Category: Gymnastics

Russian gymnasts NOT banned from the Olympics

Russia will not receive a blanket ban from Rio 2016 following the country’s doping scandal, an Olympic source has told the BBC.

Instead, the International Olympic Committee will leave it up to individual sport’s governing bodies to decide if Russian competitors are clean and should be allowed to take part.

BBC

Russia Olympics

Russia is corrupt. Systematic doping was approved all the way up to – I assume – the defacto dictator Putin. But I’m still happy Artistic, Rhythmic and Trampoline will get to compete in Rio.

The Russian girls are en route to Brazil now.

Amanda Turner – IOC Declines to Ban Russia from Rio

via Gymternet Clan

4for4 Rio Team predictions

4for4 has updated their projection. Note that this was done before the announcement on whether or not Russia will be competing.

tumblr_oasz4pOZ9d1tkuo5po1_r1_1280

Compare with another projection – Team E-Score Analysis.

Kerri Strug interview

Interesting.

Kerri Strug: ‘I was supposed to land the vault. Anything else would have been unacceptable.’

Strug

I’m reading The Sports Gene. One section talks about how athletes do not feel pain during extreme sports focus.

Giants at age-79

Bruno Klaus

Click PLAY or watch it on Instagram.

age of female gymnasts in Rio

Via papaliukin.

http://papaliukin.tumblr.com/post/147769351159/cristygen-candycoateddoom

See more stats on 4for4.info.

GymCastic – The Russian Situation

I quite enjoyed episode #206 of the audiocast from last week. It’s always entertaining when Spencer from The Balance Beam Situation is on the show.

Angelina

End of the Perfect 10 – a review

by site editor Rick McCharles

This book was written for the general public. They like it.

But as a coach I still enjoyed it. To revisit the history of the Code was a good catch-up in advance of Rio.

the-end-of-the-perfect-10-9781501101366_hr
Amazon

Dvora provides balanced perspective on the pros and cons of eliminating the iconic perfect 10. She interviews many of the important players on the world scene including Hardy Fink, the primary architect of the current Code. Hardy’s not happy with how his original proposal was changed over the years. But feels eventually it will work as intended.

New to me was the revelation that Bela Karolyi did not discover Nadia on the playground. Another part of the great Karolyi myth.

By the end of Perfect 10 I redoubled my conviction that giving up the perfect 10 was a HUGE mistake. We’ve never been much good in marketing the sport. A great salesman like Steve Jobs would conclude that the perfect 10 was our greatest and most valuable asset.

The NCAA women’s program got it right. It’s more important to fund gymnasts through University and keep coaches employed than to exactly rank the very best of the best perfectly.

That said, FIG will never go back to the perfect 10.

But I’d love to see them add something like a “Ranking Score” on top of the current system.

Each quadrennial, on each apparatus, a 10 would be set in advance.

For example on WAG Floor it might be 17.0. If Simone scored 16.5 her Ranking Score would be 16.5 / 17.0 = 9.70.

YES it might be possible to exceed the perfect 10 under this scheme. Fans would love to see a 10.100. 🙂

I bought the audio version. The audio book reader – Elise Arsenault – is poor. Not professional enough to check the correct pronunciation of names in a nonfiction work. She calls Marta Karolyi “Martha“, for example. 😦

related reviews:

• Slate – A Perfect 16.223

• Meghan O’Rourke – Why Extreme Gymnastics Will Dominate the Rio Olympics

• FloGymnastics – Q&A with Dvora Meyers