Gymnastics Coaching.com

Back in the gym. Looking pretty good.

Click PLAY or watch it on this Gymnastike videocast. (3min 29sec)

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/NTYzNzA0NjEz?related=1

Watch more video of Jordyn Wieber on gymnastike.org

(via WOGymnastike)

Top 3 in prelims at Europeans.

Max Whitlock was the star performer qualifying in top spot in to the all-around (89.365) and floor (15.466) finals and qualifying second only to Olympic Champion Kristian Berki on pommel (15.533). …

British Gymnastics

official results (PDF)

RRG – European Championships 2013 – men’s qualifications

GREAT coverage of Europeans online this year. Thanks to everyone there.

Some of the best links are posted atop the home page.

Europeans: Examiner | Couch Gymnast | Rewriting Russian Gymnastics | The All Around

Social media is the fastest way to get updates. Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The Men’s competition has begun.

2013 Euros: David Belyavskiy takes a three-point lead in men’s subdivision one

I’m en route to NCAA Championships at UCLA.

40hrs, or so, in transit.

It’s going to be worth it. I can hardly wait.

Click PLAY or watch a UCLA tribute video on YouTube.

Showtime.

An illegal jump on skis, actually.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

He makes that look pretty easy. 🙂

(via Gregory V Roe Trampoline on Facebook)

Invictus brings an epic story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) joined forces with the captain of South Africa’s rugby team, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), to help unite their country.

Click PLAY or watch the Invictus film trailer on YouTube.

Nelson Mandela had been an athlete for most of his life, but he had never played the game that would ultimately play a major role in saving the country he led out of apartheid and into democracy.

With his nation immersed in racial tension and on the brink of civil war, and with white, army-trained men angry at the shift in the balance of power, Mandela … embraced the South African national rugby team, a bastion of white society hated by blacks as a symbol of oppression and racism, before the country hosted the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

… John Carlin detailed in 2008:

The Springboks beat France, Australia and others to reach the final against New Zealand, then the best team in the world. But the day’s crowning moment came before the game had even begun, when Mandela went out onto the field, before a crowd of 65,000 that was 95% white, wearing the green Springbok jersey, the old symbol of oppression, beloved of his apartheid jailers. There was a moment of jaw-dropping disbelief, a sharp collective intake of breath, and suddenly the crowd broke into a chant, which grew steadily louder, of “Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!” […]

The whole country, black and white, sang and danced into the night, united for the first time in its history around one cause, one delirious celebration. There was no civil war, no right wing terrorism, and Mandela achieved his life’s goal of creating what remains still today, and would have seemed almost impossible then: a stable, multiracial democracy.

Think Progress

Farewell South Africa. I’ll be 40hrs en route to NCAA Championships in Los Angeles.

Corey Malinowski:

Video: Skiers Attempt World Record Simultaneous Backflip

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Thanks Mirel.

… Everyone who has seen an Alabama gymnastics meet over the past three-plus years waits for this moment. Whether she is first in the lineup or toward the end, when Ashley Sledge steps up for her uneven bars routine, all eyes focus on her. …

“The funny thing about that is that it took me like six years to learn that dismount,” Sledge said. “I could not get it – I just could not do it. I didn’t do that dismount until the year before I got to college and I had only competed it once because I tore my Achilles the first meet I competed it (on a different event). But I love that dismount. That’s probably the skill that I’ll miss the most when I finish gymnastics, just being able to crank my giants and fly.”

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

“I really think about the mechanics when I’m doing it because I try to keep it really rhythmic,” Sledge said. “For me, it goes down, up, down, up, down, up, stick – that’s what I say when I do it. I can definitely tell when it’s on — I don’t like for it to spin too fast and I don’t like it when it goes too high — there’s definitely a sweet spot and I know exactly when I’m in it.”

“I’ll miss the sense of team – I couldn’t be an individual gymnast anymore,” Sledge said. “Individual accomplishment isn’t important to me anymore; I’m not in this for me. It’s not what drives me. Just knowing that 16 other people are counting on me to do my job, that’s what gets me thinking, `Okay, let’s do this, let’s get this.'” …

read more – Alabama Gymnastics Team’s Road to a Three-peat National Championship is Paved With 9.9s

Full Twist – Refresh your mind: WAG 2012 European Champions

Valentina Rodionenko:

At Europeans, we are expecting Romania’s Larissa Iordache to be a main rival – she is well prepared; her execution could be better, but her acrobatics are very good and she is constantly making upgrades to her programme. …

Click PLAY or watch Iordache’s Doha Beam on YouTube.

Andre Agassi:

Tennis is a lonely sport, probably the most lonely. You’re out there with no team, no coach and no place to hide. That’s why tennis players not only talk to themselves but answer. And yet all that loneliness eventually teaches you to stand alone. The high standards that tennis imposes on us, the self reliance it demands of us, that’s the reason why tennis has produced so many of life’s great game changers.

Brigid McCarthy:

This quote really resonated with me the first time I read it.

Tennis is a lonely sport, probably the most lonely…

Actually, I know one that is just as lonely. …

While most other teenagers are moving in packs, the gymnast is out there learning self-sufficiency and the kind of courage it takes to fight life’s physical and psychological battles unaided. And this ability to “stand alone” that Agassi describes is a self-sufficiency that will certainly help them at testing times in their later lives. …

read more on Couch Gymnast – Gymnastics: Only The Lonely