Canada has another Nailya Mustafina.
Here’s Shallon Olsen, age-10, winning Canada Winter Games 2011 on Floor ahead of Junior and Senior National Team members. (results PDF)
original on Facebook
She’s 4′ 3″, 54lbs.
Almost every coach I talk to thinks Shallen’s doing too much difficulty at a young age.
But there’s a school of coaching that feels kids should learn difficult acrobatic tricks as young as possible, then stabilize and refine as they grow. You lay off hard ‘pounding’ during peak growth velocity.
Here’s her prelims FX routine at last week.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
She looks safe to me. Leave a comment if you have an opinion.
Note: Shallen was not the youngest athlete at Canada Games. That was Edward Guo, a table tennis player.
Other teams had underage gymnasts compete, but (so far as I know) only if they could not fill the team with age eligible athletes.
related – littlemissgymnast contrasts Shallon with Catherine Lyons from the U.K.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 