… One of the nicest gifts I have had this Worlds is the cheeky pleasure of standing behind Beth Tweddle and Amanda Kirby as they watched the rest of the final unfold. The fun of listening to them chat lies in the way they are just so very mundane and real in these major sporting moments. It was more like listening to an old married couple watch television than watching a World Championship event final.
… “The old people won today,” remarked Dutch journalist Peter van Leeuwen in the media center after the meet. He’s right — of the people who have captured individual event titles thus far, the youngest was bouncy 19-year-old Eleftherios Kosmidis of Greece. Tweddle is 25, Sacramone 22. Krisztian Berki is also 25, as is Chen Yibing….
In vault finals, Aliya Mustafina’s second vault RO-1/2 on full-twisting front layout off (6.1 D score) was downgraded to a pike (5.7). Both of Tatiana Nabieva’s vaults were downgraded – the Amanar (6.5) to a a double twisting Yurchenko (5.8) and her second vault in the same way as Mustafina’s. The Russian delegation attempted to protest the D scores for both gymnasts but were denied. „They told us we were four minutes too late,“ head coach Andrey Rodionenko told The All Around.
I still don’t know what the 0.1 penalty was for Mustafina.
The best write-up by a Dostoyevsky mile on the superb women’s competition yesterday is by a self-described Couch Gymnast:
… Frankly, there was one girl out there who could trust herself, her body and her relationship with the apparatus from the outset. Aside from a few checks on beam, there was nothing in Aliya Mustafina’s face, in her manner, or her relaxed talk to her team mates and coaches, or certainly in her performance that betrayed a moment of doubt in her own ability to win this competition. She had routines that she could do and that she would do without significant error and she knew it from the beginning.
There was faith in preparation, but there was also a quiet self-certainty- a confidence that no other gymnast showed throughout her entire performance. …
1 Chen 15.90, 2 Yan 15.70, 3 Morandi 15.666, 4 Yamamuro 15.50, 5 Yoo 15.433, 6 San Miguel 15.333, 7 Kobayashi 15.30, 8 Chen 15.266
Unbelievable strength sequences from Yan (CHN) 15.70 (6.8/8.9). … How is China training strength?
This Ring final was not the battle of the strong men we’ve seen in Worlds past. Many hold positions were not quite perfect. Many took small deductions. The Chinese were not really challenged.
That’s the final apparatus for today. The rest go tomorrow. I’ll post video of the most interesting and controversial routines when they come online.
Hambuchen was training connected Kovacs – Kolman in training today. It will be interesting to see what gymnasts go for it in the Horizontal Bar final.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 