Rick Mc

Victoria Moors – Floor 14.9 / 6.0

Victoria has the best shot of Canadians at qualifying for an Olympic Apparatus Final.

Kyle Shewfelt has posted a few more routines from Day 1 of “Olympic Trials” on his YouTube channel. Subscribe.

Jenn Isbister guesstimates the rankings / points totals with one day of competition remaining — Thursday.

… If the calculations are correct, today solidified Kristina Vaculik and Victoria Moors as future Olympians. Making the best gain today was Brittany Rogers, with Jessica Savona earning the fourth highest amount of points. Black earns points on vault and beam, but missed out with her vault being downgraded and struggling on floor. …

Gymn.ca

These are terrific gymnasts. But Kyle noted they had “too many falls”. Olympic trials = pressure.

Gabby Douglas – Slo Mo Vault

Podium training at Olympic Trials.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I assume judges requested this video so they’d be better able to decide whether Gabby did Double or Amanar. 🙂

Israeli Gymnastics Championships

Guest post by Maya Bielik, editor of the Israeli gymnastics site, Gymania. (Hebrew)

The Israeli Gymnastics Championships took place Saturday, June 23rd in Tel Aviv and brought the audience some big surprises.

Gymnastics is not as popular in Israel as Soccer, Basketball or even Tennis, not even close, so even the biggest gymnastics meet of the year, Nationals, are free of charge. Just come and watch, please?

18 women competed. The Seniors included only 6 girls this year.

Over 20 years have passed since Israel sent an Artistic woman gymnast to the Olympics. And this time it’s Valeria Maksyuta‘s turn to bring some light and acknowledgement of Israeli gymnastics to the world.

Maksyuta is known for her Vault. In May she even did the unbelievable and successfully passed tough Israeli criteria to qualify to London: Maksiyuta needed a 1-12 place in the all-around or finishing top 6 at Europeans.

What wasn’t expected on Saturday, was to see Maksyuta standing on the podium and taking “only” the bronze medal. 3 falls from the Balance Beam just couldn’t be fixed by another apparatus, and the girls from Hapoel Tel Aviv, the decorated club that brought Israel more than 20 national champions over the years, took advantage of Valeria’s “bad day”, claiming the first 2 places.

Israel’s new all-around champion is Nofar Cohen, a 17-year-old with limited international experience. Second was Hadas Koren, Nofar’s teammate, also 17 with about the same international exposure.

Maksyuta still dominated Vault, as expected.

After the competition, Israeli sports websites started analyzing what happened to Israel’s long awaited Olympian.

They question how “important” this meet was for Valeria. In less than a month she will stand at the London O2 arena and try to hit her best competition ever. Let’s just hope that Nationals were a step towards it.

This misfire should help her refocus to peak for Olympics.

Alicia should vault with GUYS

If McKayla Maroney is not able to make it back from concussion in time for the Olympics, might she be replaced by Elizabeth Price or Alicia Sacramone?

I’d love to see Alicia in another Olympics.

via Pushy Queen

via korbutflip

UPDATE: @AAinsworthNBC thinks McKayla will be competing based on podium training videos.

Canadian Olympic Trials

Kyle Shewfelt is tweeting highlights from Day 1 of the final Canadian Women’s Olympic Team “trial” in Quebec.

Day 2 goes Thursday. The Team will be named by Friday. Selection is by a points system, verified by committee. Don’t put too much importance on these scores.

UNOFFICIAL
Vaculik-55.15
Moors-55.00
Rogers-54.3
Savona-53.70
Gerber-52.45
Pegg-52.05
Black-52.05
Gardiner-51.25
…

via @gymnewstics

Peng Peng and Talia Chiarelli are not competing, both injured, but are there cheering their teammates.

photo via @kyleshew

Peggy Liddick on Olympic strategy

Lauren Mitchell will lead a team of five talented young artistic gymnasts to London 2012.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Giuliano Stroe getting scarier

… This Romanian father’s experiment in extreme strength training with two young sons won’t end well.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

1980s Soviet Floor

I commented to choreographer / artistic preparation expert Julia Spivak that Floor has never been less “artistic” than in 2012.

… She didn’t disagree. 😦

Young gymnasts today assume that she with the highest start value, should win.

But dinosaurs like me recall the golden age of women’s gymnastics, the 1980s. In that era Floor choreography was as important as tumbling. The Soviet girls were trained in classical ballet — and could entrance with dance.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (poor video quality)

… Svetlana Baitova, Irina Baraksanova, Olga Bicherova, Svetlana Boguinskaya, Olga Chudina, Elena Davydova, Olesya Dudnik, Natalia Frolova, Tatiana Godenko, Tatiana Groshkova, Natalia Ilienko, Vera Kolesnikova, Natalia Laschenova, Olga Mostepanova, Elena Naimushina, Oksana Omelianchik, Alevtina Pryakhina, Elena Sazonenkova, Elena Shevchenko, Albina Shishova, Elena Shushunova, Olga Strazheva, Tatiana Tuzhukova, Natalia Yurchenko, and Stella Zakharova.

If Shushunova can dance, anyone COULD dance.

… But they’d have to train for it.

teaching Press Handstand

In advance of publication on his Gym Coach Journal, Valentin Uzunov posted an article explaining of his system of teaching this essential skill.

scribed – Developing the Straddle Press to Handstand

This accompanying video is a quick summary, illustrating his program with drills collected from the internet.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.