The Couch Gymnast is (literally) a student of reporting.
In a post that made me laugh out loud, she quoted Barabara Matson, paid journalist for old media, the Boston Globe:
… Raisman opened her first senior competition with a splash, posting the top score on the beam, sticking a Yurchenko double full dismount to earn a 15.15. …
Yurchenko double full on beam. Now that is impressive.
I’ve watched old media sports journalists at NCAA and VISA Championships in the States. With a very few exceptions (e.g. Linda Hamilton, Deseret News) they have no idea what they are covering. Gymnastics is a complicated, rapidly evolving sport.
All mainstream journalists want is to know who won. And to grab some quotes from the post-meet press conference. Their articles are at best, boring. At worst, embarrassing.
So what should you read if you want to know what actually happened?
Gymnastics organizations with paid staff put out articles that read like dull promotional press releases. For example, the recent World Cup in Montreal. What would you know about that event if you didn’t attend?
Those articles contain no glaring errors. But the writers are careful not to say a negative word. The real “story” of the Montreal World Cup is that it should be cancelled for lack of participation. And that the entire World Cup Series should be eliminated, or improved.
You’d have to talk to someone who was there. Or read the article on GYMmedia by Eckhard Herholz to hear anything about the issue.
By far the most insightful, interesting and entertaining commentary on gymnastics today is on blogs. Almost anyone can find some they like. (Check our list of BLOGS in the right hand navigation.)
Blogs are not perfect, God knows. They over-report rumour, scandal and problems. But I still spend 90% of my own time online reading blogs and watching video. Old media is so predictable I rarely need to skim more than the headlines.
What’s the future?
Blythe Lawrence was one of the most respected gymnastics bloggers (Gymblog) before transitioning to a new media platform called Gymnastics Examiner. She’s a trained journalist, yet her Examiner articles are closer to blog posts than The New York Times.
Examiner has high enough standards to be linked to by the F.I.G.
One of the feel good gymnastics stories of the year. The big comeback of Hollie Vise for Oklahoma. She competed the all-around for the first time in her College career, scoring 39.600.
As a trivia side note, when I started my first gymnastics website (for Kyle Shewfelt in 1999), I identified Hollie’s as the best gymnast website online. It’s almost unchanged today, 11yrs-later. I still like it.
Shout out to the best gymnastics feed on Facebook.
The All Around is dedicated to bringing the latest news from the world of gymnastics, with coverage of national and international events in all disciplines, profiles of athletes, and technical articles geared to professionals in coaching and judging.
If you are on Facebook and want to get frequent and up-to-date links to all disciplines around the world, even those in languages other than English, I highly recommend you search Facebook for …
The All Around Gymnastics News
They have a blog as well, The-All-Around.com, but I see most of the links sooner on Facebook. One interesting post is a massive database of WAG Scores 2010 from all over the world.
Bea edits an English language site called Gymnastics, No Ceiling, mainly covering Women’s Artistic Gymnastics in Romania. Somehow I missed discovering it until now, though she’s been publishing good content for months.
A good starting point is Bea’s article on great Romanian talents injured out in the 1990s under Head Coach Octavian Belu. This is the first of a two-part series published in the new Couch Gymnast magazine.
Let’s talk about a controversial period in the history of Romanian gymnastics. The nineties.
Back then, the Romanians were dominating the team contests, winning five consecutives World titles and the Olympic gold in Sydney. But the way in which those medals were gained is still a very debated subject. …
A total of 10 Romanian gymnasts won World or Olympic individual medals between 1991 and 2000: Cristina Bontas, Maria Neculita, Mirela Pasca, Lavinia Milosovici, Gina Gogean, Andreea Cacovean, Simona Amanar, Alexandra Marinescu, Maria Olaru and Andreea Raducan.
I would like to bring to your attention those gymnasts that never won a World or Olympic individual medal although they showed immense potential. Here are gymnasts that could have won maybe the same amount of medals (although Gogean’s record is most likely unbeatable). Moreover these are gymnasts that would have had the ability to change the face of Romanian gymnastics, showing artistry, difficulty and elegance. Here they are:
Nicoleta Onel
Ana Maria Bican
Daniela Maranduca
Andreea Isarescu
Angela Ghimpu …
I’m just digging into the second edition, a collaborative project edited by The Couch Gymnast. Looks even better than Issue #1.
• German gymnastics talent Maike Roll
• Italy’s rising star Serena Licchetta
• Reconstructing Russia
• Lost talents of Romania (1990s)
• Form vs Execution
• Russia Rising – Juniors
• Why we love YouTube
• gymnastics photographer Iris Van Den Broek
• gymnastics cross stitch
• Aussie gymnast Nicola Cairns persists
• Amy’s Gym diary (ouch)
• International Gymnastics Quiz
Don’t forget, if you are interested in contributing to the mag- just go to the CONTRIBUTE tab and read the relevant information.
