Author: Rick Mc

1 PORGRAS Ana ROU 15.366

2 BROSS Rebecca USA 15.233
2 DENG Linlin CHN 15.233

4 MITCHELL Lauren AUS 15.200
5 SACRAMONE A. USA 15.066
6 DEMENTYEVA Anna RUS 13.966
7 MUSTAFINA Aliya RUS 13.766
8 DEMYANCHUK Yana UKR 13.733

First competitor, Alicia Sacramone opted to mount with just front tuck instead of infamous pike (fall at Olympics).

SOLID. Beautiful form on double pike dismount. … She’s jubilant. What a triumph of a comeback.

The beautiful Lauren Mitchell goes up second. HIT. Love the layout. Love the careful wolf turn. … Every little girl in Australia must be working that.

Rebecca Bross. What a rock! No problem with Arabian, this time. Switch ring shaky. Small hop on front tuck. GREAT Patterson, small step. Carly must be cheering.

Loving this Beam final. It’s great to see HIT routines in finals.

The American strategy was to go consistent, not having the highest start values as a team at this meet.

Let’s see what happens now that the pressure is on the rest …

Wow. I love Ana Porgras. This routine flows better than any other gymnast in Rotterdam. NICE. … Small errors. … Judges? … She jumps into 1st place. I’m OK with that. It might motivate the Chinese not to be so choppy in future.

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Reigning World Champ Deng (CHN) is next, under pressure from so many hit routines. NICE. Choppy. Small errors. … hmm. Moves to 2nd.

Super gymnast Mustafina. … Wot. Jumps off after Arabian. No medal here. … She really should do Patterson dismount instead of the messy triple twist.

Dementieva is a favourite of everyone here. But after a fall in the Beam final, she’s really not a proven commodity on a team that plans to win the Olympics.

Mitchell had a 0.1 higher start than Bross and Porgras. What routine should have scored higher?

Gymnastics Examiner Quick Hits.

Many will want to reorder the top three. They were very close:

1 BOUHAIL Thomas FRA 16.449
2 GOLOTSUTSKOV A. RUS 16.366
3 KASPIAROVICH D. BLR 16.316

4 YANG Hak Seon KOR 16.266
5 KOCZI Flavius ROU 16.208
6 ISAYEV Andriy UKR 16.049
7 RIVERA Luis PUR 15.945
8 WAMMES Jeffrey NED 15.750

Everyone knows that to win this apparatus you need to do two 7.0 difficulty vaults (the maximum), both with very good landings.

Second competitor, Olympic Bronze medalist, Golotsutskov did exactly that, nearly sticking both double pike Tsuk and Dragalescu.

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Bouhail (FRA) did the same vaults, almost as well. But the judges score him higher. (… Don’t they have slow motion replay from different angles, like I do?)

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Kaspiarovich (BLR) showed great Dragalescu. Then excellent Tsuk double pike. … I’d rank him second at this point. But the judges have him 3rd.

Oops. Isayev (UKR) planned a Dragulescu, but for some reason only did the handspring double front (Roche). Nice Tsuk double pike for second vault. These vaults are very dangerous, of course.

Yang (KOR) did the big cheat: virtually the same vault twice calling one Handspring 2½ twist, the second a Kazamatsu. The system still allows this. I don’t like it.

Cleanest twisting (Kyle Shewfelt clean) was Rivera. Nice!

Gymnastics Examiner Quick Hits

Golotsutskov‘s a tough gym, reminding me of Jason Gatson in some ways. He phoned someone during the final, I assume telling them he expected to win.

Tandoori Chicken didn’t even come close to qualifying for this Final. Ha!

Here’s the start list for day 2 of apparatus finals at the World Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam.

That’s from Full Twist, doing a superb job of reporting finals.

Don’t believe what you see on this TV commercial.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Gymnicetic)

Another moving post by Couch Gymnast, this time on the Gold medal Bars win by Beth Tweddle:

… Cairns remarked to the girls, “Imagine of she wins a gold in London 2012.”

Well, she would be so famous that she’d never be able to leave the house again, that’s for sure. …

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… One of the nicest gifts I have had this Worlds is the cheeky pleasure of standing behind Beth Tweddle and Amanda Kirby as they watched the rest of the final unfold. The fun of listening to them chat lies in the way they are just so very mundane and real in these major sporting moments. It was more like listening to an old married couple watch television than watching a World Championship event final.

They have done this before. So many times. …

THE UNEVEN BARS……

Terrific insight. Thanks Brigid.

See a slide show of Brigid’s photos on Gymnastics Examiner.

Which deserves the GOLD medal in the Worlds Final?

They were given the same start value. (scores)

Click PLAY or watch Beth on Bars.

Click PLAY or watch Aliya‘s Bars.

At the time, end on, it looked like Mustafina had better handstands, form and line. But a far worse landing on dismount.

Tough call seeing it from this angle.

OK … I was wrong. Tie goes to the 25yr-old. Congratulations Beth.

Beth warmed up the double double dismount this week. No problem. But I guess the coaches decided she didn’t need it.

Those linked by Full Twist which also has Bross.

Another great edit from the International Gymnastics Federation. It compares the Vault of the 3 all-around medalists. Very cool.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It includes Nabaeva’s harsh fall on beam. Ouch.

And Rebecca’s fall on beam. Sad.

… “The old people won today,” remarked Dutch journalist Peter van Leeuwen in the media center after the meet. He’s right — of the people who have captured individual event titles thus far, the youngest was bouncy 19-year-old Eleftherios Kosmidis of Greece. Tweddle is 25, Sacramone 22. Krisztian Berki is also 25, as is Chen Yibing….

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That’s from a terrific wrap-up on Gymnastics Examiner – Rotterdam reflections: Seen and heard around the Ahoy Arena after event finals – day 1 of apparatus finals at the World Gymnastics Championships.

For videos, scores and more go to Full Twist – Worlds Today 23/10/10 – Mens & Womens Individual Apparatus – A Quick Round Up

Anne From Gymnastike has a summary, too, with links to finalist interviews.

THE ALL AROUND:

Russian protest

In vault finals, Aliya Mustafina’s second vault RO-1/2 on full-twisting front layout off (6.1 D score) was downgraded to a pike (5.7). Both of Tatiana Nabieva’s vaults were downgraded – the Amanar (6.5) to a a double twisting Yurchenko (5.8) and her second vault in the same way as Mustafina’s. The Russian delegation attempted to protest the D scores for both gymnasts but were denied. „They told us we were four minutes too late,“ head coach Andrey Rodionenko told The All Around.

I still don’t know what the 0.1 penalty was for Mustafina.

Leave a comment if you know.

Someday we’ll have a website where for just a few dollars you can watch LIVE World Gymnastics Championships online. Won’t that be wonderful.

In the meantime, we have Universal Sports Gymnastics.

Here’s my experience today:

I don’t have the right version of Microsoft Silverlight. They don’t like my browser. They hate Apple too, I’m guessing.

In the end, something goes wrong.

The streaming service worked for many today. But when bloggers like Tsuk the Pain and Andrew Thornton can’t watch, that’s bad.