Year: 2010

Due to IOC sponsorship, the O2 arena, the world’s busiest entertainment dome, in London, will officially be called the North Greenwich Arena during the 2012 Games.

North Greenwich Arena 1 will host Artistic Gymnastics with 16,500 spectators. Read a review of the venue.

A second, temporary arena – North Greenwich Arena 2 – will be built next door for Rhythmic Gymnastics. It will have 6,000 seats.

She arrived at the gym to find this salutation.

Thanks Victoria.

Recall the so-called Parkour World Championships in England? (VIDEO)

Now Red Bull is sponsoring competitions.

More than 4,000 people came out to Tampa’s historic Centro Ybor district to check out a truly unique parkour experience at Red Bull Art of Motion. …

During the first round of the competition, each competitor had 90 seconds to freestyle across the course showing off on and utilizing several different obstacles and features.

… Yohann Leroux of Paris, France who claimed the title as the first ever U.S. Red Bull Art of Motion champion.

Click PLAY or watch highlights on YouTube.

The Red Bull venue is far less interesting and challenging than the one set-up in England 2008.

I still don’t think free running lends itself to a competitive format. I’d much rather see the best doing chase scenes in Hollywood movies.

by site editor Rick McCharles

This site is an aggregator.

I scan the web for stories of interest to acrobatic coaches, and link to the best. Contributors send me story ideas every day, as well.

On posts linking to those stories, I’ll often add commentary. And related information.

One of the first aggreator sites, still considered one of the best, is Techmeme. Exerpts are short. There’s no confusion regarding where the reader interested in any particular post can find the details. The news outlets they link love this site.

Often cited one of the worst aggregators is Huffington Post.

… the mother of all news internet impostures. …

The recipe is simple and extremely efficient: you take a 2600 words Vanity Fair interview of the financial reporter Michael Lewis on the rotten Greek public finances, you squeeze it down to 360 words (that’s down to 14% of the original length), and you have a self-supporting article that perfectly sums up Lewis’ point. This fits the internet era’s snippet culture: unless you nurture a secret passion for Hellenic bonds, you have no need to click and link from the HuffPo back to the original Vanity Fair story. …

I really enjoy the Huffington Post. And I really enjoy Amanda Turner’s posts for International Gymnast. But she’s very guilty of not sending traffic back to her sources. Amanda’s articles may be legal. But I’d say many are unethical.

Is Gymnastics Coaching doing enough to be a good aggregator?

Leave a comment if you have an opinion.

This rant was inspired by a superb post on Monday Note by Frédéric Filloux – Aggregators: the good ones vs. the looters

If you are a blogger, definitely click through to Frédéric.

StormFreerun’s teaser for their upcoming video.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Storm Freerun was formed in early 2010 consisting of the 5 members:

Franck “Cali” Nelle
Ash “Spyder” Holland
Paul “Blue” Joseph
Jan “Jashman” Barcikowski
Tim “Livewire” Shieff

Shieff’s YouTube channel posted him and the great Damien Walters goofing – One leg at a time/Stripogram (VIDEO)

500,000 have already watched that silly nonsense. Don’t try ANY of that at home. Or anywhere.

Thanks Michael.

Hey. This accommodation is excellent. Check it out.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

… What’s with those horrific BBC photos?

At the final Canadian mock meet before departure for Commonwealth Games.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The 2004 Olympic Champion is 28yrs-old. As a birthday present, Paul posted some recent training video on the MakingTheOlympics.com blog.

http://view.picapp.com//JavaScripts/OTIjs.js

Click through to watch the video.

(via Stick It Media)

Or … you could watch the latest Shawn Johnson training footage.

Longboarding is variety of skateboarding, a relatively modern sport—which originated as “sidewalk surfing” in the United States, particularly California—in the 1950s. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Where I live longboarding is the BIG THING for teenage boys. (We spent the weekend browsing Landyachtz.com and making our own Slide Gloves.)

Longboarding actually predates skateboarding, so we don’t know who invented the first.

It’s a far more interesting sport than skateboarding, I feel. And much easier for the average Joe, like me.

Dangerous? … YES.

Especially trying to stop if you go highspeed downhill.

Like many others, I was surprised at Canadian Championships 2010 to see Savona back in contention. She looked back in June as a lock for the Senior team to Rotterdam.

When interviewing her for Gymnastike, I found an upbeat, enthusiastic gregarious personality. Positive to be around.

JOHN CRUMLISH got an equally outgoing response – IG Interview: Jessica Savona

Click through to see what she has to say about her coaches, especially Alex Bard who’s been with her 12yrs.

I love this pic. Savona’s too excited even to stay focused for the team photo.

Preparing to compete in her first worlds, Canada’s Jessica Savona reflects on the struggles and successes she has experienced thus far, and reveals her strategy for reaching her international potential. Pictured: Savona … stands next to coach Yelena Davydova, 1980 Olympic champion, as Canada accepts the team silver at the 2010 Pan American Championships in Guadalajara.

If I was a College coach, I’d bump Savona high on my “to sign” list. She could lead a team.