tumbling, tramp, diving, acrobatics, circus, cheer, dance, martial arts, X sports … and more
Blythe posted a tribute to the inventor of the fantastic Pegan release:
… Pegan, who at 38 will be saying goodbye to gymnastics at this weekend’s Salamun Memorial in Ljubljana. According to the FIG, the event will be held in part to raise funds to build a new gymnastics center, which will bear his name …
Click PLAY or watch him on YouTube. (2008)
Weiler 1/1.
Great to see Jordyn so excited to be back in the gym. 🙂
Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.
http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/Mjk5NzA3MzI4?related=1&autoplay=false
Watch more video of The Fierce Five after London on gymnastike.org
That’s an outtake from a longer video to be aired on Gymnastike Gold. The cost of that membership is still difficult to find on the site.
Do you miss Vanessa already?
UCLA seniors Vanessa Zamarripa and Alyssa Pritchett have not hung up their leotards and grips just yet. The duo will compete in the Pro Gymnastics Challenge on May 10-11 at Lehigh University’s Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, Pa. The event will be televised on ESPN2 May 20-22 as part of a three-part series.
The PGC is a skill-for-skill competition with mixed teams of men and women.
On May 10, mixed international teams will compete in the “No Borders Competition”. The event concludes on May 11 with a USA vs. the World skill-for-skill battle. Events to be contested are tumbling; parallel bars and uneven bars; vault; rings and balance beam; rope; and high bar and single rail.
Competitors include Olympians Chellsie Memmel, Jonathan Horton and Jake Dalton, and team coaches include Olympic gold medalists Nastia Liukin and Svetlana Boguinskaia. …
UPDATE:
The World:
Females: Laura-Ann Chong, Anna Pavlova, Jessica Lopez, Oksana Chusovitina, Jade Barbosa, Lisa Mason, Nathalia Sanchez, Marissa King
Males: Sam Oldham, Andrew Smith, Alexander Shatilov, Marcel Nguyen, Petrix Barbosa, Nathan Gafuik, Tommy Ramos
The USA:
Females: Chellsie Memmel, Jana Bieger, Kat Ding, Alyssa Pritchett, Vanessa Zamarripa, Shayla Worley, Alina Weinstein, Ashanee Dickerson
Males: Jonathan Horton, Paul Ruggeri, Brandon Wynn, Jake Dalton, Steve Legendre, Alex Naddour, Jesse Silverstein, Josh Dixon, Chris Brooks
Pro Gymnastics Challenge – official website
related – Vanessa is one of four finalists for the Honda Award 2013. The other three are Rheagan Courville from LSU, Bridget Sloan from Florida and Alina Weinstein from Illinois.
Dvora Meyers has an entertaining article on the Slate double X blog:
… puberty does not spell doom for most gymnasts (or humans for that matter—life expectancy typically exceeds 16). Most of the girls figure out how to perform with their newer dimensions after a bit of time, which is why the NCAA features a great degree of body diversity. The athletes are average sized human women who just happen to do double back somersaults with ease. …
… reduced training and lesser difficulty are indicative of a different set of priorities that govern the NCAA sport. The emphasis in college gymnastics is on consistency and execution. When you see extraordinarily difficult skills in a college meet, it’s because the gymnast wants to do it, not because she needs it for her score. …
read more – Post-Olympic
Brittany’s STUCK Yurchenko 1 1/2 in Super 6 was perhaps the most underscored routine I saw at Championships. It’s included in a Georgia highlights video.
I don’t know how some of those College judges sleep at night. 😦
USAG:
… Jair Lynch was the first gymnast to compete the skill at an official FIG competition, having performed what is now known as the “Lynch” as far back as the 1992 season, and the skill is (now) included in the FIG’s 2013-16 Code of Points for Men’s Artistic Gymnastics.
… valued as a D skill …
Click PLAY or watch Jair on YouTube.
Under the last Code it was called Moznik after Marijo Moznik from Croatia.
_____ clarification by USA FIG Judge:
“Under the last Code it was called Moznik after Marijo Moznik from Croatia.”
That’s not quite right. A stretched Tkatchev half to mixed grip (E value) was called a Moznik.
A straddled Tkatchev half to mixed grip (D value) did not have a name (although it was colloquially known as a “straddled Moznik,” just like a hop 3/2 turn to mixed grip is referred to as a “Rybalko to mixed grip” or a ). See 2009-2012 Code v.6, p.123, #17. Consistent with the MTC’s naming conventions elsewhere in the Code, a notation for a differently valued variation of a skill that appears in the “same box” as that skill does not take the name of the skill in that box. (Side note: I say “same box” in quotes because skills in the same phyiscal box in the Code with different values occupy different boxes for the purposes of the D score.) No name appeared next to the asterisked notation for “Straddled D value,” and it was therefore unnamed. (Otherwise, if both were named after Moznik, one would, consistent with MTC naming conventions, be the Moznik 1 and the other the Moznik 2. See, for example, Balandin 1 and Balandin 2 on Rings.) This past weekend, the FIG judges at the NCAA Championships just had this same conversation about the Moznik being stretched after one judge mistakenly thought that the Moznik was straddled.
