Kristina Vaculik is getting much love for finishing in the top 3 on all four apparatus. Many, including me, were disappointed she was injured in 2008, unable to be selected for the Olympics. It’s nice to see her continue with international success.
Andy Thorntonasks a good question: “… it seems like girls just don’t tumble like they used to. What happened to huge double layouts and full-in dismounts?”
It’s even more true on Vault. That apparatus has seen very little progress over the past 20yrs. Yet Men’s Vault and Floor tumbling are insane in 2010.
Kytra Hunter’s demo Floor at American Cup shows impressive tumbling.
In the past, powerful gymnasts could do 3 apparatus and get away with relatively easy Bars. (i.e. Romania)
Today, in my opinion, coaches must select gymnasts first for Bars and Beam. And try to develop tumbling and vault difficulty later. Nastia would be one prototype.
I was starting to have my doubts about Shayla Worley. But now with 2 strong AA meets over the past 2 weekends, you have to count Shayla one of the favourites to win the individual NCAA championships.
For the first 5 weeks of the NCAA season Susan’s been ranked #1 in the all-around. Yet there’s not all that much information about her on the interwebs.
It reminds me of another strange routine: Zhu Sang Sang – Floor – 25 turns
If you count up all of the turns, twists, and jumps, she actually does exactly TWENTY-FIVE 360-degree turns in her routine! That HAS to be a world record. That was a quad turn at the beginning …
A small statistical analysis from IG forum posted by spezi3. In brackets are the number of mentions of each athlete on that site vis-a-vis each apparatus.
Blythe Lawrence said, “If I had to choose a female gymnast of the decade, Cheng would be it.” I’d agree.
BARS
1. Svetlana Khorkhina (18)
2. He Kexin (17)
3. Ma Yanhong (13)
4. Lu Li (13)
5. Nadia Comaneci (12)
6. Kim Gwang Suk (12)
7. Mo Huilan (11)
8. Olga Korbut (9)
9. Beth Tweddle (9)
10. Nastia Luikin (8)
Bars had a very nice mix of gymnasts from different eras. There were gymnasts from the ’70s all the way up to 2009 in the top 10.
BEAM
1. Yang Bo (21) – video
2. Tatiana Lysenko (14)
3. Olga Mostepanova (10)
4. Kui Yuanyuan (10)
5. Oksana Omelianchik (10)
6. Shannon Miller (10)
7. Nastia Luikin (10)
8. Aurelia Dobre (9)
9. Li Li (9)
10. Mo Huilan (9)
11. Catalina Ponor (9)
The results show that after 20 years, Yang Bo’s beam work is timeless. There was the biggest difference between the number of votes between 1st and 2nd place on any of the events.
Ha. Oksana Omelianchik, one of the weakest tumblers ever put on the Floor by the old Soviet Union, is #1 on Floor.
I was there in 1985 when she was co-World Champion with Shushanova. This routine was shocking and revolutionary in many ways at that time. The talk of the competition.
Great idea. Gymnastike is going to post an NCAA routine of the week, each week.
Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs of UCLA, … With this routine, Elyse is tied with Courtney McCool for the highest floor routine score in the NCAA after week 1 with a 9.925.
A real crowd pleaser. This is much stronger than McCool’s.
Elyse is a member of the 2008 Canadian Olympic team and placed 16th in the Olympic All-Around. … She was the first Canadian woman ever to win a World Championship medal when she placed third on beam at the 2006 Worlds in Denmark.
Andrew Thornton links to Elyse’s Olympic routine (video) from Beijing as an example of how much less entertaining are the FIG routines these days.
Andy also links to Brittany McCullough’s Floor from that first UCLA meet of the year. Even with watered down tumbling, you can see that Brittany may be the gymnast to beat on this apparatus come Nationals.
In College “entertainment” value is more important than difficulty. The best of example of that was Courtney McCool dominating Floor Exercise in 2008 all season. And winning the NCAA Championships on Floor that year despite having no double salto on FX.
Judges agreed that McCool’s was the most entertaining and “cleanest” routine of the finalists.
