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MAG Floor – Handspring forward salto to stand.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Canada has another Nailya Mustafina.

Here’s Shallon Olsen, age-10, winning Canada Winter Games 2011 on Floor ahead of Junior and Senior National Team members. (results PDF)

original on Facebook

She’s 4′ 3″, 54lbs.

Almost every coach I talk to thinks Shallen’s doing too much difficulty at a young age.

But there’s a school of coaching that feels kids should learn difficult acrobatic tricks as young as possible, then stabilize and refine as they grow. You lay off hard ‘pounding’ during peak growth velocity.

Here’s her prelims FX routine at last week.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

She looks safe to me. Leave a comment if you have an opinion.

Note: Shallen was not the youngest athlete at Canada Games. That was Edward Guo, a table tennis player.

Other teams had underage gymnasts compete, but (so far as I know) only if they could not fill the team with age eligible athletes.

related – littlemissgymnast contrasts Shallon with Catherine Lyons from the U.K.

littlemissgymnast is a new blog dedicated to ‘young’ gymnasts.

A recent post discusses super talent prodigies that are for various reasons unable to fulfill the incredibly high expectations as they grow.

… To me, a tragic example is Nailya Mustafina, the most impressive 10 year old I have ever seen on all 4 pieces. She is Natalia’s little sister and many suggested she was the more talented of the two. She broke her femur and has had an uphill struggle to stay at an elite level …

Protecting Young Elite Gymnasts

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

When FIG raised the minimum age to compete at Olympics the intention was to have coaches plan to ‘peak’ kids later in the career.

That’s not happened in every case. Obviously.

World Gymnastics attended the Utah vs University of Michigan meet this past weekend.

… a coming out party for Utah’s Montréal-born Nansy Damianova.

… On her three apparatus last night against the University of Michigan, Damianova matched season and career high scores on the Vault (9.850) and Uneven Bars (9.825) and set her season and career high on the Floor Exercise with a 9.875. …

read more – Flying Low, Feeling High

related – Freshman Nansy Damianova flying under the radar

I’m happy for Nansy. She and Hopfner-Hibbs, recall, competed for Canada in Beijing after a bungled, controversial Canadian selection process.

… This meet was not about posting a huge score, UF coach Rhonda Faehn said.

Right.

… “We knew that tonight was going to be an opportunity to rest quite a few of our heavy hitters and also give opportunities for some of our young athletes to get out there and gain some valuable learning time on the competition floor,” Faehn said …

… “The depth on this team is amazing,” senior Maranda Smith said. “I think having so many great athletes and a huge amount of depth in each event is what’s pushing everyone. From week to week, you could get bumped from the lineup in an event. …

Gator Sports – Gymnastics shows off depth in Senior Night win

Florida can do no wrong, right now.

Winning routine at Jr WOGA.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/Mjg0NDY1MDc2

Watch more video of 2011 WOGA Classic on gymnastike.org

Interesting routine using 2 Weiler skills. (forward free hip)

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/MjYxNDY1MDY0

Watch more video of 2011 WOGA Classic on gymnastike.org

(via Lauren’s Tumblr.)

Certainly one of the most difficult routines in the world. Layout 1/1. Pike full-in.

Update: 6.9 difficulty, higher than any routine at Worlds 2010.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/NTIxNDY1MDE3

Watch more video of 2011 WOGA Classic on gymnastike.org

She won the Jr. all-around 56.850 … with 2 falls.

In my Report Card on the current Code of Points, I gave Men’s Floor Exercise a score of 4/10.

Fugly.

Dwight Normile:

… The 10-skill requirement for men’s routines has led to the six-pass routine, and inadvertently eliminated corner moves (and probably increased the number of Achilles’ tendon injuries).

So men’s floor exercise, once an exploration of creativity, of rhythm and contrast, has become a monotony of tumbling in a confined space. For the most part, there is no “performance” aspect. …

IG – Stretching Out: Let’s Talk Floor Exercise

There are some excellent comments on that post, too.

JuliaK recommends Tomas Gonzalez as the best routine under the current Code that still has a little bit of style. (15.275)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Many feel that reducing the number of counting skills to 8 instead of 10 would improve artistry. I agree.

In addition, I’d love to see some bonus for artistry and variety. The old R.O.V. (Risk, Originality, Virtuosity) was eventually abandoned for good reasons, but it did make for far more interesting routines. 🙂

Searching YouTube can be a nightmare. … Why does Google have such a crappy video search engine?

GymnastTube is an alternative.

And now you can try the new Gymnastike Routines Page and sort (not search) by level, event, meet, and even athlete name.

Gymnastics Routine Videos

This page is still being tweaked for optimal functionality so be patient as we get everything working smoothly.

If I get really desperate, I try Google Video search.