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… up to 88 male gymnasts (26 teams and 10 individuals) and 89 female gymnasts (26 teams and 11 individuals) will compete, from 14 to 20 June, at the National Gymnastics Arena …

… Qualification is spread over 2 days with 3 men’s artistic gymnastics (MAG) and 2 women’s artistic gymnastics (WAG) events taking place in parallel per day and the results serve as the team standings (CIV). A team consists of 3 gymnasts, all 3 gymnasts can present their routine and the 2 best scores count towards the team total.

In the all-around final the top 18 competitors (max. 1 per country) on all events combined will compete for the title. …

Podium training is on June 13 and is open to media …

UEG

Lauren Hopkins posted a good preview:

Russia, with a team featuring two Olympians (Viktoria Komova and Aliya Mustafina) and last year’s Youth Olympic Games champion (Seda Tutkhalyan), has the potential to run away with the team gold. This is the only certainty in Baku, and yet even this could go awry.

Komova hasn’t seen major international competition since 2012, Mustafina has sat out since last year’s Worlds and it’s unclear what level of difficulty she’ll be showcasing, and Tutkhalyan is a ticking time bomb with her consistency, capable of putting up great scores on vault, beam, and floor, but often falling victim to her own nerves. ..

Gymnastics at the First-Ever European Games

Giulia STEINGRUBER, Fabian HAMBUECHEN, Tomi TUUHA and Eleftherios PETROUNIAS are all flag bearers for their respective nations. There may be more. 🙂

PETROUNIAS is actually competing the AA here, required by Greece for him to qualify to this team.

🙂

See it on twitter.

https://twitter.com/lchops96/status/609075202610331648

If Canadian gymnast Scott Chandler promises to retire from competition at age-40, Ellie will be there. Just to make sure. 🙂

Scott’s “thanks for leaving” birthday party is a FUN meet.

She finished online her studies at Oak Park High School in California.

See her grad selfie on instagram.

https://instagram.com/p/301GtDt5tX/

Silvia Vatteroni:

The President of the International Gymnastics Federation, Bruno Grandi, has kindly agreed to meet us to answer, in an exclusive interview, to our questions about the publication of the new qualification system for the 2020 Olympics. …

… we should start from the calendar, that is the key to the whole system of Olympic qualification. The international calendar, substantially, is based on a single competition every year. Newspapers are only interested in the World Championships …

… there are the European Championships for which there’s a television contract, but everything lasts little more than a week, after which the media attention disappears again. …

Sponsors constantly ask us more visibility …

Grandi points out that FIG has problems getting bids for World Championships in some disciplines. There’s not enough sponsorship money to cover the cost.

He wants more of the best gymnasts from smaller nations to qualify for the Olympics.

… Aljaž Pegan, famous Slovenian gymnast, twice world champion on HB (high bar), has never participated at the Olympic Games. Why? Because his country didn’t have a team. …

… The IOC saves one place for the host country and the other one is assigned, following the universality principle, to an Olympic committee of the continent which is not represented. The universality principle states that at the Olympic Games all the five continents should be represented in every sport. …

… The number of places assigned to every discipline is established by the IOC, and only the IOC has the authority to change them. Of course I tried to ask for more athletes. If the IOC had granted us 110 gymnasts I would have maintained the format of 5 team members. 110 women and 110 men would have been enough … but the IOC never agreed. …

The new rules give more importance to the World Cups, that will become qualifying and so will certainly raise more attention from the media.

These new rules, that I strongly wanted, gained an approval of the 83%, certainly not modest if we consider that countries like Russia, China, Japan and Germany endorsed it …

BRUNO GRANDI, FIG PRESIDENT: “THE NEW QUALIFICATION SYSTEM? I MADE IT TO SAVE THE GYMNASTICS”

I like the new system slightly better than what was used in London. There are pros and cons, of course. And there will be unintended consequences.

It sounds terrific that a wonderful specialist from one of the top nations could get there, despite not competing the AA. But, for example, let’s say China qualifies a team of four. And a Bars specialist for Tokyo. In the Bars Final there is still a maximum of two / nation. In prelims we’ll enjoy seeing all 5 Bars routines. But only a maximum of two will make the apparatus final.

An even smaller ‘team’ size.

The format of this competition is extremely unique. The team final will be 3-up, 2-count, and only one gymnast per country will be allowed to compete in the individual finals.

This rule sparks a major question: which Russian gymnast will make the all-around? …

Inside Gymnastics

Click PLAY or watch them on twitter.

via Nico on GymFever2012

Junior National Coach Markos Baikas and the young Canucks are guests of USA Gymnastics. 🙂

Like the photo on Facebook.

Wow!

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

Sam Mikulak throws down a STICK CONTEST challenge.

Click PLAY or watch it on instagram.