I just signed up with Team USA News. Like every organization, the American Olympic Committees is trying to get hip with the social media. Cozying up to bloggers, previously scorned. The world is changing.
Actually, anyone can sign up for this offer. If you are an Olympics Junkie, try it.
Sign up now to receive exclusive access information, previously available only to the U.S. Olympic delegation.
You will receive the following insider information during the Games and beyond:
• Daily Report (via e-mail) of the latest sports performances and athletes to look out for in the coming days during the Games
• Mobile text alerts, including updated medal tallies during Vancouver 2010 and invitations to the USOC retail store located at the USA House in Vancouver
• The latest on Team USA hopefuls as they strive for Vancouver, London and beyond.
Seems the I.O.C. is finally starting to understand social networking.
Shaun White’s 93,000 followers (including me) will be getting personal updates, legally, from Vancouver.
… there is no Olympic rule that sets up a blackout period for athletes according to Bob Condron, the Director of Media Services for the United States Olympic Committee.
“Athletes are free to blog during the Games,” says Condron. “And Twitter is just a blog that’s written 140 characters at a time.”
There are some restrictions on what athletes can do online during the Olympics. … people must keep their posts confined to their personal experiences. “You can’t act as a journalist if you aren’t,” says Condron. “You need to do things in a first person way.” …
The other most significant restriction on athletes posts is a ban on references to sponsors or advertisers who aren’t official Olympic partners. …
Katrina sent a link to clarifications from the “IOC Blogging Guidelines for Persons Accredited at the XXI Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver 2010? and the “IOC Internet Guidelines for athletes, coaches, trainers, officials and any other accredited participants” documents:
95% of people don’t read the comments on this site. They are “buried“. You must make a special effort to find them. Or to comment.
I like it this way. But the topic is controversial:
If you’ve been following the blogging and social media scene over the last five or more years, you know that there’s one heated debate that keeps on showing up: the debate about comments on blogs. Should blogs have comments? Should these comments be moderated? When has a comment gone too far? Judging from a couple of recent events, it’s once again time to rethink these issues.
Popular gadget site Engadget has recently shut down comments. It’s a temporary measure, it says, but the blog took it because the “tone in comments has really gotten out of hand.” …
The main purpose of comments on Gymnastics Coaching is to share information. Or, more often, to correct a mistake that’s been posted.
If you want to debate Nastia vs Shawn ad nauseum, head over to one of the gymnastics forums. If you want to get nasty about it, there are invitation only private forums. If you can find them.
I never miss a post from The Couch Gymnast in Australia. It’s one of the best blogs.
Just released is an associated online magazine. From the editor:
… I was inspired to do this project by my readers and their comments. … I wanted to make a space where people who don’t have time to make their own blogs… could contribute to this ongoing discussion about our favorite sport. …
Click over to Gymnastics Examiner for highlights from the last week, including:
Do you like the new sticking rule for women’s floor?
Nowadays elite gymnasts are deducted for lunging backwards out of their tumbling passes. Amy Van Deusen at About.com Gymnastics would like to hear your thoughts about this. …
Ana Claudia Silva changes gyms
The 2008 Brazilian Olympian, 17, has signed a contract to compete for Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo Club this season, as has 2009 World team member Khiuani Dias. Other Flamengos include Diego and Daniele Hypolito and Jade Barbosa. …
Spotlight-ready
Stanford freshman Ashley Morgan is the daughter of baseball’s two-time National League MVP Joe Morgan … Says her Hall of Famer dad, “I’m more proud of her than I am of anything I ever did as an athlete.” …
Why Paul Hamm deserved to win the 2004 Olympic all-around gold, once and for all
Andrew Thornton dissects Yang Tae-Yung’s high bar performance from the 2004 Olympic all-around final. … Yang’s start value on high bar was incorrectly tabulated…
I’m not completely convinced by Andy’s conclusion in the Hamm scandal in Athens. But he’s right that Yang Tae-Yung was over-scored by 0.1 in the start score on Horizontal Bar. Yet another blunder for the Men’s judges in that meet that went unnoticed until now.
shawnjohnson.net has had a makeover. Twitter features prominently.
@ShawneyJ
(Looks good. But how can any new design in 2010 not have an RSS feed? Bill Gate’s new site designer forgot RSS, as well. It’s finally been added.)
One of her “favorite videos” is World’s Greatest by CdO90. I’d started to forget what made Shawn the best gymnast of the last quadrennial. This edit brought it all back.
