update on Mustafina’s injury

Artistic Gymnastics is a dangerous sport.

That’s for sure.

… Mustafina dodged a bullet by only tearing her meniscus, an injury that often requires surgery but is not considered career-ending. Bridget Sloan tore her meniscus in March of 2008 and made the Olympic team in July. …

Gymnastics Examiner

Gymnastike:

… World champion Aliya Mustafina of Russia was by far the favorite to win today’s all around final at the European Championships in Berlin, but she went down in the first rotation of night after landing her yurchenko 2.5 twist vault …

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I’ve got my fingers crossed that further examination doesn’t reveal additional damage.

You can send a message to Aliya on her Facebook Get Well Soon page. Or on her Aliya Mustafina Online Facebook page.

stoop shoot Jaeger – Danusia Francis

Danusia Francis competed the AA European Finals for GB, including this cool sequence. (video from an earlier meet)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Moustafina’s injury on Vault

@IntlGymnast:

… suffered a torn meniscus and will need surgery, coach Valentina Rodionenko says

Let’s hope there’s no ligament damage.

Many are blaming Aliya’s loose form and ‘bad technique‘ for the injury.

I don’t buy that, in this case.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The vault is not all that poorly executed.

Instead, blame the Code that values the extra half twist at so much higher a start value than double twist. And the Execution judges who differentiate only 0.2 – 0.3 between a good Amanar, and a poor one.

Because this injury happened to the World’s best, FIG (Nellie Kim and Bruno Grandi) will have to answer to the general public why the new code (2006) results in such serious accidents.

In reality, her injury is very similar to what happened to Kyle Shewfelt in 2003, old Code, on the same Vault. It’s easy to do if you are still twisting while landing with that kind of impact force.

(via The All Around Gymnastics News on Facebook)

Dementieva is European Champ

1. Anna Dementieva
2. Elisabeth (Elizabeth) Seitz
3. Amelia Racea
4. Diana Chelaru
5. Carlotta Ferlito
6. Vanessa Ferrari

The 2011 all-around Russian National Champion, Anna Dementieva (Dementyeva) is European Champion. (57.475)

Congratulations.

Recall she was picked Couch Gymnast Prize for Elegance 2010.

I’m amazed you can win Europeans with only a Yurchenko 1/1 twist.

Yet the competition looked quite good, from what I could watch on Romanian TV.

Details on Gymnastics Examiner LIVE blog.

World Championships in Tokyo?

THE ALL AROUND at European Championships:

… The answer seems to be: Probably not.

The All Around has yet to find a coach that would happily send his or her gymnasts to Japan in October. With many of the female competitors at Worlds likely to be minors, the main concern is the pressure parents face in making a decision of whether to let their children compete despite the potential health hazard. …

… The FIG has taken the decision to wait [before making a final decision] until the Council meeting May 19-20 in San José. …

The General Secretary of the Japanese Gymnastics Federation is due to arrive in Berlin over the weekend to discuss the situation with FIG officials.

According to FIG Executive Committee member Wolfgang Willam stated that so far the only official offer to take over from Tokyo had been received from Moscow …

Notes from Berlin I

Blythe is hearing the same thing.

This guy is smiling.

Moustafina Bars / Beam

From prelims.

Click PLAY or watch her Bars on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch her Beam on YouTube.

On Bars our World Champion will win more often than not against He Kexin and Beth Tweddle. She’s awesome and consistent.

But she fills me with unconfidence on Beam.

crappy, potentially dangerous, gymnastics articles

For fun I’ve been reading some articles from “content mill” or “content farm“ sites mentioning gymnastics. They are hard to avoid in 2011.

Low quality crap written to get a high Google ranking, pushing Google ads deceptively.

The best known (and most banned) is eHow.

Here’s an amusing one from All Expert Articles:

… There are plenty of fresh and also enjoyment toys in a gym. Nevertheless possibly the almost all fun doll in the health and fitness center is actually a stuff security gap.

There’s 2 varieties * a shed memory foam hole and also a resi-pit. A loose polyurethane foam hole is a lot like a major, enormous pool area filled up with quite gentle space-age foam hinders alternatively of water. Resi-pits resemble major big soft cushions, generally one yard thick developed down into the floorboards. …

How to Have Fun With Gymnastics by ElenovskajaMedlents

It seems to have been written by a computer programed to include key words at any cost: nudists, Huge Playthings for ladies, etc.

Don’t Let Anybody Wreck Ones Gymnastics Enjoyable

related – Read Write Web – Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried