Year: 2011

The South Korean female artistic gymnastics squad has hired a Chinese coach to prepare for next year’s Summer Olympics, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

Chen Shijing will join South Korean gymnasts at the National Training Center in Taeneung, northern Seoul, later Tuesday, according to the Korea Gymnastics Association. Chen had been a coach at a Chinese national training center built by Li Ning, a three-time Olympic gymnastics gold medalist. …

Yonhap

They hope to qualify for the London Olympics with a full team.

That’s via the Chinese Gymnastics Blog.

On this weekend in Montreal.

In this photo: Coralie Leblond-Chartrand

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On Facebook.

The Tide is ranked #2 this week and could win it all at Championships.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via College Gymnastics Board)

Without any doubt, the parallel bars are an invention of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, who put up three trestles in his “Hasenheide” in Berlin …

Initially, the parallel bars were set in the ground. About 30cm under the ground they were fixed with a wooden plank …

Gymnastics at parallel bars were also part of the Olympic Games in Athens 1896.

The German Alfred Flatow is the first Olympic Champion on bars …

In Helsinki in 1952, there were still a lot of broken poles (at the uneven bars as well); only in the mid 1950ies the German Richard Reuther presented “multipurpose parallel bars”. …

… read more

Each Wednesday we are linking to a different apparatus posted on GymMEDIA – Apparatus HISTORY. (English and German)

Kyle Shewfelt has announced the tentative line-up at his inaugural competition March 25th.

Friday night’s Men’s Artistic competition will be an important international meet. Canada competes against the GOLD (China) and BRONZE (USA) medal nations from the Beijing Olympics.

USA
1. Dylan Akers
2. Andrew Elkind
3. Tyler Mizoguchi
4. Jesse Silverstein

CHINA
1. Lu Bo
2. Tong Yingjie
3. Liu Rongbing
4. Wu Guanhua

CANADA
1. Nathan Gafuik
2. Jayd Lukenchuk
3. Anderson Loren
4. Brandon O’Neill
5. Jackson Payne

Marco Mayr (Austria)

details on Kyle Shewfelt Gym Fest

The following night the Chinese women compete at Wild Rose, 3rs away in Edmonton. (warm-ups at 5:15pm)

A real fan could catch both international meets the same weekend. 🙂

Justin Caouette brings us the second part of his series on the most watched routines on Youtube. …

Click PLAY or watch Nadia on YouTube.

Isn’t it nice to see a continually moving routine?

see the rest on Couch Gymnast – The most watched routines: Beam

I can’t think of anyone online who complained more vociferously than I in the past about the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup events.

They’ve been lousy for decades, despite those years when Hardy Fink and the Men’s Technical Committee tried in vain to make improvements.

So when the first in the latest revamp – American Cup 2011 – was interesting and entertaining, I want to be positive.

Let’s give it a fair shot.

… That how I felt until I read Nora’s post on THE ALL AROUND – Editorial: FIG Masters Time Travel

We’ve got problems.

Brigid, the Couch Gymnast, visited the Victorian Women’s High Performance Centre for an Open House to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation.

She posted some nice pics.

see more on Couch Gymnast

Spanny did a great job of analysis. Thanks.

Click each image for a larger version.

Execution score = 9.333

Execution score = 9.066

See more photo magic like this on Big Fake Smile.

So … lady judges. How do you defend the panel that only differentiated these vaults by 0.267 ??

Shame shame.

That Vault is worth 0.7 more than a double twisting Yurchenko.

There’s no way anyone can claim that Execution is as important as Difficulty on Vault in 2011.

Full results of the American Cup.

I coached one season at the Christchurch School of Gymnastics in New Zealand.

It’s part of the QEII sport complex which has been condemned.

Avril Enslow:

… the gym is also badly damaged about $500,000 worth.

We hope to get back in after some remedial work next week. Some clubs in
NZ are rallying to support us.

If you’ve not seen the damage done, click PLAY or watch a tribute on YouTube set to Bruce Springstein’s City of Ruins.

(via TWNZ)

Good luck to everyone there. After suffering thousands of after shocks, I don’t know how they sleep through the night.