Author: Rick Mc

After the Hungarian gymnastics movie White Palms, next get the even more critically acclaimed, even more controversial film called The Gymnast.

There is not a lot of gymnastics in a movie called The Gymnast. It’s a lesbian love story of two circus aerialists.

Instead of the movie trailer, I post a background piece with interviews of the two stars:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

THE GYMNAST – official website

The Gymnast – Amazon

I haven’t seen The Gymnast yet myself. Will post a review after I do.

UPDATE: The official MySpace page has more photos. It also makes clear that the film is only available in Canada and the USA, so far.

After some consideration, Dave Adlard decided to screen the critically acclaimed, Academy Award nominated film White Palms at Region 2 (R2R) Congress in Spokane. None of us had seen the movie before the Saturday night social.

Reviews were … mixed.

Friends of mine said, “I don’t like the movie. It’s too dark. Too harsh. It has no ending.”

There is a fair bit of profanity making it unsuitable for children. Fact is, profanity was common in Hungarian gyms and may still be today. (Using a fencing foil for discipline was not common, I hasten to add.)

Other coaches, myself included, liked the movie very much.

It’s a film produced on a low budget starring a friend of mine “Uldi” Zoltan Miklos Hajdu and features Canadian gymnasts Orion Radies, Silas Radies and Olympic Floor Champion Kyle Shewfelt.

The disclaimer is that the movie was “inspired by real events”. Dongo (Uldi) did not actually qualify for Worlds. Did not compete against Kyle in the finals on Vault at World Championships. (I did like the fact that Kyle finished ahead of Dragalescu on Vault, correcting the mistake made by judges in Athens 2004 Vault finals.)

The film deliberately made my home gym, Altadore Gymnastics, look bad. And my city, Calgary, look bleak.

I guess that’s cinéma-vérité. The hand-held camera work is unsettling.

So far as I know, there were no professional actors in the movie. I particularly liked Jerry Gibbons who played a parallel role to actual Altadore Head Coach at the time, Kelly Manjak.

Though the film is about gymnasts, there is surprisingly little gymnastics in it.

This movie trailer is in Hungarian, though the film itself is Hungarian and English with English subtitles. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Details on purchasing the DVD – $28.

Related:

Good news.

Their Senior Championships is coming to my region next year.

Our own Stu Cram is on the organizing committee so I’m already confident it will be well organized.

Stu was one of the key committee members on the highly successful 2007 Canadian Gymnastics Championships leadership group.

Alexandre Despatie – more photos – Dive Canada

Coach Jacob Small asks about sanitizing foam blocks in our gymnastics pits.

Great question.

If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

I’m just starting to research MRSA vis-a-vis gymnastics. Friends told me they have had reported cases at their gym.

Step 1 is frequent hand washing, of course. And increased availability of antibacterial gel.

But what else is needed?

From Wikipedia:

Prevention and infection-control strategies

Alcohol has proven to be an effective topical sanitizer against MRSA. …

Because MRSA can survive on surfaces and fabrics, …

… The National Association of Athletic Directors (NATA) recommends that cleaning of athletic gear be done on a regular basis.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

UPDATE: Gym Chat has a thread called — ewww! smelly pits stink!.

Judy Higgins is a career gymnastics coach from South Africa, many years a Head Coach. Additional areas of expertise are judging and Rhythmic. She has experience working with mentally challenged children.

Judy is willing to relocate internationally. She has family in Canada.

more information: 4higgins @ vodamail.co.za

Region 2 Rising (R2R) organizer David Adlard also did 6 presentations in his spare time. I believe Dave only slept 3 hours over 3 days in Spokane.

We’ve previously (from San Jose) posted his PowerPoint presentations for these:

His spotting sessions … WELL, you just had to be there.

By the way, I feel Dave is the best in the business when it comes to organizing major gymnastics events and making participants feel valued.

The excellent hit reality TV show is coming to The Great White North.

