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Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Aussie Nationals is in less than 2wks.

(via Australian Gymnastics Blog)

China dominated at World’s 2007. Here are the reigning gold medalists.

China’s Men’s gymnastic team with Yang Wei, Xiao Qin, Huang Xu, Liang Fuliang, Chen Yaibing, Zou Kai, from left, celebrates during the medal ceremony after winning gold in the Men’s team final of the Gymnastics World Championships in Stuttgart …

(AP Photo/Daniel Maurer)

ESPN – Gymnastics Photo Wire

Who will be on their 2008 Olympic Team? (I’d heard last summer they were trying for minimum 7.0 start values on every routine for Team finals.)

Most of the top contenders:

2008 Chinese National Championships
May 10-11, Tianjin

Men’s Floor Exercise
1t. Zou Kai 16.300 (6.7 A)
1t. Liang Fuliang 16.300 (6.5 A)
3. Zhang Chenglong 15.700

Pommel Horse
1. Xiao Qin (A 6.6) 16.575 ……. WOW
2. Zhang Hongtao (A 6.6) 16.375
3. Chen Chen

Still Rings
1t. Chen Yibing 17.100 (7.4 A)
1t. Yang Wei 17.100 (7.5 A)
3. Yan Mingyong

Men’s Vault
1. Guo Jiahao 16.587
2. Hu Junjie 16.300
3. Liang Mingsheng 16.262
… Li Xiaopeng competed only one vault (16.900, highest score) during preliminaries as a safety precaution

Parallel Bars
1. Huang Xu 16.800 (7.0 A)
2. Feng Zhe 16.650 (7.0 A)
3. Yang Wei 16.475 (7.0 A)

High Bar
1. Zou Kai 16.55 (7.0 A)
2. Feng Zhe 15.925
3. He Jiajin 15.725

Next up for the Chinese Olympic contenders is this weekend’s World Cup in Tianjin. Slated to compete for China are Cheng Fei, He Kexin, Yang Yilin and Xiao Sha for the women, and Yang Wei, Chen Yibing, Li Xiaopeng, Xiao Qin, Zou Kai and Huang Xu for the men.

Lu Bin, who unfortunately suffered a major elbow injury just days before Nationals … is likely out of Olympic contention.

read more on International Gymnast

Detailed, excellent post by Lisa Wang just went up on International Gymnast:

The Chinese National Championships, which also served as one stop of the Olympic team trials, concluded Sunday in Tianjin.

When asked to recap the weeklong competition and where the Chinese women currently stand as a team, Head Coach Lu Shanzhen reiterated that “the [Olympic] team gold is of course of the utmost priority.” Comparing the Chinese and U.S. teams, Coach Lu noted that “the U.S. National Championships have not taken place yet, so we are not certain what secret weapons or new upgrades the U.S. team will unveil. However, from the information gathered so far, in a 6-3-3 team scenario, the Chinese team can now match or even outscore the U.S. on vault, on bars we can outscore the U.S., and on floor exercise if we hit our routines the way we’ve hit them today we’ll be on par with the U.S. team for a good fight.”

Coach Lu’s optimism is wisely tamed with caution though, as he emphasizes that “while we’ve made significant technical upgrades across the board, competition results are not determined on technical ability alone. We have a relatively young squad, so stress management under high-pressure continues to be an area we work on and improve upon.” …

read the rest of this article on IG

… there’s the rub. Can China hit 12 for 12 in the Olympic Team Final?

I’m still thinking the team with the highest start score will win preliminaries. The team toughest psychologically will win Finals. That will be the USA.

Some of the top contenders for the Chinese Olympic Team:

2008 Chinese National Championships
May 10-11, Tianjin

Women’s Vault
1. Cheng Fei 15.812 (Double-twisting Yurchenko, 15.50/Cheng 16.125)
2. Deng Shaojie 15.45
3. Deng Linlin 14.90

Uneven Bars
1. He Kexin 17.325 (7.7 A)
2. Yang Yilin 16.725 (7.7 A)
3. Pang Panpan 16.475
4. Jiang Yuyuan 16.40

Balance Beam
1. Sui Lu 16.575 (7.0 A)
2. Guo Wei 16.500 (6.9 A)
3. Zhang Nan 16.300 (6.8 A)
4. Cheng Fei 16.175 (6.8 A)
5. Li Shanshan 16.125
6. Cui Jie 16.050

