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The most raved about routine of the weekend, so far.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Will kids start emulating the weird start to her sprint?

Grace Chiu GraceClick on Facebook:

Elite Canada Champions …

Argo: Sam Zakutney (National Capital), Tyro: Aiden Marsden (Capital City), Junior: Kal Nemier (Flicka), Senior: Jackson Payne (Capital City).

Thank you and congratulations to Gymnastics Mississauga for hosting a wonderful meet!

Sam Zakutney

And thanks to Grace for providing some information and posting a few of her wonderful photos on Facebook, almost the only publicity for the meet that I could find online.

Support her photo site graceclick.ca

Blythe is in France at the World Cup meet:

I was put in the mood for gymnastics today (oh, who am I kidding? I am always in the mood for gymnastics!) on the metro to the Bercy by a group of 10-12 year old girls who got on a few stops away from the arena. They were decked out for “la gym” with signs, tricolor pompoms and the French flag painted on their cheeks.

One girl had streaked red, white and blue eye shadow on her eyelids so that when she blinks you see the French flag. They sang a little song that basically went “If you love gymnastics, clap your hands” followed of course by hand claps. There is so much support and genuine excitement surrounding this event! …

Only 4 gymnasts qualified to Finals, cash prizes for the top 3.

Men’s floor: 1. Gonzalez 2. Koczi 3. Bouhail

Men’s pommel: 1. Smith 2. Bertoncelj 3. Tommasone

Women’s vault: 1. Mustafina 2. Nabieva 3. Chelaru

Men’s rings: 1. Chen 2. Balandin 3T. Pluzhnikov and Morandi

read more – Gymnastics Examiner LIVE coverage

The 20th annual Jason Whitfield Invitational was held in Ann Arbor, Mich., March 12-13.

Cathy and Jim Whitfield announced the 2011 Whitfield Foundation scholarship winners of $3,000 each are: Danell Leyva, Jesse Silverstein, John Orozco and Stacey Ervin.

Three of the four scholarship winners attended the meet this year. The Whitfield Foundation was established after the death of Jason who died in a motorcycle accident in 1991 while pursuing his own gymnastic dreams. Thus far, the Whitfield Foundation has awarded a total of $180,500 to 67 male gymnasts from across the country.

Cathy and Jim Whitfield with scholarship recipients Jesse Silverstein, John Orozco and Stacey Ervin. Danell Leyva not pictured.

USAG

1. Jackson Payne 167.350
2. Casey Sandy 166.000
3. Jayd Lukenchuk 164.250

Click PLAY or watch his Pommels on YouTube.

Results for all levels of competition are posted on the Gymnastics Canada official webpage.

Here’s an international competition where 80% of the medals will not be taken home by one nation.

Blythe LIVE blogged the World Cup meet in France:

… qualifiers on all events for tomorrow’s event finals:

Women’s vault qualifiers:

* 1. Tatiana Nabieva
* 2. Aliya Mustafina
* 3. Diana Chelaru
* 4. Jennifer Khwela

Women’s bars qualifiers:

* 1. Aliya Mustafina
* 2. Huang Qiushuang
* 3. Elisabeth Seitz
* 4. Tatiana Nabieva

Women’s beam qualifiers:

* 1. Aliya Mustafina
* 2. Ana Porgras
* 3. Anna Dementyeva
* 4. Lauren Mitchell

Women’s floor qualifiers:

* 1. Sandra Izbasa
* 2. Diana Chelaru
* 3. Vanessa Ferrari
* 4. Anna Dementyeva

Men’s floor finals qualifiers:

* 1. Tomas Gonzalez
* 2. Gael da Silva
* 3. Thomas Bouhail
* 4. Flavius Koczi

Men’s pommel horse qualifiers:

* 1. Prashanth Sellathurai
* 2. Louis Smith
* 3. Saso Bertonclej
* 4. Cyril Tommasone

Men’s rings qualifiers:

* 1. Chen Yibing
* 2. Koji Yamamuro
* 3. Konstantin Pluzhnikov
* 4. Alexander Balandin

Men’s vault qualifiers:

* 1. Dmitri Kaspiarovich
* 2. Tomas Gonzalez
* 3. Theo Seager
* 4. Luis Rivera

Men’s parallel bars qualifiers:

* 1. Feng Zhe
* 2. Mitja Petkovsek
* 3. Epke Zonderland
* 4. Roman Kulesza

Men’s high bar qualifiers:

* 1. Danell Leyva
* 2. Epke Zonderland
* 3. Marijo Moznik
* 4. Jeffrey Wammes.

