At Chinese National Championships the arena was near empty. Can’t a totalitarian state demand school children fill the bleachers?
Don’t tell me China is preparing those girls for the intense uproar of Olympic Team finals. I see no evidence that Chinese coaches have much understanding of how to prepare gymnasts psychologically for the BIG MEET.
They need to bring in an NCAA coach to help.
… 85 NCAA women’s gymnastics teams listed on the Troester rankings drew well over a half a million fans for the season; a remarkable 50,000-plus fans attending NCAA women’s gymnastics meets for any week of the regular season. Small wonder that many of us feel that NCAA women’s collegiate team gymnastics is the premier form of the sport, worldwide.
Average Home Meet Attendance
NCAA Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics – the fan’s favorite – GymGemz
The shergymrag commented:
The popularity of NCAA gymnastics has nothing to do with Performance and everything to do with accessibility. NCAA gymnastics outdraws all other forms of gymnastics simply because it’s the most accessible form of gymnastics. Hands down, case closed. NCAA teams have a schedule. They’ll have several home meets per season. Instead of going to a movie some night, a local gymnastics fan can go on down to see their team compete against some other team. When the team has an away meet, they are performing largely in front of the local fans of the host team. You don’t have to be a hardcore traveling fan to enjoy NCAA gymnastics in person several times a year.
Elites have a meet once in awhile, here or there, maybe, maybe not. There is no opportunity to build a local fan base for “home meets†because elites come from all over the place and USAG gymnastics clubs generally do not treat their teams as TEAMS. They are just a bunch of girls who train together at the same gym. Most gyms do not have enough elites to field a full team and there’s no current structure for Elites, level 10s, and level 9s from one club to compete all together as one team on a regular basis against teams from other clubs that are also mixed level. If you want to follow elite gymnastics you either have to do it over the internet or be rich enough to travel all over the place to attend meets held everywhere. Once in a blue moon you can watch it on tv. If you want to follow JO gymnastics – what’s there to follow? The local club is going to have a meet like once a year.
All very good points.
Having just attended JO Nationals where a few of the “performances” were just as good as the NCAA, I must say the meet was far less entertaining. It was incredibly drawn out with 8 rotations / flight.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 