Year: 2011

@StickItMedia and @USA_GymEvents had terrific LIVE coverage on twitter.

USAG is posting routines, seemingly randomly, on YouTube.

Overall, pretty good online coverage. Kudos.

My biggest complaint was the lack of LIVE combined results. Each session was posted separately.

Click through to the official website results page for details.

Update: USAG posted a wrap-up:

Jake Dalton of Reno, Nev., leads the all-around after preliminary competition at the 2011 Winter Cup Challenge at the Las Vegas (Nev.) Sports Center. The competition concludes with finals on Saturday, Feb. 5 at 7:15 p.m. PT.

Dalton, who competes for the University of Oklahoma, posted an 88.100 in the first day of all-around competition, recording the top score on floor exercise (15.900). 2010 World horizontal bar finalist Danell Leyva of Miami/Hilton HHonors, finished in second (87.450) and posted the highest score on high bar (16.000). Glen Ishino of Santa Ana, Calif./University of California, Berkeley, finished in third (86.900). …

read more – Dalton leads 2011 Winter Cup all-around after preliminaries

I’ll be posting highlight routines all weekend.

Huge routine. But I’m still not a fan.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

7.400 difficulty.
Exec: 8.300 7.550 8.500 9.050 8.850 8.60

Who’s right? … the 7.55 or the 9.05 … ??

Is there some way to put this guy on the team?

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

6.80 difficulty, 9.20 execution.

Not at the level of the World Championships finalists. But by far the best routine of the meet on pig, so far.

Artemev did not compete Pommels.

For fun, try this …

Click this link. Let the page load.

Qwiki is a multimedia website which links a robotic reading of a text summary drawn from any chosen Wikipedia article with still and moving images drawn from many sources across the web.

… It is backed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim …

Qwiki won the TechCrunch Disrupt Award in 2010

Actually a Kaz + 2/1 twist. … Or, even more accurately, 1/4-on, 2 3/4-off.

He’s currently leading the Vault standings at Winter Cup. And has been rocking this world class vault all season.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (from 2010)

Competition in progress.

official website – live scoring

The updated list has just been posted.

WOGA has 5 gymnasts, the most of any club. That’s not counting Nastia.

Cassie Whitcomb announced her retirement from international gymnastics, yet is still listed on the Team.

Are they hoping she changes her mind?

Most interesting WAG NCAA meet this weekend.

One of the nation’s top dual meets of the 2011 collegiate gymnastics season is set for this Friday when the No. 1 Florida Gators (5-0, 2-0 SEC) face the No. 6 Alabama Crimson Tide (6-0, 1-0 SEC) …

Both programs are coming off season-high team totals and those totals rank among the top three turned in among the nation’s teams in 2011. Florida’s 197.50 is the nation’s highest posted and Alabama’s 196.825 matches the third-highest total of 2011. …

Gator Zone

HGB Backstrand is a Swedish company that manufactures sports mats. They’ve provided wrestling mats to 4 Olympics. (Google Translates to “Sports Rugs”. Cute.)

They’re now marketing mats to Gymnastics and Cheer, selling over 250 airfloors to 22 different countries. Feedback has been good.

It’s a TumblTrak alternative available in 5, 10, 12 and 15m lengths. It’s sold through partner companies worldwide. Prices vary depending where you live.

Here’s one in use at Kauai Gymnastics Academy, Hawaii.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

In this video a 78yr-old does his first 1/1 twist in 30yrs.

Here’s a video showing how to inflate the Floor and install the new run-up attachment.

These are marketed these under the air4tumble brand. I’ve posted a link in the right hand navigation.

The future of gymnastics matting is inflatable, I project, especially for Cheer.

Costs will be lower than petroleum based foam. And ultimately we’ll be forced into some sort of tumbling surface that is proven to reduce knee and Achilles injury.

So far, so good. Pia Velander tells that the company is expanding the range of products. I’ll post new equipment as it comes online.

Leave a comment if you’ve tried this floor.

On a recent post about an American lawsuit I mention, as an aside, that I don’t like the hair styles of many current gymnasts.

That hair might be appropriate for a rock star.

via KP

But not, in my opinion, for Artistic Men’s Gymnastics.

The comments on that post, however, were mostly supportive that boys be able to wear their hair any way they want.

Women’s Artistic coaches have multiple hair ‘requirements’ for their girls. Why should it be any different for the boys?