Morgan Hurd is featured in a music video trailer encouraging young Americans to vote.
Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.
The full version will be released November 5th at 10am EST on Apple Music. The day before the election.
Category: ethics
Syria competes at Worlds
In a hopeful sign for eventual stability of the war torn nation, Syrian gymnast Areej Alkhayat did compete at World Championships 2018.
Colbert reports on Gymnastics
FIG WTC made late night comedy TV in the USA.
We’ve been mocked by the best. 😀
Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.
World championships format
“Changes to the world championships format are needed to reduce the size and length of the competition, which is taking place over 10 days in Doha,” Watanabe said.
“It is a heavy burden on gymnasts physically and mentally, and in some cases it leads to injuries,” he said. “We have difficulties to find organisers due to huge expenses.”
… the Competition Commission in consultation with the Technical Committees is exploring the idea of using continental championships as a qualifier to compete at the world championships. …
“I understand there may be objections from the developing countries, but we must go the right way,” he said. “The world championships must be the competition for the most experienced athletes and the showcase for the Gymnastics family.”
I’d agree that something should be done. I’m leaving before apparatus finals myself to save on cost.
FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar
For us having World Championships in Qatar is a very big deal. But it’s nothing compared with football’s biggest event.
FIFA President praises Qatar 2022 infrastructure progress during whistle-stop tour
Needless to say, the choice of Qatar was controversial.
FIFA’s Human Rights Advisory Board met in Doha 1-4 October to with the Local Organising Committee (LOC).
Aside from labor law reform (which is progressing) talks included safety and security of individuals of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
I haven’t seen news of any significant progress on that, however.
As of November 2018 FIFA nations still have many reasons to criticize the choice of host.
My best guess is that Qatar will be forced to change their laws on human rights before 2022.
Glamour Women of the Year – gymnasts nominated
One woman spoke out, another listened. That helped put an end to the abuse that lasted for more than 20 years. Meet the survivors, detective, attorney, and judge who told the world: Believe women.
The Army of Women Who Took Down Larry Nassar
Tom Forster on team finals
Tom has been posting daily updates on Facebook. We like the transparency and honesty.
Day 14 went well. 🙂
… We started the day with two line ups; one with Simone and one without in the case her kidney stone moved. I told the girls that anything can happen and we have to be prepared. We had the fourth girl warm up each event in the case Simone had to pull out. …
The USA Elite program is working. The athletes feel safe. The athletes are taken care of. The athletes are heard. The athletes and coaches are working smart.
Those that questioned if Riley should have been put on beam – YES she should have! …
Aspire Park, Qatar
Most gymnasts here have explored the world’s largest indoor sports complex. Our venue.
They’ve walked past the impressive Torch Doha hotel over to the air conditioned luxury mall.
But the rest of Aspire Park is huge and beautiful too. An oasis of greenery and water.
I ran the entire thing last night. It took some time.
Families come at night when it’s cooler. Cycling is restricted to one big loop, the rest of the trails dedicated to walking and running.
Why did a small nation build such an amazing sports complex? They bid for the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Olympics. And will keep bidding into the future.
‘face painting’ not allowed
FIG WTC announced the new rule at Worlds.
I’m not sure when it goes into effect
Many instantly reacted online. Dvora summaries those concerns
Coach Jason Mortimer had the most thoughtful reaction I’ve seen so far:
… Gymnastics will always straddle, pun intend, the line between athletic sport and artistic expression. …
If you’re an athlete and you want ZERO theatricality, run track. If you’re a performer and you want ONLY theatricality, do theater. If you’re an athlete who wants to perform, there’s gymnastics.
It’s in the nature of the sport to test the boundaries in each direction. Simone is testing the physical limits of what someone bit by a radioactive spider can do.
(Céline van Gerner) tested the limits of what can be performed. I applaud her for trying. FIG reacted by deciding that’s not a boundary we need to push right now. The emphasis and direction of the sport, based on the way the current codes are written, seem to favor the direction of pushing toward the sport-end of the sport/art direction.
Now, their word choice, using the phrase, “modest,” was a bad decision.
… yes, it would be disgusting if their decision was meant to censor women, or stifle their creativity. …
Ask yourself this: does the makeup enhance the performance, or not? If the makeup does NOT enhance the performance, then it isn’t necessary, and isn’t something that needs to be fought for. If it DOES enhance the performance, is that what we want gymnastics to become? Do we want girls getting deductions because their makeup wasn’t flamboyant enough? Do we want insufficient costume deductions? Do we really want to send the message to clubs that now they need to employ makeup artists to be competitive?
The impetus behind ANY envelope pushing at this level is to create some kind of competitive advantage. (Céline) could not compete with Simone on floor by out-tumbling her. She had to try something else. So she tried stepping up what the Dutch had already been doing well: she tried to be MORE artistic. …
… FIG decided they were concerned about the slippery slope. What would come after makeup? Props, right? …
… we should only be judging their gymnastics. It should not matter if they have bright nail polish, or visible tattoos, or non-natural hair color. None of that should matter. …
If the US women’s soccer team all came out with full bald-eagle face paint, would they play any harder or be more likely to win? I doubt it. To them, there’s no correlation between their makeup and their performance. We’re only thinking it does in gymnastics because gymnastics already has some “performance” element to it.
But I don’t want my kids losing a meet because they wore a temporary face tattoo. And I don’t want them winning a meet either because their smokey eyes were on point. For myself, I want to compete gymnastics. I don’t want to compete theater.
There’s more on Jason’s Facebook post. Leave your comments there.
Personally I would not restrict makeup or face painting for MAG or WAG in any way. But props should be disallowed.
The word modesty is too open to interpretation. That has to be defined clearly.
It would seem this is a WAG rule. Of course it should be applied to MAG, as well.
Finally, this is a classic example of folks getting very worked up about a tiny issue. Céline was rewarded for her brilliant, creative innovation at Europeans. Let’s get the rule better defined. And move forward.
NO face painting in WAG
Sounds like FIG WTC is trying to clarify what is and what is not allowed in terms of makeup.
Needless to say, that’s not easy.
They want artistry, but want to put limits on theatrics.
On the upside, Celine’s a bit of proud of being the last.
The gymternet is going to have a field day talking implications, sexism and inconsistencies.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 