Some highlights:

Sandra Izbasa, FX: Double turn with leg up. Castanets before Tango music starts. Full in tucked with a step back. Triple full to single stag jump, very nice. Tourjete full, very good. Long pause in the corner before her 1.5 to Rudi to little beat jump in the air as she rebounds out. Switch ring, switch half. Again, a fairly long pause, but terrific easy looking 2.5 to front tuck full to end the routine! Wonderful job!

Aliya Mustafina, UB: Staldfer full to toe Khorkina II, inbar blind to pike Jaeger, inbar full to Tkatchevb to Park to stalder half to toe shoot to high, toe full to 1.5 twisting tuck with great landing, tiny hop. Basically a carbon copy of what she did at the American Cup. Lovely work. Lovely. 15.833.

Click PLAY or watch Aliya on YouTube.

See more of the Bar routines on Couch Gymnast.

Huang Quishuang, UB: Hecht mount, blind to front stalder to Ono, to Rykbalko, pirouette to pike Jaeger. Pak…toe hecht to high. Rybalko to half turn to giants to stuck double layout. Excellent routine for Huang! 15.466.

Theo Seager, VT: WOW! Dragulescu with the best landing yet, just a small hop! …

(GB)

read the full meet report on Gymnastics Examiner

Oh, say! can you see …

City of Jesolo Trophy
Jesolo, Italy
March 19, 2011

Senior
Team
1. USA, 232.250
2. Italy, 212.800
3. Russia, 210.200

All-around
1. McKayla Maroney, USA/Laguna Niguel, Calif., 57.850
2. Jordyn Wieber, USA/DeWitt, Mich., 57.700 … fall on FX
3. Alexandra Raisman, USA/Needham, Mass., 57.400
Other U.S. finishes

Individual events
Vault
1. McKayla Maroney, USA/Laguna Niguel, Calif., 16.000
2. Jordyn Wieber, USA/DeWitt, Mich., 15.950
3. Alexandra Raisman, USA/Needham, Mass., 15.100

Uneven bars
1. Bridgette Caquatto, USA/Naperville, Ill., 14.500
2. Sabrina Vega, USA/Manhattan, N.Y., 14.350
3. Jordyn Wieber, USA/DeWitt, Mich., 14.250

Balance Beam
1. Alexandra Raisman, USA/Needham, Mass., 14.750
2. Jordyn Wieber, USA/DeWitt, Mich., 14.700
3. Gabriella Douglas, USA/Virginia Beach, Va., and Sabrina Vega, USA/Manhattan, N.Y., 14.550

Floor exercise
1. Alexandra Raisman, USA/Needham, Mass., and Sabrina Vega, USA/Manhattan, N.Y., 14.050
3. Gabriella Douglas, USA/Virginia Beach, Va., 13.950

Junior
Team
1. USA, 233.050
2. Russia, 220.500
3. Italy, 214.750

All-around
1. Kyla Ross, USA/Aliso Viejo, Calif., 58.750
2. Madison Kocian, USA/Dallas, 57.750
3. Katelyn Ohashi, USA/Newcastle, Wash., 57.700

Individual events
Vault
1. Alexis Priessman, USA/Cincinnati, Ohio, 15.750
2. Kyla Ross, Kyla Ross, USA/Aliso Viejo, Calif., 15.450
3. Elizabeth Price, USA/Coopersburg, Pa., 15.400

Uneven Bars
1. Anastasia Grishina, Russia, 15.100
2. Kyla Ross, USA/Aliso Viejo, Calif., and Katelyn Ohashi, USA/Newcastle, Wash., 14.900

Balance beam
1. Kyla Ross, USA/Aliso Viejo, Calif., 14.850
2. Anastasia Sidorova, Russia, 14.800
3. Madison Kocian, USA/Dallas, 14.450

Floor exercise
1. Katelyn Ohashi, USA/Newcastle, Wash., 14.050
2. Anastasia Sidorova, Russia, 14.000
3. Anastasia Grishina, Russia, 13.850

see detailed results on Couch Gymnast

Commentary on GymNiceTic.

