Year: 2011

» USA VISA Championships Aug 17-21 schedule | home page | Gymnastics Examiner LIVE

US Champion turned coach Kim Zmeskal-Burdette will be coaching a large team of 7 gymnasts at this month’s Visa National Championships.

The 7 members of the Dream Team to compete in Saint Paul are: Kennedy Baker, Kiana Winston, Peyton Ernst, Nica Hults, Dare Maxwell, Bailie Key, and Macy Toronjo. Zmeskal talks about each of the 7 qualifiers and their expectations for Championships.

In total, Texas Dreams qualified 8 athletes to the Visa Championships, but Chelsea Davis is off to start her collegiate career at the University of Georgia.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/NzQ0NTAzMDc2?related=1

Watch more video of Visa Championships 2011 on gymnastike.org

The psychology of free climbing is something for all coaches to consider. It’s the ultimate.

Catherine Destivelle (born 24 July 1960) is an Algeria-born French rock climber and mountaineer. In 1992 she became the first woman to complete a solo ascent of the Eiger’s north face. …

Destivelle has been the subject of several documentaries, including French director Rémy Tezier’s, Beyond the Summits (Au-delà des cimes), which won the award for best feature-length mountain film at the 2009 Banff Mountain Film Festival …

She was age-28 (1987) when she free-climbed an overhanging sandstone cliff in Mali.

Click PLAY or watch her on YouTube. (9m 30s)

Sport climbing just might become an Olympic event.

The sports (being considered) are: baseball, karate, roller sports, softball, sports climbing, squash, wakeboard and wushu, one of which could be added to the 2020 sports programme to be voted on by the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires in 2013.

… Catherine eventually slowed down, after one 20m+ fall and becoming a Mom.

A site called Online College Courses posted a provocative overview of the American legislation. Likely you won’t agree with all of these summary points:

Many schools still don’t abide by the Title IX law

No school has ever lost federal funding for violating Title IX

Women are not inherently less interested in playing sports than men

For every new dollar going into college athletics at the Division I and II levels of college athletics, male sports receive 65 cents. Female sports receive 35 cents

Title IX hasn’t radically changed how college athletic programs are managed

Title IX doesn’t only apply to athletics or females

Title IX doesn’t force schools to cut men’s athletic programs

There are fewer female coaches today than there were in 1972

The majority of Americans support Title IX

read more – 9 Title IX Facts Every Athlete Should Know

… I have mixed feelings about Title IX myself. The intent of reducing discrimination (by discriminating) was noble, but I agree it’s not worked particularly well.

On the other hand, what would NCAA sport look like right now if Title IX had not been brought into law?

Better? Worse? … or somewhat the same?

What women’s collegiate sport needs is not more legal protection, but more great builders like Greg Marsden at Utah. His team had had the highest average attendance of any NCAA woman’s sport last year (13,503) and the third highest WAG team GPA in the country. No credit to Title IX.

He’s developed a product that fans want. … And he knows what his athletes want.

Jenn Isbister posted an excellent catch-up interview with one of my favourite gymnasts of all time.

Yvonne is working for Cirque, loving life … and is engaged to be married (to a former French gymnast) May 2012.

I particularly enjoyed Yvonne’s reminiscences of choreographer Antonia Markova.

One of Canada’s most successful gymnasts, Yvonne Tousek was perhaps also its most creative. Known the world over by her avant garde floor routines, she qualified to the floor finals at the 1999 World Championships – one of a small group of Canadians to advance to an individual apparatus final at World or Olympic competition.

The two-time Olympian went on to a stellar NCAA career at UCLA, capturing three team titles and three individual titles at National Championships. Yvonne joined Cirque du Soleil shortly after graduating, and has traveled the world with the show. …

read more on Gymn.ca – Yvonne Tousek interview

Click PLAY or watch a montage on YouTube.

A thread on Chalk Bucket compares rates for different gyms.

$25 a half hour and up to $50 for an hour is fairly standard in the USA.

I’ve got mixed feelings about Privates myself.

They do work for the gymnast, I find. And coaches love them as supplementary income, … sometimes tax free. 🙂

A private with this coach might cost a little more.

(via Gymnast to Coach)

Up-and-coming New Zealand gymnast Brandon Field.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Love the old style accelerating giants and tucked position for the dismount. (I’m still suspicious that this Tong Fei technique for dismount is a fad :))

Brandon was their youngest team member on their Commonwealth and Worlds Teams in 2010. (INTERVIEW)

Watch more of Brandon’s training or subscribe to SFieldBrandon’s YouTube Channel.

Scott Weller of Weller Spring has been promoting his new revolutionary design for a Floor Exercise spring. Athletes who try it, like it. And a few clubs like WOGA have installed Weller springs into their gym.

But what he really needs is a respected 3rd party to scientifically measure and report the differences between the Weller spring and standard AAI springs, used in most gyms in the States.

Ideally, he’d get Dr. Bill Sands to do the research …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (13min)

It will be some time before Dr. Sands reports. Follow progress by LIKING the Weller Spring Facebook page.

If you want to buy some Weller springs for yourself, email scott@kingbarssports.com.

Scott wants readers of this site to know you can get a 25% discount by using the code “purple” at checkout on wellerspring.com.

Pretty home page for Russian superstar Anastasia Grishina. (Who has no wikipedia page, as yet.)

Blythe Lawrence has lived part of the past 2yrs in France. She’s been doing some blogging for Universal of late:

If you think about the men’s teams most likely to medal at this year’s World Championships and next year’s Olympic Games, a few countries should spring instantly to mind: China. Japan. Russia, perhaps. Germany. The United States. Great Britain. France.

France?

It’s not inconceivable. The French team doesn’t seem to be on the forefront of World and Olympic success in the same manner as, say, the Japanese. But even without the help of Benoit Caranobe — the surprise all-around bronze medalist in Beijing — France managed a quiet fifth-place finish at last year’s World Championships, ahead of the Russians and the British. …

read more – French men have depth to spare going into 2012

Do you know European vault silver medalist Samir Ait Said, from France, for example?

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.