gym club guilty in death of gymnast

Australia:

TOWNSVILLE Gymnastics Association was yesterday found guilty of a workplace health and safety breach that caused the death of a teenage gymnast.

But the finding has provided little comfort for 19-year-old Michelle Maitland’s grieving family who said it won’t bring her back.

Industrial Court magistrate Ross Mack yesterday handed down his findings, saying the association could have prevented the tragedy had it provided safety mats on the area of floor Ms Maitland had struck her head on when she fell after failing to land properly in the designated area on August 18 last year.

read more – Gym club found guilty

She fell from a TumblTrak and hit her head on concrete. A tragedy.

The club subsequently covered the concrete with matting, but it’s too late now for Michelle. The only tiny upside is that this precedence might help ensure that the rest of the clubs world wide will not have any exposed concrete anywhere near a trampoline device.

Recall the death of coach Jon McCurdy who hit concrete at the bottom of a 6ft foam pit.

No concrete anywhere near a trampoline!
That’s the standard.

Aliya Mustafina will win Worlds

So says Russian National Coach Alexander Alexandrov.

That’s good enough for me. I’ll predict Aliya, too, to win scoring over 61 points all-around.

May 02, 2010 - Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom - epa02140519 Aliya Mustafina of Russia competing in the Beam event during the Women's Senior Apparatus Final of the European Gymnastics Championships held at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, United Kingdom, 02 May 2010.http://view.picapp.com//JavaScripts/OTIjs.js

Russia will win the Team competition.

coach Mike Lorenzen to ASU

Congratulations.

The Arizona State women’s gymnastics head Coach John Spini announces the addition of former Stanford assistant coach Michael Lorenzen to the Sun Devil staff. Lorenzen was named associate head coach.

Lorenzen arrives at Arizona State after spending five years as an assistant coach at Stanford University. During his time at Stanford, the team had a successful post-season run attending four NCAA Championships, making the Super Six three years and culminating with a third-place NCAA team finish and an individual National Champion on bars in 2010. …

read more on The Sun Devils

AUS, ENG, CAN – Commonwealth MAG

Commonwealth Games Men’s Artistic Team competition:

Gold – Australia 259.050
Silver – England 256.750
Bronze – Canada 248.500

Dave Phillip‘s New Zealand team was 4th. Koudinov managed to compete the AA despite the recent knee injury. Congrats.

All-Around qualifiers:

1. Joshua Jefferis (AUS) 85.350
2. Reiss Beckford (ENG) 84.550
3. Luke Folwell (ENG) 84.350
4. Samuel Offord (AUS) 84.300
5. Max Whitlock (ENG) 84.300
6. Thomas Pichler (AUS) 82.500
7. Tariq Dowers (CAN) 81.750
8. Ashish Kumar (IND) 81.550
9. Patrick Peng (NZL) 81.000
10. Misha Koudinov (NZL) 80.550

see the full list on The Australian Gymnastics Blog

Australia's Thomas Pichler competes in the floor exercise portion of the team gymnastics event at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi October 4, 2010.     REUTERS/Andy Clark   (INDIA - Tags: SPORT GYMNASTICS)http://view.picapp.com//JavaScripts/OTIjs.js

Australia’s Thomas Pichler

international gymnastics NOT dying

Bloggers, including this one, love to rant about how Bruno Grandi’s personal mission to push through an “open ended” scoring system will ultimately destroy the sport of Artistic Gymnastics.

How giving up the “perfect 10” was a marketing blunder.

If so, why are over 500 gymnasts entered at the 2010 World Gymnastics Championships?

If tie-breaking scores of 16.725 confuses mainstream sports media, why are 333 representatives of the written press, photographers and TV right holders coming to Worlds?

Why is that meet in Rotterdam selling out of tickets?

Though this is an unimportant World Championships for the top teams, I don’t recall more excitement about a Worlds, ever.

Gymnastike, Gymnastics Examiner and Gymnastics Coaching will all be there. Should be the best online coverage ever, too.

_____

Related – Ivan Cuk and Warwick Forbes – HOW APPARATUS DIFFICULTY SCORES AFFECT ALL AROUND RESULTS IN MENS ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS

• the open scoring system we use today was first proposed by Fink and Fetzer (1993)
• before before World War II, in some meets, the maximum score was between 11 and 16 points
• open scoring has caused one problem: the “relative weight” of the apparatus is not equal. In a 2009 study taken at European Championships, Vault was the most over-valued, Pommel the most under-valued. (i.e. it is very hard to get a high D score on the pommel horse, easier to obtain a high D score on vault)
• D scores predicted 84% of all-around final scores

Download that report for yourself (PDF) – Science of Gymnastics Journal vol.2, num.3, 2010

Commonwealth Games begin

Congratulations to Cyprus Gymnast Irodotos Georgallas who was the flag bearer for the nation at the Delhi Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony last night.

Mielieta Gonzalez calls him the favourite to win Rings.

who will win World Championships?

Andy Thornton’s top 12 contenders:

1. Rebecca Bross
2. Aliya Mustafina
3. Ksenia Afanasyeva
4. Jiang Yuyuan
5. Ana Porgras
6. Mattie Larson
7. Tatiana Nabieva
8. Huang Qiushuang
9. Deng Linlin
10. Koko Tsurumi
11. Lauren Mitchell

12. Bridget Sloan

Tough call.

For once I don’t have a prediction. Leave a comment if you do.

Rebecca Bross has some kind of foot injury.

Shawn Johnson – new Gym, new training partner

Likely you’ve already seen the Shawn Johnson training video #2. (updated)

How about this one?

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.