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… ah, we’ve seen this already.

Let’s instead watch the Silver medal routine – Arthur NABARRETE ZANETTI of Brazil. Only 0.2 behind Chen Yibing.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Here’s Chen Yibing’s Gold medal routine. (VIDEO)

The defending World Champion watched his major competitors miss. Then put down his usual excellent routine.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Click through to YouTube to watch the rest of the Bar final, segments linked on the chinesegym1 YouTube channel.

Nabieva finished 2nd, but had an even stronger routine, I thought.

1.Victoria Komova (RUS) 15.500 (6.7)
2.Tatiana Nabieva (RUS) 15.000 (6.6)
3.Huang Qiushuang (CHN) 14.833 (6.7)
4.Jordyn Wieber (USA) 14.500 (6.3)
5.Asuka Teramoto (JPN) 14.200 (6.3)
5.Gabrielle Douglas (USA) 14.200 (6.2)
7.Koko Tsurumi (JPN) 14.066 (6.4)
8.Youna Duforunet (FRA) 12.641 (6.3)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Watch the entire final.

1.McKayla Maroney (USA) 15.300
2.Oksana Chusovitina (GER) 14.733
3,Thi Ha Thanh Phan (VIE) 14.666
4.Jade Barbosa (BRA) 14.566
6.Giula Steingruber (GER) 14.450
5.Tatiana Nabieva (RUS) 14.349
7.Alexa Moreno (MEX) 14.216
8.Yamilet Peña (DOM) 6.950

Confusion aplenty in Tokyo.

THE ALL AROUND is trying to interpret the new FIG regulations.

So far — it looks like — 

MAG teams: JPN – USA – CHN – GER – RUS – KOR – ROU – UKR

MAG Floor: 3.Diego Hypólito (BRA) + Alexander Shatilov (ISR)
MAG PH: 2.Cyril Tommasone (FRA)
… Kristian Berki (HUN) gold winner and Louis Smith (GBR) Bronze don’t reach criteria.
MAG Rings: 2.Arthur Zanetti (BRA)

Confusing. … And what happens if Brazil qualifies a men’s team at the test meet?

WAG teams: USA – RUS – CHN – ROU – JPN – AUS – GER – GBR
3.Phan (VIE) qualified

This is the best guess of Albert Minguillón i Colomer. We’ll wait on Stoica and Kim to tell us officially. Media has not heard a word from either one, so far, in Tokyo.

Related – TAA – More than medals on the line in Tokyo finals

I’ve loved following 362 excellent people on Twitter during the World Championships. Including Nastia.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Once this LIVE event ends, I’ll not check twitter often. Perhaps once a day for Direct Messages. … But now that Apple has integrated twitter into new devices, it may become more valuable to me, day-to-day.

I doubt it. The noise of all those trivial tweets will be deafening.

But for finals I’m @GymCoaching.

My Mac is freezing up when trying to load pages from universalsports.com

Yet I have the Current version of (crappy) Silverlight 4 (4.0.60831.0)

Leave a comment if you’re having problems with that site, too.

Nice tribute edit.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It ain’t over ’til it’s over. A good story for up-and-coming gymnasts.

Dvora Meyers is a good writer. She sums up the case against Marta Karolyi in these two posts:

Unorthodox Gymnastics – The leadership of Martha Karolyi

Slate – Last Leotard Standing

Béla and Márta Károlyi coached dozens of Olympic and World Championships medalists, adding to the list this week. Their methods have produced results.

She’s retiring from the role of U.S. National Team Coordinator after London, so there’s not much more time for critics to sound off.

The complaints in Dvora’s articles aren’t new. The position is that Americans under her watch have:

• been over-trained
• peaked too early
• suffered too high an injury rate

Is that true?

I think it was true in Marta’s first years in the job. She required, in those days, up to 10 routines on Bars and Beam the day before a competition, in some cases that I saw with my own eyes.

That was idiotic.

But from what I’ve seen, especially in Rotterdam and Tokyo, the demands are much more reasonable today. Good gymnasts can do more routines — the American girls were more capable of routines than any other nation. And they did more.

Dvora’s Slate article concludes:

… Martha Karolyi shouldn’t shoulder all the blame for the injuries suffered by Alicia Sacramone and others. Sacramone’s Achilles, for instance, has been a problem throughout her career. Karolyi, though, clearly could’ve done more to accommodate each of her athletes and taken more precautions in the run-up to the world championships.

The United States’ latest gold medal shouldn’t obscure the fact that female gymnasts keep breaking down, and not simply because gymnastics is a risky sport. With less than a year to go until the London games, we’ll find out if the United States finally learns to train smartest instead of hardest.

In Tokyo I don’t think Marta has been “too hard” on the team. And she’s certainly not responsible for injuries to Aliya Mustafina (RUS), Jessica Savona (CAN) or Sandra Izbasa (ROM).

Most nations have one or more of their top gymnasts missing in Tokyo due to injury. Fact is, this is a very risky sport. Elite female gymnasts are too injured to train 100% about 1/3 of the time.

Personally, I feel it’s the FIG rules that are too demanding. If you want to demonize someone, I’d suggest you target WT Chair Nellie Kim over Marta Karolyi.

I don’t see FIG WTC doing anything to make gymnastics “safer” for elite gymnasts. That will be brutally obvious later today when we watch a girl compete Handspring double front on Vault in Finals. That’s the “trend” today — do more difficulty if you want to win.

related – Gymnastike – interview with Marta following Jordyn Wieber’s win (VIDEO).

Women’s Artistic gymnastics, in most parts of the world, is far more popular than men’s Artistic gymnastics. That’s the fact, Jack.

For once, male athletes are a minority compared with female athletes, in the same sport.

Male gymnasts often ask for equal treatment. That happened yesterday — the prize money for MAG will be equal to the prize money for WAG at FIG World Cup meets, though the girls are far more marketable.

It’s just the opposite out in the “real” world.

… a trailer for a great-looking new documentary called Miss Representation. Its premise, from the film’s website, is that “American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls’ value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality. It’s time to break that cycle of mistruths.”

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (some profanity and depressing content)

… the film explores how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in influential positions in America …

Stories from teenage girls and provocative interviews with politicians, journalists, academics, and activists like Condoleeza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Katie Couric, Rachel Maddow, Margaret Cho, Rosario Dawson and Gloria Steinem …

(via darren barefoot)