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From John Crumlish on the fantastic all new International Gymnast online:

Yemen’s Nashwan Al-Harazi told IG he is “still in shock” after recently receiving a wild-card berth for this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing.

coach Jim Holt and Nashwan Al-Harazi

… Al-Harazi will be the first gymnast from Yemen to take part in Olympic competition, after a tripartite commission selected him and female gymnast Thuong Di Thi Ngan (Vietnam) for the two available wild-card berths for Beijing.

The tripartite commission consists of the International Olympic Committee, the International Gymnastics Federation and the Association of National Olympic Committees. Geographic representation at the Olympics is one of the factors for designating wild-card berths.

“I know that there are gymnasts with greater accomplishments than me who have not been invited to Beijing,” Al-Harazi told IG from Yemen this week. “I feel a great responsibility to them and to the international gymnastics community to perform my best, and to be a worthy example of what the Olympic spirit is supposed to mean.”

…

“I’m looking to have my floor, pommel horse and vault Start Values in the top 15 in the competition,” said Al-Harazi, who placed 27th on vault at the 2006 Worlds and 21st on vault at the 2007 Worlds. “Ensha Allah, my goal is to perform my exercises cleanly!”

…

“Jim started me on the path that led to Beijing,” Al-Harazi said. “It was a dream come true for me to be able to live and train in America with him and Hannah this past year, and to be at Worlds with ‘my second parents.'”

In 1996 Holt conducted an IOC Solidarity Course in Sana’a, Yemen, where he asked a group of 40 Yemeni coaches and gymnasts to define their goals.

“They said, ‘We’d like to be competitive with the Arab countries,'” Holt recalled. “I responded, ‘That’s too small. If you’re going to do this, you need to pick an impossible dream and chase it. There’s no reason that Yemen can’t have a gymnast compete at the World Championships or even qualify for the Olympic Games.'”

Al-Harazi, then age 9, was among the group of gymnasts standing on a mat next to a homemade vault board. “I pointed to Nashwan and said, ‘This could be your guy. This could be the first gymnast from Yemen to compete at Worlds,'” Holt said. “And as Nashwan told you, he believed me.”

Al-Harazi “Still in Shock” Over Wild-Card Olympic Berth – IG

An inspiring story. Dream BIG is the lesson learned.

Related post: top gymnasts NOT going to Beijing

You’ve got to see this kid – Jashaun Agosto:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Straight to the Bar)

International Gymnast online posted live coverage of the competition in San Jose, California.

Senior All-Around

1. Paul Hamm USA 94.450
2. Sasha Artemev USA 92.300
3. Lu Bo CHN 91.350
4. Maxim Devyatovsky RUS 90.800
5. Raj Bhavsar USA 90.650
6. Takuya Inatera JPN 90.200
7. Wang Heng CHN 89.450
8. Joshua Jefferis AUS 88.600
9. Nathan Gafuik CAN 88.100
10. Liang Mingsheng CHN 87.900

UPDATED Team:
Final results — The U.S. beats China and Japan for the team title. Japan jumped in front of Russia with a great ending on vault.

read the details – IG online

Congratulations to Paul and Team USA. Things are looking good leading up to Beijing.

… Said Hamm’s coach, Miles Avery, “He’s done a good job in terms of working on his strength. If he’s going to win the Olympics, it’s got to look beautiful, and that’s what we’re going for.” …

San Francisco Chronicle

original – Hamm on Vault – ESPN

I am just working backward through a terrific, little known gymnastics blog posted by janghwa_hongryeon somewhere in the USA.

(… anyone else tiring of cryptic pseudonyms on the internet?)

Quality commentary on Women’s Artistic Gymnastics around the world.

A good sample post — Code Tweaking in 2009 — concerns rumoured changes to the international judging rules:

Finally. No, they’re not bringing the 10 back. It’s dead and its corpse is a feast for the maggots now.

The biggest change for the WAG side is the change from counting the 10 highest skills to 8. Still too many, IMHO, because BB will still be skill-pause-skill-pause and UB will be hour long sets with gymnasts trying to fit in a bunch of D and E elements, but hopefully this will end the side double full pass on FX. I doubt it’ll be the end of the double pike dismount, though.

“Gymnasts from all disciplines will have to show exemplary mastery in their exercises. Execution will be favored.”

These principles are not new, and exist within the philosophy of the current Code of Points. However, beginning in 2009, the women’s Code will reduce the number of required elements from 10 to eight. That should lead to shorter routines and longer careers.

…

The “longer careers” comment is debatable. That’s not happening as long as they keep putting emphasis on risky high level elements and chucking skills that are beyond a gymnast’s capabilities.

Actually, the change to fewer counting elements will likely lead to better routines. The most difficult skills will still be included. But there will be easy, clean connecting elements between them.