And the value of this meet, long term? …

International Gymnast:

Shao Bin and Korean judge Nam Seung Ku comprised the Difficulty (D) panel during the floor exercise final at November’s Asian Games in Guangzhou. The FIG announced this week it had launched a disciplinary case against Shao for altering the Execution (E) score in order to move China’s Zhang Chenglong into a tie for the gold medal with Korea’s Kim Soo Myun.

(Shao Bin) insists he acted correctly to produce a fair result. …

Shao, the dean of the Physical Education College at Shanghai University, told newspaper “Sports Weekly” that he and Nam agreed the Execution score needed to be changed because Zhang was underscored. …

Shao said that both he and Kim agreed the change was necessary to produce the correct result.

read more on IG – Chinese Judge Defends Changing ‘Unfair’ Score

Even if he did the wrong thing for the right reason, … Even if the Korean judge agreed, … Shao Bin will still be found guilty, I predict. The difficulty judges cannot change scores of execution judges. Grandi will insist.

On the second big issue from this controversy:

FIG Men’s Technical Committee President Adrian Stoica was present to supervise the competition. …

In an earlier interview with Chinese news portal Tencent, Chinese team manager Ye Zhennan blasted Stoica and said he should be held accountable for the incident.

“[I want to ask Stoica,] why did you release the score when it was submitted?” Ye said. “Why did you sign off on the final ranking list? If one mistake is forgivable, what about two? And then you accuse the judge to FIG? Who is going to launch an investigative procedure against you?” …

Stoica declined to respond directly to Ye’s comments, noting to IG that the investigation is still active …

In the IG article Stoica’s report from the competition is quoted. But after reading it, I’m still uncertain why Stoica signed off on the results knowing at the time that he would later be sanctioning Shao Bin for that incident.

Read more commentary on The Chinese Gymnastics Blog, the site most closely following this story.

Gymnastike:

Welcome to the 2011 NCAA Conference Championships homepage!

Follow your favorite teams via live updates all in once place. …

Many of the college teams featured below will be providing live updates throughout their competition so you can closely follow all the action with up to the second inside information.

This is the final weekend for teams to count their team totals towards their Regional Qualifying score and only the top 36 teams will qualify to NCAA Regionals.

Gymnastike – 2011 Conference Championships

A summary of how the College women run their ‘playoffs’ is posted on College Gym Fans – The Final Stretch.

That page has some interesting commentary on Florida’s Dominance, Judging, Routine Conformity, etc.

Update: He Kexin has withdrawn with a forearm strain.

Blythe Lawrence is there LIVE blogging …

Tatiana Nabieva, VT: DTY with a step back. Smart decision not to do the Amanar. Piked Podkopayeva second vault, very nice, small step. A drama free rotation from Nabieva.

Qualifiers: Men’s floor: Gonzalez, Da Silva, Bouhail, Koczi. Still rings: Chen, Yamamuro, Pluzhnikov, Balandin.

Koji Yamamuro, SR: The lone competitor from Japan here gets a nice ovation…strong routine with a stuck full twisting double layout dismount from Japan’s resident strongman. A lot of fight and a lot of pride on his face during that exercise. 15.633 good for second right now.

On high bar, Zonderland and reigning world champion Zhang Chenglong will get to have a rematch. (Oooh…)

The goal of today for all these gymnasts is just to make the top four in order to move on to tomorrow’s final. So it’s not too much of a surprise to see Deng Linlin warming up a bhs, bhs, layout to two feet to Korbut on beam, or to see Yana Demyunchuk doing a roundoff, layout on the same event. It’s a risky strategy to throw everything you’ve got in the qualifying, because if you fall, you’re done.

LIVE notes on Gymnastics Examiner

official meet updates page (French)