CTV to Develop Canadian Edition of So You Think You Can Dance

… The Canadian version of the series is based on So You Think You Can Dance, the Emmy Award-winning, hit program … Canada now joins the United States, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Turkey and Israel as markets with an original So You Think You Can Dance production. Original versions of the series are also currently being produced in Australia, Poland and Malaysia and soon in Scandinavia as well. So You Think You Can Dance is a Top 3 summer series in Canada on CTV with an average audience of 1.25 million viewers.

…

So You Think You Can Dance Canada will embark on a nation-wide search for Canada’s favourite dancer. The new series will follow a similar format to its hit cousin, Canadian Idol: talented dancers of all shapes and sizes will compete to impress an expert panel of judges with their moves during a cross-country audition process. The dancers who spark the judges’ interest will be invited to call-backs where they will work with some of Canada’s top choreographers. The judges’ will then choose the Top 20 dancers who will continue in the competition. Then, it’s up to Canada to decide who stays and who goes as the public will vote for their favourites following weekly performance episodes in which the dancers are assigned different partners and dance styles to perform in competition, including hip-hop, krumping and popping to salsa, quickstep and jive. …

CHANNEL CANADA :: CTV to Develop Canadian Edition of So You Think You Can Dance

We’re looking for a Canadian Schwimmer now.

Click PLAY or watch Benji on YouTube.

Over the past weekend at R2R (Region 2 Rising) in Spokane many of the clinicians I talked with are worried that USA Gymnastics will not organize Congress events as well as they have been run independently in the past.

It seems a vote was just taken in this Region, the Pacific NW, to turn over their event to USAG Head Office in Indianapolis. Region 2 had been the last of the independent Congress events.

If top-down management was a good model, there would still be a Soviet Union.

Decentralization and competition are what made the United States great. This is a big step backward for Region 2 in my opinion.

I like the Australian model. Gymnastics Australia helps the regional congress events by providing an international clinician headliner. After that, each State in Australia does their own thing. They must make or break financially on their own.

Almost certainly, it will become obvious after a few years that quality has suffered. They will all be as vanilla as USA Congress.

Eventually the Congress events will be spun off back to the Regions.

At the same time, independent education events like Jeff Metzger’s Boot Camp will thrive.

No doubt good people at USA Gymnastics believe they can improve Congress events. Let’s see them prove me wrong.

Strict rules about nutrition for young athletes are a big mistake, in my experience.

They put the child athlete in a serious conflict: the coach’s rules vs peer pressure / temptation.

All the best coaches I know now talk to kids about making “good choices”. Education will work, long term, for those kids who are serious about their sport.

The real problem are the parents of athletes. Far fewer than half where I live provide reasonably healthy food for their children. (I don’t blame them. They have plenty of challenges of their own.)

The best parent education I’ve ever seen are grocery store tours like the ones organized by Gymnastics British Colombia:

Registered Dietician, Christina Baxter, will take you on a tour of a typical grocery store and give you practical and useful information …

Even better is when the child comes along on the tour with Mom or Dad.

The Dieticians of Canada offer The Virtual Grocery Store, an on-line interactive game. (It’s not all that fun. The real store tour is better.)

To be honest, good nutrition is not one of the most important variables of training. I’ve known a few very successful athletes who can eat anything with no effect on performance.

UPDATE: Dana Brass noted that her club Marian Gymnastics in Canada organized grocery store tours in the 1990s. We copied that idea at Taiso Gymnastics, I recall.

UPDATE: Check Anna’s comment below too. She feels kids today are “over-fed, … bombarded with food choices”. Too trure

Who are the “Super 7” again?

Oh …

The Super Seven U.S. Women’s Team made history by winning the first World Championships team gold medal outside the USA! The 2007 World Championships took place in Stuttgart, Germany, Sept. 1-9, and the Super Seven included Ivana Hong, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Samantha Peszek, Alicia Sacramone, Bridget Sloan, and Shayla Worley.

USA Gymnastics is taking the Super Seven team on a fun trip to New York to celebrate the gold medal win. All seven team members will be on the Today Show on Friday, Oct. 26. They also get to do a little shopping and go to the theatre while in New York. The team also will visit Madison Square Garden, site of the 2008 Tyson American Cup, to help promote the event.

Super 7 interviews

(via Rutterja on Chalk Bucket)