Everyone. Everyone has flagged Yul as the breakout star of Worlds 2017.
But I was wrong in a post from Oct 11th. Of the top 10 AA Yul did not win the E-score. Dwight Normile noticed I had the incorrect Pommel E-scores. IG posted corrected ranking.
XIAO Ruoteng won the AA and won E-score. #respect
Here’s my corrected list (including FX and Vault line deductions in the E-score). Please double check it.
Now that Morgan Hurd and the rest of the world survived Worlds Montreal, let’s talk about the Big O. It’s been called the “greatest white elephant of a stadium ever built“.
And it’s still under construction though the 1976 Olympic debt was finally repaid some years ago.
The roof has broken and been repaired many times over the years. Chunks have fallen.
Inside it’s a massive, confusing maze of dead end concrete space. The only way to get around efficiently is by bicycle or golf cart.
Judges and media had only 2 slow elevators to get to the field of play. After a week I finally found a random set of stairs and used those instead. It’s very easy to get lost.
Many have commented on how few washrooms are available in a complex that size. Eventually some Men’s toilets were switched to serve the ladies.
I was relieved there weren’t more problems.
So … I’m sure the City at various times considered tearing down The Big O. Personally, I’m glad they didn’t. It’s weirdly beautiful. And there are plenty of attractions nearby that I enjoy. Especially the new Gymnastics facility in the tower. A Gym was proposed way back in the late 1970s. The INS Gym will be a great resource in future.
The Montreal Olympics left the city with a C$1.6bn debt, a string of corruption scandals, and a creeping sense of economic and social decline. Forty years on, how did the city survive?
On 17 July, with Queen Elizabeth, Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau and 73,000 people looking on, the Greek athletes who traditionally led the Parade of Nations came up the ramp toward the Olympic stadium to find their way almost blocked by construction workers.
Out of sight of the cameras and the throng inside the stadium, the staff were frantically wielding shovels and brooms to clear away the building debris left from the manic push to complete the facility on time. In the final scrambling months before the Games, 3,000 labourers had worked in teams 24 hours a day to make it possible for the Olympics to begin at all. They barely succeeded. …
The Olympics can no more run a deficit than a man can have a baby
But was the number of injuries at 2017 Worlds more than usual? I’m not sure. I recall some very bad Worlds.
FIG tracks those numbers. In the past I’ve seen the FIG Worlds medical report. It won’t be published for some weeks, I expect.
But I’ve not seen that report released publicly for many years. I’ve requested a copy from one of the FIG Medical Commission.
This year meet ending injuries were suffered by some of the highest profile gymnasts: Kohei Uchimura (ankle on Vault in competition), Ragan Smith (ankle in training), Larisa Iordache (Achilles on Floor in training), Vanessa Ferrari (Achilles on Floor in competition).
Social media is the main source of competition information for many people. Injuries were very quickly communicated from those in the arena. More so than in the past. Five major injuries occurred in one subdivision of MAG preliminaries. That set off the gymternet alarm. Ready to quit the sport, I had to take a long walk to calm down.
In the cases of Vanessa and Larisa Achilles rupture waspredictable. Both arrived in Montreal knowing there was a chance it could happen. I can’t blame the venue. The same thing happened to Alicia Sacramone at Worlds Tokyo 2011.
Those who jumped on the Montreal broke the gymnasts meme reminded me of the old similarly wrong over-simplification: Marta broke the girls.
Gymnastics is a very dangerous sport. It’s most dangerous when athletes used to landing on mats in the pit have to try to stick a Vault on competition mats. It’s Russian roulette. Audrys Nin Reyes was a favourite to medal on Vault. He was injured on landing just like Kohei.
Kyle Shewfelt had 2 serious injuries over 3 Olympics. One landing on competition Floor. The other landing a competition Vault. (Kyle said Kohei’s injury looked similar to his on Vault.)
If you worry about the health of your favourite gymnast, worry most when they compete Floor and Vault.They are much, much safer training in their own Gym.
Was lighting in the training Gyms or competition Gym a factor?
Possibly. But not a big factor I don’t expect.
Was insufficient practice time in the competition Gym a factor?
Yes. In my opinion.
That facility sat empty much of the time before the start of competition. Why not offer a second podium training? Why not allow more time / gymnast? FIG could easily correct this for Doha.
Podium training was bungled too for some gymnasts. Petrounias, for example. Lack of chalk and timing errors are the fault of the organizing committee. Not FIG.
Did the gymnasts have enough time on the new Gymnova equipment?
No, in some cases. The U.S. men had not used the Gymnova vault horse before arrival in Montreal. Donnell Whittenburg, one of the favourites, said he couldn’t get used to it in time.
On the other hand, some nations planned to get time on the Worlds equipment. China spent a week training on Gymnova in Alberta before arriving Montreal, for example. Smart. Japan and Brazil trained at INS Montreal before the official Worlds training gyms opened.
No. It was a far better than average World Championships. I congratulate FIG, the Worlds organizing committee and all those volunteers for getting 99% of things right.
Interesting. Of course she’s training only isometric strength in only one body position. Not what we need for sport. We need train all the sheets of muscle for strength / power.
On the other hand, perhaps some future evolution of this kind of machine could have the athlete go through a greater range of motion. Duplicating specific skills.
Over the 11 minute video they up the resistance of the machine. A gymnast like Whitney finds it easy. That’s because gymnastics body weight training / conditioning is far superior to any machine. 🙂
