Year: 2011

As we suspected at the time, Mihai took out the punch front after Arabian in her first pass during Team Finals Floor. Playing it safe.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

On that springy floor it’s not all that easy not to punch. Raisman is the most powerful tumbler in the women’s competition, I’d say.

Highest score on the apparatus in Team Finals. (14.900)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Sadly, Lauren did not qualify for the Floor final so cannot defend her title.

Did you notice that the coach touched Vika Komova on Jaeger in Team Finals?

I could see it even from the bad angle of the Press gallery.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

No deduction. Lucky this time.

FIG Official – The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) donates 10’000.- Swiss Francs to tsunami victims.

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Recall that FIG could have moved this meet to Russia. I’m happy they didn’t. We should support the Japanese people.

@ASac3

They slapped this sucker on me when I was under anesthesia…

I’m (so far) going to vote for Sui Lu (China) and David Belyavskiy (Russia).

Watch her Floor (VIDEO) from Team Finals.

Click PLAY or watch David Belyavskiy’s Floor on Gymnastike.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/OTc2NTA5Nzg2?related=1

It’s not easy being elegant in men’s gymnastics in 2011.

Longines Prize for Elegance is actually selected by a “special Jury”, not journalists or general media. But it’s nice to be able to nominate your own choice.

Leave a comment if you have favourites.

When Viktoria Komova made errors in the Team competition, I immediately pictured her as Olympic Champion.

She’s trained lousy, in the recent Russian tradition, yet looked excellent in preliminary competition. That’s frustrating for coaches.

Click PLAY or watch her mistakes on Beam & Floor on YouTube.

I’m hoping these errors motivate her to prepare more methodically for London. She needs decide to win — then avoid injury. Vika’s likely still growing, too, so time is needed to adjust to longer body proportions.

Her principal competitors in London, I think, will be American (Wieber, etc.) and from her own team, hopefully Moustafina. She’s one of 4-5 favourites to win it all.

This was my favourite routine of the Team Final.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (15.666)

Sui Lu should win the Longine’s Elegance award.

The “hardest” routine in the world got the top score in Team Finals. Great to see.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (15.666)

Sadly she didn’t make the apparatus final so this is the last time we’ll see it until Olympics.

McKayla took the world’s best ever Amanar even higher, if that’s possible, in the Team final.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

SV: 6.50, Execution: 9.533, Score: 16.033

Vault execution judges are more inclined than any other apparatus to throw a score. If all apparatus did this, the Code would work MUCH better than it does now.