In v.2 of the 2013 Code (released this month), the MTC deleted the “Straddled D value” notation from the Moznik box and moved the straddled Tkatchev half to mixed grip into its own physical box in the Code with its own diagram and named that after Jair Lynch. See 2013 Code v.2, EG II, #22. So this is not an example of correcting a naming error; it is nothing more than just naming an existing unnamed skill. (That said, there is plenty to say on the FIG’s errors in naming skills.)
No doubt they considered moving that skill to the same box as Tkachev. Catching in a different grip does not make it all that much more difficult. It’s clearly overvalued. And therefore will be overused for the next 4 years.
The first of the Tumbl Trak Choose Your Habits clinics goes May 23, 2013.
It’s targeted at advanced recreation and pre-comp coaches.
9:15 – 10:00 Handstand Essentials
10:00 – 10:45 Tumbling10:45 – 11:00 Break
11:00 – 11:45 Vaulting
11:45 – 12:30 Bars12:30- 1:30 Lunch provided by Tumbl Trak (yes, there is such a thing as a FREE lunch!)
1:30 – 2:15 Beam
2:15- 2:45 Strength & Conditioning2:45 – 3:00 Break
3:00 – 3:45 Alternative Programs
3:45 – 4:15 Q & A Community Forum4:15 – 4:30 Closing Comments and Conclusion
It’s free, if you can make it. But register online ASAP as numbers are limited.
… In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Tumbl Trak will be hosting several FREE Recreational Coaches Clinics during the summer of 2013! …
September 2012 WAG NCAA finally decided to eliminate the required dangerous 2nd vault in Finals. To “lessen the possibility of injuries“.
That solves the biggest problem.
Thank you NCAA.
But Vault remains the stupidest NCAA apparatus.
It’s embarrassing to qualify 23 or 24 gymnasts to an 8 woman final. It gives the wrong impression to the general public that judges cannot discriminate between the best. 🙂
Miss Val:
“I really feel that with how our sport is judged, we need to keep encouraging interesting gymnastics. I’m not really a fan of the fact that – how many of the vaults were Yurchenko full today? That’s not fun.”
quoted in Examiner
denn333 compiled a list of options for NCAA to consider for 2014:
1) 6 judges in prelims (fewer ties to finals)
2) two vaults for all gymnasts in prelims
3) two vaults for 2-3 gymnasts per team in prelims
4) stricter execution scoring to spread out the scores
5) (optional) bonus for 2nd vaults
6) lowering difficulty values of vaults to encourage a few harder vaults (say, 93 FIG rules)
7) lowering difficulty values of vaults but ALSO awarding a bonus for an optional second vault — multiple ways to get to 10.0. (E.g., a DTY -or- a FTY + a piked front)
There are more ideas out there.
… One idea that has been discussed among the coaches is using lines on the mats to help the judges determine how straight the vaults are and the distance, while another proposal is to award the gymnasts for doing more difficult vaults by “giving them back” tenths of a point for steps and other minor miscues on challenging vaults.
“Nobody wants to devalue vaults, but something needs to happen to reward gymnasts for doing more difficult vaults,” Marsden said. …
Utah gymnastics: Coaches look for ways to separate top gymnasts’ scoring
______
I hope they choose the simplest solution.
• devalue Yurchenko 1/1 to 9.9
• one vault only
That should do it. Even with only 4 judges at the major multi-team competitions.
Downside?
Increased risk of injury landing of all those NEW Yurchenko 1 1/2s.
Here’s the full video of Finals 2013, starting with Vault and Bars.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
First competitor Olivia Courtney ended up 3rd with 9.9167.
Second competitor Rheagan Courville tied for first with 9.9250.
… tough call.
If you missed the excitement from this past weekend, get a quick recap.
Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.
http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/NzE3NzA2ODYx?related=1
Watch more video of 2013 NCAA Women’s Championships on gymnastike.org
Couch Gymnast:
The Romanian gymnasts returned to Bucharest on Monday evening. As it is the custom on such occasions, they were welcome in the official lounge of the Henry Coanda airport where the media got the chance to speak to the gymnasts. As usually the mainstream media don’t do a fantastic job asking the questions but we have to appreciate the warm reception and the fact that the event was broadcasted live. …
Octavian Bellu: “We are back from Moscow, from this edition of the European Championships, as you can see we have survived.
(It was) a very interesting competition and with a high level, you may have noticed that winning a gold medal at Euros is not exclusively reserved for Russian and Romanian gymnasts anymore, the Swiss can win gold medals, the Swedish can win silver medals and Great Britain and Italy were very close to medaling as well.
I think it was a maturity exam for these young seniors, they faced only some of their opponents, at Worlds they will have to compete against the Americans, the Chinese; the competition will be much stronger because then they will have to meet with event specialists from all over the world. …
Bellu: “… you must know that the girls competed on their first big meet with grips … it’s an important shift in their preparation…
Euros 2013: the Romanian delegation returns to Bucharest (translation)
Romania Insider – Romania wins seven medals at European Gymnastics Championships, gold for Larisa Iordache
Gymnastics Coaching.com 