Minnesota 2021 NCAA Championships host

April 16 & 17, 2021 Minnesota will host the Men’s Championships.

Coach Mike Burns:

September 10, 2020, I got the call I had always feared getting but had always hoped I wouldn’t.

‘Coach, I’m sorry, but we’re discontinuing your program after this season.’

I hope none of you get that call in your lifetime. To say it’s devastating would be a serious understatement.

… 22 lives will be monumentally transformed in the blink of a Zoom call.

Dealing with adversity is part of our daily grind in the gym. This sport demands rigorous physical conditioning, precision timing, and a lifetime of commitment to excel. The guys on this team have checked these boxes on all of those demands of the sport. And they deserve to be treated better.

This team, this 2021 Team, may be the last at Minnesota. But it will be a team that will be remembered for banding together in times of extreme adversity.  …

We’ll be hosting the 2021 NCAA Championships at the Maturi Pavilion on April 16 & 17, 2021.

One thing I’d love to see is the biggest crowd ever to attend an NCAA Championships that weekend.

These Golden Gophers deserve that kind of support from our community after getting the news we got on September 10th.

2017 – University of Minnesota Gopher Men Gymnastics
— Copyright Christopher Mitchell / SportShotPhoto.com

Caitlin Rooskrantz – Olympic 2020 Bar routine

The original Tokyo 2020 Games programme had her lined up to perform on August 2 at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre.

On that day a sponsor suggested Rooskrantz live-stream what could have been her Olympic routine.

Great idea!

On the other hand, Caitlin was 4 months out of the Gym due to COVID-19.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Read Caitlin’s story on the Olympic Channel.

https://twitter.com/olympicchannel/status/1305100862977605634

 

Ana Padurariu defers UCLA for a year

Good call.

Ana will stay home to focus on Olympic qualification.

Olympic Beam skills

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

celebrating Julianne McNamara

Julianne was fantastic. She and Tracee Talavera were our favourite American gymnasts, back in that era.

What the boys liked best was Julianne’s mixed grip Jam Cast mount on Bars.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Sam Mikulak will retire after this season

Sam’s done a lot of reflecting during COVID-19 shutdown.

He’s engaged to be married, too.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

new Rebeca Andrade interview

In this exclusive interview with ge , via video call, directly from Sangalhos, in Portugal, where she resumed training with the Brazilian team last week, Rebeca talks about the most relevant issues in this round: quarantine alone, the importance of the mother, the recovery from another surgery, daily racism, harassment in gymnastics, the Olympic classification and the desire to win a medal in Tokyo. … 

I’ve come here before, for competitions, and the people are really nice, so it’s cool. This contact with the Portuguese is very limited, mainly because of the virus. Better for us athletes. Here I have a room to myself. And the area that we can all be together is just the open area. Nothing closed. The girls cannot come to my room, and I cannot go to their room. But we have already done tests and everyone is fine, everyone is negative, everyone is in good health, thank God. Everything is going well. …

Yes, I watched “Athlete A”. I also watched the documentary that talks only about Larry Nassar (“No Coração do Ouro”). That’s it, impactful, heavy. I thank God that I did not go through this. That my coaches since I was little and now with Chico (Francisco Porath Neto) have always respected me. He always respected my mother (Rosa Santos), my family. So, something like that, so tense and difficult and abusive, didn’t happen to me. …

globoesporte (Portuguese)

New Aliya interview

Russia’s seven-time Olympic medallist in artistic gymnastics, Aliyá Mustáfina calls herself “unbreakable”.

Why? “Because I absolutely don’t care who thinks what about me,” she told Olympic Channel in an exclusive interview.

Since her country’s COVID-19 quarantine was lifted, Mustáfina is back to full-time training during the week and spending her weekends with her three-year-old daughter Alisa. …

The 25-year-old is the subject of an Olympic Channel film entitled ‘Life in the Day of Aliyá Mustáfina’ where she talks about how she always enjoyed competing against Aly Raisman and now Simone Biles. …

EXCLUSIVE! ALIYÁ MUSTÁFINA: “I’M PROBABLY THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO MYSELF.”

YOG Dakar delayed to 2026

SENEGAL AND THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE (IOC) HAVE MUTUALLY AGREED TO POSTPONE THE YOUTH OLYMPIC GAMES (YOG) DAKAR 2022 TO 2026.

The IOC and Senegal understand that this news will be disappointing for many young athletes. …

what’s a “false grip” on Rings?

One reason Eleftherios Petrounias deservedly won the Rings gold medal in Rio is that he does not “cheat” his strength holds with false grip.

Opening the hand makes it even clearer to the judges that no false grip is used.

eleftherios-petrounias_still-rings_rio-olympics_ap