Gymnastics Coaching.com

Via Sports Girls Play:

Former Olympian and NCAA Champion Gymnast Courtney Kupets was awarded the 2009 Sportswoman of the Year award for an individual sport. Courtney’s list of achievements over the past 4 years while she was competing for University of Georgia are just staggering. Courtney came back from a torn Achilles tendon in her junior year to lead the Gymdogs to a fifth straight NCAA team title and she won the all around, bars, beam and floor titles as well. Throughout her collegiate career, she earned nin individual NCAA championship titles – more than any other gymnast – ever. …

Congratulations. Well deserved.

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NEW YORK – OCTOBER 13: Gymnasts Shawn Johnson (L) and Courtney Kupets attend the 30th Annual Salute To Women In Sports Awards at The Waldorf=Astoria on October 13, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)

With the highest All-around score only 57.30 through 4 of 5 rotations, it’s not really much going out on a limb to make this prediction.

photo by Grace Chiu

Of course the Preliminary round is quite unimportant for Rebecca, except on those apparatus she wants to qualify for Event Finals.

=== Update:

A pretty good meet, the biggest deduction coming on Beam where she touched her hands on the Patterson dismount, double arabian.

Too bad. She missed her insanely difficult routine in front of the home town crowd.

… first thing I knew about it was when my head hit the floor. …

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Beth Tweddle’s world title defence comes to disappointing end when she falls in qualifying

Happily, Beth did qualify for the Floor Final.

Great images are distributed via the internet in near real time.

Deng Linlin of China performs on balance beam on the first day of women’s competition at the 2009 World Gymnastics Championships in London.

AP Photo/Alastair Grant – Gymnastics Examiner

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A non-stop full-court press gives weak basketball teams a chance against far stronger teams. Why have so few adopted it?

John emailed me an excellent article from The New Yorker:

HOW DAVID BEATS GOLIATH
When underdogs break the rules.
by Malcolm Gladwell

While not specific to gymnastics, it’s an excellent read for all sports coaches.

I love the story of how Vivek Ranadivé, with no basketball experience, decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team.

… They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling. They were not the sort who played pickup games at the playground every evening. Most of them were, as Ranadivé says, “little blond girls” from Menlo Park and Redwood City, the heart of Silicon Valley. These were the daughters of computer programmers and people with graduate degrees. They worked on science projects, and read books, and went on ski vacations with their parents, and dreamed about growing up to be marine biologists. Ranadivé knew that if they played the conventional way—if they let their opponents dribble the ball up the court without opposition—they would almost certainly lose to the girls for whom basketball was a passion. …

Not knowing any better, Coach told the girls to play a full court press defence for the entire game, every game.

Read the article to find out what happened – HOW DAVID BEATS GOLIATH

From Grace Chiu …

Women’s qualifying AA results after subdivision 3 of 5. So much drama!

Sloan 3rd so far, despite a fall on Beam. Bross yet to compete.

He Kexin nails Bars to lead qualifiers so far on that apparatus.

… on front tuck. Oops. (13.25)

Likely she’ll still qualify to the AA Final.

Ivana Hong missed Bars.

Commentators are surprised (as am I) how well the Romanian girls are doing on Bars.

I’m trying to follow the action via Facebook, Twitter and websites. Bit of a jumble. Preliminaries are often the best competition. I wish the first 2 days were streamed via the internet.

Some funny stuff from Couch Gymnast at World Championships …

…Fabian Hambeuchen limping out of a Japanese restaurant at the o2, hollering “sushi!!!”, which made much more sense when it became clear he was yelling it at Kohei Uchimura who came over and bowed at him and consoled him about his injury! …

Weird.

One of my favourite College gymnasts.

… Two Florida media sources are reporting that the goods, nine rifles and shotguns, as well as two computers, were stolen in a series of burglaries connected with Sinclair’s boyfriend Leonard “Bud” Williams. …

Gymnastics Examiner

Team bio – Melanie Sinclair

Just a bad boyfriend?

All-around standings after 2 groups:

Deng CHN 56.35,
Kurbatova RUS 55.95,
Yang CHN 55.50,
Bui GER 54.175,
Wing GBR 53.875

From Twitter.