Gymnastics Coaching.com

One of Brigid’s posts is right on the mark. Trying to make sense of the enigma that is Tatiana Nabieva:

… In Rotterdam, Tatiana Nabieva proved herself to be everything she has promised. She was inconsistent, but she was brilliant. She was by turns funny and sad, angry and calm.

Laughter would turn to tears at the in the blink of an eye- and just as quickly in the other direction. A skill was performed spectacularly one day and flubbed the next. She demonstrated skills, like her toe-on laid out Tkatchev and an Amanar vault that many gymnasts would only dream of, but when it counted individually, couldn’t pull them out for a medal for herself. …

Couch Gymnast – Tatiana Nabieva- Serious Fun

Starts today.

Dec. 10-12th
Location : Centre Sportif de Gatineau
Gatineau, Quebec
Women’s Artistic Competitor’s List (PDF)

Normally Canada has two major WAG competitions a year. The other is Nationals.

WAG/MAG/T&T
May 23-28
Charlottetown, PEI

But 2011 is a BIG year. We have 2 more major meets on the calendar:

Canada Winter Games
MAG / WAG (Youth)
Feb 11-18, ’11
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Western Canada Summer Games
WAG/MAG
Aug. 10-14
Kamloops, B.C.

For all things Canadian Gymnastics, a good starting point is Gym Score Depot. From that page Stu Cram has all the critical links.

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Update from Kelly Manjak of Oakville Gymnastics near Toronto. In the first trial for the Ontario Canada Winter Games team their kids finished 1st to 5th all-around!

Sabrina Gill was 1st at that Trial with a 57.85. On Bars she’s added 3 new skills from last season.

Oakville has the most competitors of any club at Elite Canada including 6 of the 36 Seniors.

There’s a big group from Gymtastics, Calgary, too. Congratulations.

http://view.picapp.com//JavaScripts/OTIjs.js

Anthony Napolitan was the first to land a BMX double front at Big Air, X Games 2009. He didn’t win, actually.

Click PLAY or watch the historic moment on YouTube.

How do YOU flip a single? … It’s not that difficult, so long as you have a foam pit.

Click PLAY or watch the tutorial on YouTube.

(via Woodward)

Steve Penny was named president of USA Gymnastics in April 2005. Penny, who joined USA Gymnastics in 1999, is responsible for the overall management and strategic planning for the association. …

A sports administrator for more than 20 years, Penny’s professional experience includes vice president of Bob Walsh Enterprises, a private sports marketing company in Seattle, and managing director of USA Cycling. He also worked for Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) on its premier international multi-sport event, the Goodwill Games, and for the Seattle Mariners in community affairs and public relations.

USAG

Personally, I really like Steve. He’s doing a great job and (I hope) bringing in the bacon to pay that salary.

link – Tennis boss paces US sport leader salaries: report

(via About.com Gymnastics)

Terrible.

Bo Frese, known worldwide for his gymnastics stunts, broke his neck during a practice session this weekend at ArtSports World in Colorado Springs. He died Sunday.

Frese, 37, apparently missed a padded landing area as he dropped about 30 feet.

A coach at ArtSports World told KKTV 11 News that Frese was in the happiest time of his life.

He says the facility will be closed Thursday for memorial services for Frese, and a tournament this spring will be named in his honor.

KKTV

I’ve linked a number of times to ArtSports World, “the world’s largest trampoline gymnastics center“.

Bo was a coach there.

Good luck catching up to Kohei Uchimura guys.

At Japanese Nationals:

Vaults: a triple-twisting Yurchenko and a Dragulescu (both 7.0 value), a 7.1-value high bar routine (almost perfectly executed layout Kolman) and a 6.9-value parallel bars routine.

He won floor exercise (16.200), vault (phenomenal 16.787 average) and high bar (16.150)

His AA was 92.750. Ono No Komachi reminds that Japan has some bonus points in addition to FIG.

read more on IG

One of the toughest skills ever competed is named after Tina.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Tina Erceg is the only female gymnast ever to represent independent Croatia at the Olympic Games.

related – IG interview

Eileen Langsley has 4 excellent portfolios of photos from the World Gymnastics Championships.

On her blog she recaps the challenges of shooting there:

In Rotterdam TV introduced the Spidercam for the first time at a gymnastics event. This was a remote overhead camera, supported on four strong cables which were slung across the arena. …

For the photographers, the camera and its cables proved to be a real headache in that you would find yourself a nice clean angle to shoot a piece of apparatus then at the last moment Spidercam would move into the background and become a feature of the image. …

… A number of people were accredited as photographers who had little or no experience of working in this kind of environment. Not only did they shoot as if there was no tomorrow, creating the most unbelievable amount of motor drive noise but they felt it was quite alright to speak to the gymnasts, try to get them to pose for pictures and so on. On a number of occasions I had to move away from some of these snappers …

Inevitably with photographers at the same level as the gymnasts and coaches, it was very easy to get images blocked when they moved around, warmed up or a TV crew moved in for a shot. …

Dutch Courage

An interesting read. Certainly Japan next year will have even more media. Coaches and athletes should be better protected than in Rotterdam.

LangsleySports.com

(via Full Twist)

The 2010 Asian Games (XVI Asiad) in Guangzhou

… The two-week-long competition triggered spending of 122 billion yuan ($18.3 billion) on projects including stadiums, roads and subway lines. That compares with the 9.3 billion-pound ($14.7 billion) budget set in March 2007 for the London Games.

Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, will host the Youth Olympic Games in 2014. …

Bloomberg

This 2001 purpose built structure is called the “Olympic Stadium“, as originally it was meant to be used for some events of the 2008 Olympics.

Capacity 80,012.

Guangzhou (Canton), China has a greater population of around 25 million.

There’s no recession there. Growth was 11.5% last fiscal year.

Guangdong justifies the amount of spent as mostly infrastructure. I partly buy that argument in light of the fantastic rate of growth.

In qualifications.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

He did half out (Dragalescu) in Finals. … Is there anything he can’t do?

Thanks Skyler. Thanks Ono.