Year: 2011

Google translate of a GymPower post – Van Gelder swing away from Olympics:

… Van Gelder eventually finished in fifth place.

“This is the biggest disappointment ever. I was a swing away from the Olympics. I missed a swing for my dismount properly gymnastics. Now I came from a standstill, which makes it even more difficult. If the jump had gone just fine, I had caught a medal and a ticket for the Games.” …

I checked with consultant to the Dutch team, Sadao Hamada. He did the math for me. If Yuri had competed the easy C-dismount he used to make the final, he wouldn’t have finished top 3 and qualified for the Olympics.

The plan all along was to use the double front pike in the Final. Unfortunately Yuri ended up with no swing at all before bailing for dismount — that makes for trickier timing. He stalled the rotation.

Watch how long he holds the handstand trying to decide the best time to bail. …

Click PLAY or watch his Finals Ring routine on YouTube.

Too bad.

They love drama in Romania.

Couch Gymnast is following media reaction to zero medals in Tokyo:

… Something tells me winning the Longines Prize is not going to help make nice back at Izvorani. …

read more – Bellu on Worlds: “Not Dramatic”, but “Catastrophic”

Update … Karen did not compete.

… 23-year-old (Rosannagh) MacLennan, from King City, Ont., claimed gold in the women’s event at the Pan American Games, after three-time Olympic medallist and defending champion Karen Cockburn withdrew.

Soehn, from Red Deer, Alta., claimed the men’s gold in a final that was missing teammate Charles Thibault, withdrawn with what team officials believed was the same bug that sidelined Cockburn. …

details

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Rhythmics and Trampoline are underway at the Pan-American Games.

How is Karen doing, so far?

… Entering the Pan-American Games, which are being held in Guadalajara, Mexico, Cockburn is the defending gold medalist from the 2007 games in Rio de Janeiro. …

Cockburn jumping for start of Pam-Ams

Some day Karen is going to retire. A sad day for many.

… Karen Cockburn has already done what no other woman has, winning a medal in each of the three times trampoline has been an Olympic sport. And now, having turned 31 earlier this month, she is entering what appears to be the final phase of her Olympic career.

She is competing at the Pan American Games in Guadalajara as a way of warming up for next month’s Olympic qualifying event in England. Should she qualify, her ticket to the London 2012 Games would likely be her last, even though she knows she could probably continue to compete for at least one more Olympic cycle.

“I personally wouldn’t do that, but I could,” she said. “I want to start a family and things, and I don’t want to keep pushing it back. …

Cockburn ready for one last leap for rings

I’m sensing a theme in this translation of an article from the Romanian publication ‘The Medal Factory’:

Adrian Stoica: Romania is not a bars specialist, neither in the women nor in the men´s competition.

The team trained by Marian Bitang and Octavian Bellu had good performances at the World Championships but the uneven bars did not allow us to make the podium. Romania finished this year´s competition in 4th place, but there are high expectations for London. …

Reporter: Where could you have done better?

Ana Porgras: Definitely on bars. We could have added that half point we lost. I can´t say we did great on the other apparatus either, but on bars mistakes very obviously visible. …

Adrian Stoica: The girls had good performances in the team final, maybe not their best ones but ok on 3 apparatus. Bars, unfortunately, is still an unsolved issue. If we take a look at the last competitions, we have basically competed with a handicap there. If you start a competition with a 2-4 point difference, you cannot make up for it. We knew this would happen, this is not a surprise. The surprise is that we have been trying to improve performance on this apparatus and we are still not there yet. …

Nadia: We could have fought for third, but the Chinese are 3-4 points ahead of us on bars, they clearly taught us a lesson there. …

Nadia … we have around 12 productive clubs in Romania while the US has around 2500. …

read the entire translation on Fangymnastics

related:

Gymnastics No Ceiling – Romania return home without medals

Bellu:

“Some drastic measures must be taken… I take full responsibility …

Check the comments on that last link. Actually, Romania has enjoyed a real upswing since the return of B and B. They mainly they need to improve Bars. That’s not new. But it indeed is Belu’s responsibility.

