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I’ve seen good high school athletes drop out of training merely to get a crappy minimum wage part-time job. One of their reasons is the high cost of training in gymnastics and acrobatics.

Here’s something interesting:

The Minnesota Gymnastics – Men’s Scholarship Foundation, in partnership with USA Gymnastics and Minnesota USAG Member Clubs, has instituted a scholarship program to financially assist qualified high school student/athletes by offsetting the costs of advanced gymnastics training.

This milestone program will enable these student/athletes to continue their training and gain the skills and experience necessary for future careers in collegiate gymnastics.

details on the scholarships

Leave a comment if you know more about this program.

Team Competition:

1. Great Britain 265.475
2. Russia 263.300
3. Germany 258.475
4. Switzerland 255.275
5. Ukraine 255.075
6. Spain 252.975
7. Greece 252.900
8. France 250.950

All Around:

1. Daniel Keatings GBR 89,700
2. Daniel Purvis GBR 87,600
3. Gustavo Simoes POR 86,500
4. Amin Garibov RUS 86,050
5. Petro Paknjuk UKR 86,025
6. Christian Bazan ESP 85,950
7. Sam Oldham GBR 85,875
7. Igor Pakomenko RUS 85,875
9. Andreas Toba GER 85,675

Keatings is still a Junior? He’s been competing against the big boys for quite a while. Senior champion of England in 2007.

Here is Daniel swinging pommels in 2007. World class.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Congratulations to the UK. Quite a showing.

more details on European Championships linked from GYMmedia (German and English)

related: British Juniors Stun Europe – IG

Yuck.

I was going to write a post on yet another bad invention designed to get cheerleaders over on backward handspring before they are physically and technically ready to do so.

Then I saw the ludicrous price tag — $1450 plus estimated $240 shipping.

That’s even worse than the product itself.

The Handspring Trainer is shipped via a truck and shipping is added based on shipping destination. The Handspring trainer weighs only 55lbs. and it’s dimensions are 60″x48″ when the mats are folded up.

see a video on CoreAthletics.com

In the hands of a good coach, this invention could be useful. In the hands of a cheer coach not capable of spotting bigger athletes, it will — at best — teach bad habits. Spend your $1450 on paying for a spotter, instead.

(via Chalk Bucket)

Li Xiaopeng – 16.900 Pbars

Yang Wei and Chen Yibing – 17.100 Rings

… China now has 10 male gymnasts in contention for the Olympic team: Li, Yang, Chen, Huang Xu, Feng Zhe, Feng Jing, Teng Haibin, Xiao Qin, Liang Fuliang and Zou Kai. …

Competition continues Friday in Tianjin with the men’s and women’s all-around final. …

Li Continues Strong Comeback – IG

Lu Bin was injured at the meet. (Fractured and dislocated elbow.)

source

Strategic mistake? Narrowing your selection group to only 10 athletes with 3 months remaining before the competition? The USA has 45 men competing in Houston in their first Olympic trial.

Still, China is so strong in Men’s Gymnastics it would take a “perfect storm” of disasters for them to lose the Olympics as a team.

Mirror’s Edge is an upcoming … action-adventure video game that is being developed … for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows. The game will be released on these platforms simultaneously. …

The game is set in a conformist dystopia in which communication is heavily monitored by a totalitarian regime, and so a network of runners, including the main character, Faith, are used to transmit messages while evading government surveillance. …

Wikipedia

To see the trailer click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

In 2008, gymnasts rarely get deducted by judges in competition for crossed legs. I could cite plenty of examples from FIG and NCAA.

But here’s the most famous …

Nastia Liukin – Pacific Rim 2008 – GymnasticsMedia.com – larger image

The few that can keep their legs together — NCAA Floor Champion Courtney McCool, for example — do not get enough credit from the B-panel judges. (Courtney did not win because of good leg form, by the way, she won because of music, choreography and good landings.)

I hate to pick on Nastia, who I LOVE because of her artistry and amplitude, but she more than anyone else will be in the media spotlight leading up to the Olympics. Over and over and over again even the non-gymnastics savvy are going to see those crossed feet.

