Category: history

Bridget Sloan wins the Honda

She is this year’s Honda Sports Award recipient for gymnastics, distinguishing her as the nation’s top collegiate female athlete in the sport. The honor was based on the results of national balloting among all NCAA member schools as part of The Collegiate Women Sports Awards program, now celebrating its 40th year. The other finalists were Lindsay Mable (Minnesota), Nina McGee (Denver) and Elizabeth Price (Stanford).

This is the second such honor for Sloan, as she won the award as a freshman in 2013. A Gator gymnast has claimed the honor four of the last five years, as Kytra Hunter was the 2012 and 2015 recipient. …

Gators

Bridget

What a career!

Catalina PONOR – Beam

Cata led Beam in preliminaries in Rio with this routine. Opted not to compete in the Final.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Epke Zonderland – Gold in Rio

Our defending Olympic champion at the Rio Test Meet.

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

where did Romania go wrong?

Bea Gheorghisor compiled first shocked reactions from Adrian Stoica, Octavian Bellu, Mariana Bitang, Daniela Silivas and others.

I’m quoted in a Guardian article by Dvora Meyers – Romania’s Olympic gymnastics failure: where did it all go wrong?

One positive note. It sounds like Catalina Ponor will try to continue through the 2017 European Championships hosted by Romania.

Epke wins Horizontal Bar

After a disastrous ranking at Worlds 2015 we feared Epke would not get the chance to defend in Rio.

He will. 🙂

Team Netherlands did qualify and will almost certainly include Zonderland in their lineup.

I watched the warm-up. Bart DEURLOO, BRETSCHNEIDER and ZONDERLAND are all capable of linking multiple big releases in a final. Here’s how it turned out.

1 ZONDERLAND Epke NED 7.100 + 8.633 = 15.733
2 BRETSCHNEIDER Andreas GER 7.300 + 8.300 = 15.600
3 OROZCO John USA 6.800 + 8.566 = 15.366
full results

Ultra clean Nile Wilson fell twice. John Orozco hit superbly with Liukin for the Bronze. (John was 9/9 in Rio.) But as he’s done so many times in the past, Epke hit the routine best when it counted.

Congratulations. Netherlands may be the happiest nation coming to the Olympics at this point.

documentary – ‘Made in America’

Featuring interviews with Olympic gymnasts like Nastia Liukin, Shawn Johnson and Carly Patterson and footage from the Karolyi Training Camp in Texas, the documentary will show the evolution of the U.S. women’s gymnastics program.

The documentary will premiere online on Wednesday, April 20th on the USAG YouTube channel.

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on Facebook.

Romanian teams will not go to Rio

Neither men nor women.

Seems like a bad dream. 😦 Respect this team and great ROM history.

Russell Mills – 1964 Pommels

This is the winning routine in the 1964 AAU Nationals (the precursor to the USGF and USA gymnastics). Mills also won the NCAA Championships in 1963 and 1964, coached by Don Tonry and . competing for Yale University. When Mills hit his routines, he was unbeatable in the US and probably by anyone in the world at that time. There was no international competition for specialists during the period. The mount here is a back Moore, caught a bit late by the camera.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.