Another amazing video from Japan has over 100,000 hits.

Cirque du Soleil has a men’s Rhythmic troupe in the new Los Angeles show IRIS … actually it’s in the new Michael Jackson THE IMMORTAL World Tour. Thanks Stacy.

The scandal at ArtSports World in Colorado is bad news for all Gymnastics Clubs. Parents will understandably be more reluctant to register their kids after they read this story:

… Ten retired gymnasts told The Orange County Register that (Doug) Boger, a 62-year-old former national team coach, sexually or physically abused them while they trained in Pasadena, Calif., in the 1970s and 1980s. …

Since that revelation, at least 10 more recent athletes have contacted me to say that Boger was a great coach, and that they felt completely safe with him.

In the court of public opinion, certainly, Doug Boger will be assumed guilty. Whether he’s innocent or not.

… Is there any upside at all for the rest of us?

Perhaps clubs will be more open to scrutiny.

… There’s an observation deck for parents, as well as more than a dozen security cameras, at ArtSports, which isn’t a member of USA Gymnastics but mandates background checks for 50 employees and an annual safety certification, according to a statement emailed by ArtSports management after Womack declined comment. Instructors also aren’t “allowed to be alone with a student in our facility at any time,” the statement said. …

… Keeping everything in the open is the name of the game at Aerials Gymnastics, a USA Gymnastics-sanctioned club with three locations in the Springs, all of which have lots of windows, an observation area and security cameras. Aerials also has a policy at the two gyms owned by Tom and Lori Forster, with 1,200 athletes, that prohibits 55 coaches from contacting students outside of class – no calls, no texts, no Facebook posts, no tweets. …

… Stars National Gymnastics Village is contemplating a social media policy …

… Windows overlooking practice mats are a staple of The Little Gym of Colorado Springs …

Those quotes come from an article by Brian Gomez in the Colorado Springs Gazette – Safety of kids at gymnastics clubs called into question

Does your gym have good answers if a reporter like Brian comes asking?

And does your gym have one way glass between the gym and the parents viewing area?

I’ve often heard stories about the great gymnastics clinics and camps in Alaska. They bring in some of the top coaches in the States.

Steve Arkell posted this pic from a recent edition:

Yukio Endo (1937-2009) was … Olympic champion and world champion.

… At the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo he also received two individual gold medals, in parallel bars, and in individual all-around. …

Here’s Endo competing in the very same venue that hosted Worlds 2011.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Abe Grossfeld was there — but tells that the arena has been much renovated (improved) in the decades since.

(via Mesothelioma)

I attended the World Gymnastics Championships Banquet as a guest of Marceline Goldstein from Cirque du Soleil, a sponsor.

Here she is channeling her inner Uchimura.

Marceline is running open auditions in Tokyo and Osaka.

Here Grace Chiu is showing the soon-to-be-iconic photo of new World Parallel Bar champion Danell Leyva celebrating with Yin Alvarez.

Click on any of the photos to see the original. On most you can comment.

Team USA …

Artists were available to quickly present the ultimately personalized souvenir of Tokyo.

Meiji Kinenkan restaurant is a huge complex adjacent to the famous Meiji Shrine. They had one room just for Sushi & Tempura, another for Chinese food. And several for deserts.

By the end of the evening, the outdoor area was most popular.

As people get home from Tokyo, I expect Facebook to be flooded with images from this event. It truly was a highlight of the competition.

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Certainly this was the most memorable Worlds Banquet in history. I’ve not been to many — but did attend the worst … Montreal 1985.

The final day of competition was a Sunday and all food services anywhere near the venue were closed. Everyone was starving when the grub arrived. It was mad — the best gymnasts in the world scrambling over each other to get to the food.

Katie at Full Twist has been following the World Championships in Tokyo as closely as if she had been in the gym the past 14 days.

Thanks.

Here’s her wrap-up of the meet, the best single summary post I’ve seen as it links results to videos of the winners.

Worlds 2011: A Final Wrap Up

Full Twist will rank high in my year end “Best of the Gymternet” list.