and 170,000 videos offering step-by-step instructions on how to do things.

It’s much criticized as a “content mill” or “content farm“. Low quality crap written to get a high Google ranking, pushing Google ads deceptively.

Hows that working out for them?

eHow got the #1 rank for a Google search = “Gymnastics Coach”.

(I reset the Browser so there was nothing in the cache or history.)

Sage advice from eHow:

… Encourage your gymnasts to stay on their toes at all times by using the balance beam. Instruct each gymnast to walk across the beam at the beginning of practice. Once your practice is finished, ask them to do a simple handstand or flip on the beam to demonstrate the necessity for balance.

Why doesn’t Google rank content farms lower?

… Maybe they like all that Google ad revenue.

In Bing eHow was #1, as well. (And Bing results are consistently worse for me on any specialized search term.)

Check in your own browser. My results might have been personalized by location.

The new Duck Duck Go browser filters out all eHow results. This site was #1 there.

Wikipedia has blacklisted all eHow articles.

No, not a Men’s Team. Sadly.

The Board of Directors at Lindenwood University (LU), located in St. Charles, MO (near St. Louis) has just approved the addition of a women’s gymnastics program as part of its transition from NAIA to NCAA Division II competition (2013-2014).

An athletic committee is now being formulated to make a recommendation to the Board in May regarding details of the program’s implementation (facility, coaching, etc.).

flagymiemom on College Gymnastics Board

This is far from a done deal. But it may help for the gymnastics community to rally round the cause.

Here’s the Coeur d’Alene Resort in Idaho, right now. We’re setting up for the big competition this weekend.

Meet Director Dave Adlard is the last man standing end of night.

more photos

home page

Unofficial.

Some sort of ‘National Championships’ in Russia.

Anna Dementieva 58.05
Anna Pavlova 56.2
Alena Polyan 55.15
Yulia Inishina 55.1
Yulia Belokobylskaya 54.7
Maria Stepanova 54.25

Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

… Viktoria Komova had the highest score on bars – 16.700 (be aware of the fact that Russia uses a modified CoP), Dementyeva the highest on floor – 15.100, Yulia Belokobylskaya the highest on beam – 14.550 – and Pavlova the highest on vault – 14.900. …

GymNiceTic

I want to see that 16.70 Bar routine. …

Pavlova, Dementyeva, Polyan

… Of other famous names, Tatiana Nabieva competed vault and bars only. Aliya Mustafina and Anastasia Grishina were not in the line-up.

Going For Gold