Women’s Floor Exercise
1t. Sui Lu 16.200 (6.4 A)
1t. Cheng Fei 16.200 (6.5 A)
3. Yang Yilin 15.675 (6.2 A)
4. Cui Jie 15.500
5. He Ning 15.625
6t. Guo Wei 15.500
6t. Jiang Yuyuan 15.500
8. Xiao Sha 15.450

IMHO, the Chinese girls on Floor are not nearly “on par” with the USA. Here’s co-winner Sui Lu in Finals. Her score of 16.2 out of 16.4 for this routine is clearly absurd.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I don’t particularly like Cheng Fei’s Floor routine (video) either.

more videos from the meet on YouTube posted by fanbutterfly

UPDATE:

Routine-by-routine analysis is bringing to light more questions about the validity of these scores. For example:

BEAM – Gold: Sui Lu (7.0 A-score, two wobbles and a sizable step on the dismount. A 16.575?! These Chinese judges put even the Scam Cup judges to shame when it comes to the outrageous over scoring of home gymnasts.)

polish101 blog

Note: The “Scam Cup” is what brutally accurate bloggers call the American Cup, famous for too high judging scores.

Ooo. … I dunno. This is a GREAT BEAM ROUTINE with a few errors.

Click PLAY or watch Sui Lu win Beam Finals on YouTube.

polish101 does concede that Sui Lu will be on the Olympic Team.

GYMmedia posted a list of all-time greatest competitors:

screenshot

see the entire list – GYMmedia (click Champs All)

The highest ranked current great is Dragalescu. But he has problems and did not compete at European Championships. Some suspect he will not be competing in the Olympics, either.

That would be a big loss for the Games.

Just finished watching the coverage. Hosted by Tim Brando and Amanda Borden, the weeks-delayed edit was far better than usual.

CBS did a pretty good job of condensing the “feel” of the Super 6 Team finals into a short broadcast.

If you missed it, no worries. The best bits will soon be are already uploaded to YouTube.

UPDATE: Check out YouTube ….

… Shame CBS cannot find a way to give us viewers what we want. On demand TV.

Valentin Uzunov does a ton of work putting together his Journal of Gymnastics Education and Development. I’m a booster.

A sample snippet from the newest newsletter:

How to teach a freehip circle to handstand
by sport scientist / coach Lukas Stritt

Valentin has been adding video links to some articles. For example, freehip on YouTube.

The easiest way to see the entire freehip article is to download TheGymPress May 2008 Issue from the TheGymPress.net. A PDF file.

It’s FREE though donations are welcomed.

SEGA will be the publisher of the Official Video Game of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. It will be produced for all major gaming platforms.

Screenshots from the gymnastics portion of the game:

Mexico wins gold. Who knew?

Nastia will be one of the cover athletes.

This game is expected to appeal to the Asian market. I’m hoping it also appeals to female gamers.

It’ll be out this Summer in time for the Games.

Related post: Sonic and Mario at the Olympic Games

Just to show that Shawn and Nastia aren’t getting all the advertising contracts in the Olympic year, here’s Canadian coach Sheena Steacy …

Bowen Works

Media interest in this story, I think, has passed its peak.

Sey memoir not all it’s chalked up to be

is ex-gymnast author Jennifer Sey a liar?

But if you are still following the coverage of her new book, Jennifer posted a reaction to the “very vocal few” … “haters”.

Player Haters – Jen Sey

Event winners:

Floor – GOLOTSUTSKOV Anton (RUS) 15.700
Pommel – BERKI Krisztian (HUN) 16.025
Rings – VAN GELDER Yuri (NED) 16.500
Vault – BLANIK Leszek (POL) 16.562
Parallel Bars – PETKOVSEK Mitja (SLO) 16.025
Horizontal Bar – HAMBUECHEN Fabian GER 16.025

more scores – GymnasticsResults.com

Incredibly, half one third of the European Champions — those in bold — did not qualify for the Beijing Olympics.

Blanik was ineligible for the 2004 Olympics.

What does that say about the FIG Olympic selection process?

Thee very best gymnasts in the world must jump through too many hoops to get to our showcase competition.

Related post: top gymnasts NOT going to Beijing

Thanks for the correction rockygaz.

Related: commentary on GYMmedia – Men’s Apparatus Finals