Author: Rick Mc

Inside Gymnastics magazine posted by far the best detailed coverage I’ve seen:

What’s Up in Warm-ups

As We Saw It …

Check also: News, Notes & Quotes from Nats, Thur

The layout of the site is much improved. Congratulations.

Watching from the stands, I was hopeful it was a minor finger “jam”, a very common occurrence on P Bars. Especially on Stutz to one bar.

Sadly, it was worse than I thought.

HOUSTON — Reigining Olympic all-around champion Paul Hamm has a broken right hand and will miss the U.S. Olympic Trials in June, his coach Miles Avery announced Friday.

“He won’t be able to do the Olympic Trials,” Avery said. “The course of action for that is to petition him to the team. And try to prove his readiness later in the summer, closer to the Games.”

Hamm suffered the injury on parallel bars in the final rotation of the first day of the U.S. Championships for men in Houston. During a stutz to one bar, his finger shifted on contact with the rail and he felt something pop, he said.

X-rays on Friday showed a fracture in the fourth metacarpal. Hamm will likely undergo surgery to put a pin in, and he will take four to six weeks to heal.

read more on International Gymnast

original – flickr

If it was any other gymnast, they might be off the team right now. But here is how Paul did last night under the official “point program” for selection:

Paul Hamm – 46
David Sender – 29
Joseph Hagerty – 25
Jonathan Horton – 24
Morgan Hamm – 24
Kevin Tan – 23

David Durante – 22
Raj Bhavsar – 22

Justin Spring – 15
Kyson Bunthuwong – 15

(Leave a comment if you know how they arrived at these “points”.)

Certainly from the point of view of the athletes, they simply want to have a good competition on day 2 (Saturday) and qualify in the top 14 through to Olympic Trials in Philadelphia.

Everyone expects Paul to be given every possible opportunity to compete in Beijing. He has 77 days before the start of the Games.

Wang won gold medals in all four individual events — ribbon, hoop, clubs and rope Thursday — and her combined score of 66.500 has her in first place after the preliminary round of the all-around competition. Rachel Marmer (62.575) is in second place and Ava Gehringer (62.200) is third. …

The Visa Championships likely will be the last major competition of Wang’s career. She plans to enroll at Yale in the fall and is not looking ahead to London in 2012 or torturing herself over what might have been this summer in Beijing.

Wang overcomes heartache
Defending champ eyes third title despite missing cut for Olympics – Houston Chronicle

We can ready for Lisa’s coronation as 3 time USA Champion after finals.

larger photo – NYTimes

Too young to compete in the Beijing Olympics.

… Or it may be that the reporter for the People’s Daily Online made a “mistake”.

Gymblog and Shergymrag jumped on this “mistake”.

This is the biggest scandal waiting to happen in our sport right now.

Great routine. Amazing landings. Aussie record score = 15.750

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Thanks Emily.

More routines from that competition on YouTube.

Read more on the Australia Gymnastics blog.

Another reason to promote fitness.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

…

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

Reuters

Global Warming Trends

Men’s gymnastics needs a media “superstar”.

We really haven’t had one since Sexy Alexei Nemov.

Paul Hamm is popular in the USA, but he’s no Nemov.

The best candidate on the horizon, I think, is Germany’s Fabian Hambuechen. Everybody loves this guy. And he is GOOD.

source?

One cute story:

Fabian Hambuechen was celebrating his high bar title with an adoring fan club that only sounded as if it included all of Germany when he spotted an unhappy Alicia Sacramone.

The term “bad mood” simply doesn’t exist in this gymnast’s vocabulary – in English or his native German – so he walked over to the American and put his arm around her, determined to make her smile.

“I was upset after (finishing second on) floor exercise. He was like, `Come on, baby, walk with me,”’ Sacramone said, laughing at the memory. “He’s all about having fun.”

And with the run he’s on, Hambuechen is having a blast.

“I love it,” he said recently. “I just try to take the good things out of it, take the good motivation.”

Just 20, Hambuechen will be a multi-medal threat at the Beijing Olympics. …

NBC Olympics – Olympics could give world `Fabi Fever’

Analyst John Roethlisberger at the USA VISA Championships said that Paul Hamm is now ahead of Fabian in the All-Around, with a higher start score particularly on rings.

Wow.

Where to start.