… Nellie Kim in an International Gymnast interview had said that when they picked the original number for skills to be counted, they picked some arbitrary number and it ended up being 10. Glad they all thought this through before putting it into practice. But she also felt it was too many and wanted it to go down to six. Six is a much better number. The gymnasts can put in a few big skills, don’t end up getting tired halfway through, don’t have to have five tumbling passes, can have their skills connected and flow much better on BB and UB, etc. Speaking of tumbling passes, I’m hoping they’ll put a cap on the number of passes in a routine, four being the max. Five is just excessive.

read the rest of this post

I like 6 counting skills better than 8, as well. At least on Floor. Perhaps on Beam. Not necessarily on Bars.

Nellie Kim’s first comment is nonsense. Counting 10 skills was included in the original concept as developed by Hardy Fink over 20yrs. There was nothing arbitrary about it. (Hardy is no longer involved in the code revisions. And is NOT happy with the current rules.)

Other excellent posts include:

Montage Time!

Flash of the Past: Yang Bo (CHN)

On the VOX network, Lightbulb Hands – The Perfect 10 Lives is a pretty blog as well. I have to visit the site directly — Lightbulb Hands — as Google Reader cannot seem to find an RSS feed. THANKS. If you click on the RSS link in the right hand navigation, you can subscribe. (Auto-find did not work.) It has no “subscribe by email” function. We’ve linked to it under BLOGS in the right hand navigation.

Check it out for yourself: Lightbulb Hands

Comic-Capoeira in San Sebastian, Spain.

original Рflickr Рmike (el madrile̱o)

by Rick McCharles

Finally, a web 2.0 online gymnastics magazine.

At first glance, the revamped IG looks GREAT. Far more functional than their nearest competitor, Inside Gymnastics online. The next best online magazine content-wise, GYMmedia.com from Europe, is positively hideous in comparison.

… We have been working hard to bring you a brand-new Web site for the Olympic year, and we’re proud to unveil it in conjunction with the Pacific Rim Championships in San Jose, Calif. We will be offering live coverage of every artistic gymnastics session in San Jose.

International Gymnast Magazine and International Gymnast Magazine Online continue to be the leader in global gymnastics news, features and photos, but we are eager to hear from you! We invite you to register with our site so you may comment on all our articles, and you may even submit your own article or news tip for our consideration!

We are still working on improving our new site. We will be adding many more features in addition to including the past eight years of content into the online archives. Please let us know how we’re doing or if you experience any technical glitches or notice any problems. Please comment below or e-mail us at sitefeedback (AT) intlgymnast.com.

Congratulations to whomever is responsible for this huge upgrade. I’ll be far more actively engaged at the new site now that you have an RSS feed.

As editor of GymnasticsCoaching.com, I spend all day long looking at gymnastics websites. Even on launch, IG 2.0 is one of the best.

Check it out right now: IntlGymnast.com

A year after we first posted the award winning tell all exposé Secrets of a Gymnast by Andrei Nourescu, I’m embarrassed to say I still have not read it.

There seems to be several different covers. With at least two different titles in English:

Buy a copy for yourself, $20 at Cafe Press.

Books like this turn me off. I am suspicious of those who make money by “revealing” the “scandals” of the past. But, in the case of Romania, many of these scandals have been well documented already. For example: Romanian gymnasts faked age to compete (BBC, 2002).

I could believe almost anything possible.

That’s Alexandra Marinescu on the cover, one of the girls who’s age was faked.

Leave a comment if you’ve read the book and can recommend it. Or not.

Thanks northernriver of difficulty plus execution for the reminder.

Hollywood does Mixed Martial Arts. It’s been getting bad reviews since opening March 14th.

Richard Roeper, host of At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, gave the film a marginal “thumbs up” saying “I laughed so much at the litany of clichés that I finally had to admit I was entertained from start to finish by this cheesy knock-off.” …

Never Back Down – Wikipedia

See for yourself.

Click PLAY or watch the movie trailer on YouTube.

(via Straight to the Bar)

The Platt Brothers from San Diego are super popular coaches at Woodward West Gymnastics Camp. And very funny guys. They’ve coached thousands of kids over the years.

Their comedy troupe is up for KIIS FM’s “best unsigned artist and music video” based on internet votes. The wnners get $10,000 and perform LIVE at Wango Tango in LA.

Here’s their video for this contest. It includes tumbling and acrobatics:

http://a1671.v249353.c24935.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1671/24935/v0001/cchannel.download.akamai.com/24935/bigbreak/1206090717_the_ruckus_sequence_01_compressed.wmv

If you like it, click through to vote for The Platt Brothers.

As a response to the clap chin-ups post, Katrina from CrossFit Lethbridge in Canada linked to this challenge.

Click PLAY or watch Chad “Action” Brandt on YouTube.

There must be many more variations we could share, all leading up to the type of challenges done in the Ninja Warrior TV show. Those defeated even Paul Hamm and Jordan Jovtchev.

Leave a comment if you have seen other challenging pull-up variations.