Often the official sources of news at major gymnastics events SUCK. They are slooowwww to post, boring, sanitized. … You know what I mean.
But in Rotterdam, as a gymnastics news aggregator, I find myself linking to FIG and USAG just as often as blogs and specialized sites.
International Gymnast magazine is doing a great job on Facebook, already. (Inside Gymnastics has yet to much get started.)
Grace Chiu just arrived on a red-eye from Rhythmic Commonwealth Games Championships. She’s my favourite gymnastics photographer though they’ll be hundreds more here by tomorrow. We’ll be swamped with pics.
… Still, Gymnastics Examiner and Couch Gymnast have been my best sources at Worlds, so far. Gymnastike for video. … But old media is closing the gap. They’ve finally figured out that readers want real time, interesting news.
Most surprising is the International Gymnastics Federation. As a politically driven natural monopoly, I would have predicted they would be the very worst source of useful information. But check out their news feed. It is truly excellent.
Kudos to Meike Behrensen, Philippe Silacci and their media team. The FIG is an easy punching bag. But it’s stand up to acknowledge, too, when they are doing things right.
So far Twitter has been near useless for Worlds. I’ve been using the hashtag #gymnastics2010. Not much happening there. USAG will use #2010wc and #USA2010wc once the competition starts. Hopefully one of those will catch on.
What should have happened is that meet organizers would announce the hash tag. But the guy updating the official Worlds website has yet to show up at the venue. I was optimistic about gymnastics2010.com at first, but it’s been a disappointment so far, even though they have Brigid contributing.
Leave a comment if I’ve missed mentioning one of your favourite sites. Some of the National Federations have some super keen contributors here. I’ve probably not even seen their posts.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 