Europeans Sr podium training

Blythe:

… The Couch Gymnast’s Bea Gheorghisor and I (roomies for this week) sat down together post-senior women’s podium training to put together some superlatives about what we saw.

Biggest surprise of the day — team: Great Britain. Two DTYs, out of the blue!

Biggest surprise of the day — individuals: Ruby Harrold …

Mariya Livchikova … looks better than ever

Biggest surprise of the day — skill: Vanessa Ferrari’s full in tuck to immediate back tuck second pass. Um, wow. Honorable mention: Anne Kuhm’s triple full off beam.

Top three teams and why: Russia, Romania and Britain or Italy. Italy looked stronger on beam, Britain better on vault …

Top three individuals: Anastasia Grishina, Larisa Iordache and Mariya Lichikova. Not necessarily in that order …

read more on Examiner – B & B’s Senior Europeans podium training summary

Komova

Men’s Europeans May 21-27, 2012

Women’s European Championships are underway. The Men go later in the month in Montpellier, France.

The last big international before the Olympic Games in London …

Germany. GBR. France. Russia. Ukraine. …

Philippe BOY is the defending AA champ.

details

Team Visa – Lauren Mitchell

Seems Visa has issued take-down orders for others who posted this clip on YouTube. Here’s their official version.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Interview with Team Visa athlete Lauren Mitchell about her training and dedication getting to the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Utah at NCAA Championships

Nice edit.

Behind the scenes with Utah at the 2012 NCAA Championships.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It seems a long time ago already.

Romania – Euro podium training

Couch Gymnast:

… Bea Gheorghisor gives a comprehensive look at the Romanian training during the morning’s podium training session as well as video of the girls training. It seems that Romanian are competing as expected, strong on their pet events; beam and floor, while bars is still lacking …

Bars

When the Romanian gymnasts arrived for podium training yesterday, it was Diana Bulimar, Raluca Haidu, Larisa Iordache and Sandra Izbasa who stepped up and trained uneven bars. The most consistent in this rotation was Larisa Iordache. She managed three or four full sets with only minor form breaks. Diana Bulimar was pretty steady as well. Her form though, was not as consistent: she sometimes hits every handstand, has great straight elbows but other times she pikes her body a little bit and loses the rhythm. You can see that she is struggling to overcome this. Raluca Haidu, on the other hand has much better form but looked the most inconsistent of the three. She had issues especially on her Giant 1/2 to Jaeger. Sandra Izbasa did train bars as well – in her usual style, a bit slow with some form breaks but nothing big. She dismounts with a double twist. …

Romanian Podium Training Report and Video

Diana Chelaru is there, perhaps just observing the competition.

TAA linked to an interesting interview with Head Coach Octavian Bellu.

It may be a close Team competition. Romanian consistency vs Russian brilliance.

Grishina

(via Pushy Queen)

Cheer Ambassadors – movie trailer

A very cool documentary. Who knew Thailand had Cheer?

In 2011 Thailand tied for 1st place in the Cheerleading World Championships. They are the first international team to hold this title. Unfortunately due to a national disaster in Thailand, the team will not be able to defend their championship on 4/26/2012. See what it takes to be the World Champion.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

You can watch the entire documentary online for $8.

Thanks Monica.

Yao Jinnan not injured

It looked bad when the Chinese #1 AA was carried out of National Championships in China after a fall on Vault. But reports are she’s OK. But not competing, as a precaution.

Yao is the first Beam routine in a recently posted FIG FX / Beam highlights video from Tokyo Worlds 2011.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (28min)

Sarah Finnegan, Elizabeth Price

A couple of carefully edited clips from the April Women’s National Team Camp at Karolyi Ranch.

Click PLAY or watch Price’s Bars on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch Finnegan’s Beam on YouTube.