As a coach, I think we need spend more time on trampoline drills with young kids emphasizing feet together.

… For example, have contests to see if kids can do drills with a foam sponge between their feet or knees.

Christchurch School of Gymnastics

gymnastics – “environmental coaching”

Related post: gymnastics – “form foam”

This is what we want to see.

Alicia Sacramone – 2005 World Championships – original – Raisport, Italy

Leave a comment if you have links or other tips for keeping the feet together. Whatever we coaches are doing right now in the gym — it’s not working.

Excellent feature article on Ohio State coach Miles Avery.

His daily routine. Preparing Blaine Wilson, Paul and Morgan Hamm for the Olympics. His read on what it would take for Paul to upset current World Champion Yang Wei in the All-Around. And the USA team strategy for competing against China in Beijing.

There are three ways to read the article:

International Gymnast magazine, May 2008 edition

read it online at InternationalGymnast-digital.com

PDF file linked from Ohio Buckeyes

Even more interesting is an article on the NBC Olympics page:

China’s Yang Wei is the 2006 and 2007 individual all-around world champion in men’s gymnastics. Paul Hamm of the United States is the 2003 all-around champion and winner of gold medal in the individual all-around at the 2004 Olympics.

Hamm took two years off before coming back to the sport; Yang will undoubtedly be favored to win gold at the 2008 Olympics. …

Here, in his own words, Hamm explains, event by event, how the competition may unfold – and what it would take to repeat as Olympic individual all-around champion. …

How to repeat as champion – Paul Hamm breaks down his game plan to beat China’s Yang Wei

Is Paul gutsy and straight-talking?

Or a touch arrogant?

Thanks TCO.

Will compete this week in an informal in-gym meet vs gymnasts from Germany, Italy, Canada, Venezuela and Colombia. Test meet to be held at Karoli Károlyi Ranch.

Two juniors, Mattie Larson and Corrie Lothrop, age eligible for Beijing, have also been invited.

details – Inside Gymnastics

GymDivas

Preliminary team results. Top Eight Advance to Finals.

1. Russia 273.175
2. Germany 268.000
3. Ukraine 267.025
4. Romania 266.275
5. Belarus 265.150
6. Switzerlands 264.800
7. France 263.300
8. Italy 262.950

Like the Women’s European Championships, no All-Around champion will be named. It’s sad to see the steady slide in the importance of the AA.

Fabian Hambuechen of Germany performs on the parallel bars during the European Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Championships on Thursday May 8, 2008 at the Malley Sport Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland.

(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus) – ESPN

Best site to follow the action is GYMmedia. (Dieter Hofmann (SUI) analyst: Volker Minkus (GER) photos)

IG has the full list of event finalists: Russians Rule Qualification at Men’s European Championships

Like most analysts, I believe it will be a showdown in the Team Competition between USA and hosts China.

Andrew Thornton on Gymnast.com is crunching the numbers after the recent competition in China.

… If the scores reported from this meet are legitimate, then China may be so far above and beyond the rest of the world at this point that even the U.S. women can only dream of beating them. …

Gymnast.com

The Team Competition in Beijing will be thrilling. Twelve routines. All count. If one gymnast falls, it’s likely OVER for that team.

That’s why I predict the USA will win. They will be psychologically stronger. The Chinese girls have a history of making mistakes under pressure. And they will face unimaginable pressure.

USA Team Director Marta Karoli has mellowed over the years. She’s (hopefully) about “right”, now, in terms of knowing when to push. And when to rest.

And the USA has a lot of firepower. See what I mean on this tongue-in-cheek video: Marta will make a man out of you. Disney Moulin soundtrack.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I saw it linked from the entertaining difficulty plus execution blog: It’s Featured Gymnastics Montage Time (ix)

As Northern River says, it’s ludicrous to cast those tiny, cute Chinese gymnasts as HUNS. That’s what make this edit so funny.

more videos from malimalimali123 on YouTube.

Related post: Chinese Gymnastics Championships videos !!