Romanian Bars

Romania could have missed the Team Final in Nanning. No depth on Bars in a 5-up, 4-count competition.

… an uneven bars rotation of 39 points and 25th place on the event. Romania was luckily qualifying in 7th place for the final. …

In the 3-up, 3-count final, depth is a little less important. Romania finished 4th behind Bronze Russia.

“We have a young team, that is now growing/maturing. But we wouldn’t have come so close if others had not had mistakes” said coach Sandu after the final. …

For Worlds 2015?

… With the addition of 2015 seniors Laura Jurca and Andreea Iridon, the return of Diana Bulimar, bars is not looking as grim all of a sudden. Iridon is a polished bars worker, the only challenge for Larisa at the recent Nationals and has good difficulty on this event (Ricna, full in dismount) as is Jurca (who does a pretty good Hindorff), while Diana Bulimar does not have huge elements but manages execution scores of over 8.5 and is very consistent. …

Rom-cover (1)

click over to Bea’s wrap-up on Couch Gymnast for more – Romania says “Game On!”

Simone Biles – Floor

Undeniably the World Champion. Sky high, difficult tumbling. Decent leaps. Energetic and interesting choreography.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Some people like to complain about this routine. But nobody can claim Simone should not have won the title. 🙂

Oleg Verniaiev – P Bars

His many fanboys finally got their wish. Oleg is a World Champion.

Difficult. Interesting. HUGE stuck dismount.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Embarrassingly, organizers played the wrong National Anthem at awards. Oleg’s from Ukraine, not Uzbekistan. More Russian plotting? 🙂

full P Bar Final results

dancer Taylor Hatala

Have you heard about this 11yr-old?

This clip with Laurence Kaiwai went viral.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Here’s the follow up with Matt Steffanina.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Yahoo News)

UCLA facility upgrade

The Bruins have launched a crowdsourced fund-raising campaign to raise their training equipment up on to platforms to simulate the podium used at NCAA Championships.

$150,000 in 30 days. That should be no problem with their rich & famous fan base. 🙂

Hopefully injuries will be reduced, as well.

details here

Epke Epke Epke

Zonderland had a 7.7 start without needing to do 3 releases in series.

Kohei, the eventual silver medalist, could only smile after watching this.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Epke’s form continues to improve. 🙂 He should have won.

On the other hand, those guys in the blue jackets supposedly judging the routines awarded the same execution score 8.525 to Kohei as Epke.

That’s wrong. Kohei’s is considerably cleaner.

Click PLAY or watch Kohei’s routine on YouTube.

Execution judging is terrible in both WAG and MAG in 2014. But the rules and evaluation are worst of all on Horizontal Bar. 😦