My heart goes out to the many American gymnasts who have sacrificed so much for a shot at the Olympics. But only 14 will go forward to the next stop in Philadelphia.

There are many, many ways to put together the US Team. Without the Hamms, it would be a hodgepodge. With the Hamms, the team is a strong contender.

Online you will see a great deal of analysis of this meet. Speculation on who should make the final team.

From what I saw tonight …

#1 Paul Hamm – All-Around

#2 Kevin Tan – the USA needs his Ring routine to be doing the same sport as China. And Kevin can contribute on other apparatus.

#3 Morgan Hamm – Looked good, especially considering how little time he has spent on routines.

#4 Sasha Artemev – the USA needs his Pommels. But he missed them tonight. Had a bad meet, actually. In danger of not moving on. Awesome gymnast on several apparatus.

#5 David Durante or Joseph Hagerty. Or David Sender. Or even Yewki Tomita.

Thank God I am not on the selection committee. Looking at the options for contributing scores hurts my brain.

Official RESULTS – USAG

Certainly Raj Bhavsar will go forward to the Olympic Trials. He had a great meet tonight. Justin Spring the selectors will love — but he looks like he hasn’t competed in a year. He hasn’t.

Jonathan Horton everyone loves. He finished 3rd on Floor, 2nd on Rings and 6th of Vault. But he’s very inconsistent. Missed Horizontal Bar again. Jon’s looking forward to the second day of competition.

Raj Bhavsar

The last time I saw Raj he was being led away, having been randomly selected for drug testing. This is standard procedure at these meets. I recall TKO commenting some weeks ago that Raj looked “juiced”. Of course that is ludicrous. But the testing will tell for sure.

Related:

In His Own Words: Raj Bhavsar – Inside Gymnastics

The Flip Side with Raj Bhavsar – video profile on Gymnast.com

Note: Blaine Wilson looked bad. Withdrew from the meet after 3 events.

Paul Hamm fell on his last routine, Parallel Bars. And may have hurt his hand though he finished the routine.

The Men’s Artistic Olympic trial #1 is just starting. (Is that Carly Patterson singing the National Anthem?)

I just rushed in from Rhythmic day 1 competition.

I spoke to former great Mary Sanders, judging this competition. Mary told me the level had improved considerably since 2007. And that more athletes were invited to Championships this year.

The venue was better than the past 2 years too, I thought. Especially the spacious warm-up gym:

Results are not yet posted online. But Lisa Wang was dominating. I saw two of her routines. Rope was particularly gorgeous.

Sadly, Lisa did not qualify to the Olympics. In fact, this may be her final competition.

One more thing … A Mom told me their total cost for 1 year for a Junior gymnast approached $50,000. And she has 2 daughters in Rhythmic.

There are no College scholarships for Rhythmic. (Mary Sanders went to Cirque du Soleil.)

It is for the U.S. Men’s program:

TEXANS TUSSLE: Looking at the roster, it seems the list of athletes who don’t have Texas as their homestate is shorter than those who do. Eleven of the 45 men—Taqiy Abdullah-Simmons (Oklahoma), Raj Bhavsar (HGA), Chris Brooks (Oklahoma), Sean Golden (HGA), David Henderson (USOTC), Jamie Henderson (Oklahoma), Jonathan Horton (Oklahoma), Tyler Mizoguchi (HGA), Greg Stine (Air Force), Todd Thornton (USOTC) and Sean Townsend (HGA)—who qualified to compete in the senior division hail from or train in Houston, along with two of the juniors. Another seven of the gymnasts are from other Texas towns—meaning almost half the field has a home base connection to the Lone Star State, which should be good for attendance.

News, Notes & Quotes from Nats – Inside Gymnastics

The Gymblog considers the number of great women’s gymnastics programs in Texas:

It is remarkable how many different athletes, from how many different gyms, have come from Texas. Off the top of one’s head, there are the WOGAites, Karolyi kids, gymnasts from Stars Academy and Cypress Academy, Houston Gymnastics Academy and Texas Dreams. …

Texas: The new gymnastics state?

Mary Lou Retton. Carly Patterson. Nastia Liukin.

I’m not sure you can find a population base of the same size in the world which has produced more high level international gymnasts.

Leave a comment if you can.

UPDATE:

I stand corrected. Romania is the center of the gymnastics world.