tumbling, tramp, diving, acrobatics, circus, cheer, dance, martial arts, X sports … and more
A TV commercial for the Nokia N96 Bruce Lee limited edition phone.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
It’s not real. But, very impressive, none the less.
The handset has Bruce Lee’s face and signature on the back case, and it’s packed with rare photos of the legendary actor. The phone further comes bundled with several accessories and a Bruce Lee doll, made by a company called Enterbay.
You can pick up a Bruce Lee phone in Hong Kong for about US$1,286.
Shout out to the Demonstration Gymnastics girls from my club that traveled to Cranbrook, BC for the 2009 Key City Invitational.
Sounds like it was a terrific road trip.
Wish I had been able to be there.
The #1 Oklahoma Men’s Gymnastics team will face #6 Ohio State on Saturday, March 14th at 7:00 p.m. at McCasland Field House.
Former OU Gymnast and 2008 Olympic Silver and Bronze Medalist Jonathan Horton will be honored at the meet and will perform an exhibition routine on the high bar following the competition. Horton’s heroics in the 2008 Beijing Olympics led team USA to a Bronze Medal in the team competition. Horton won his Silver Medal with an amazing high-bar routine in the individual finals …
International Gymnast forum – jhorfan24
Inside Gymnastics has a long, personal article on the Beijing hero. A good read.
Horton, a native of Houston, will return to his hometown after he graduates from the University of Oklahoma with a business degree this May. He and fiancée Haley DeProspero, also an OU gymnast and Texas native (her family hails from the Dallas area), will make their home in Houston after their June wedding. There, Haley will attend the University of Texas medical school, while Horton plans to return to his roots and work with junior coach Tom Meadows at Cypress Academy.
Meadows and Horton have remained close. Meadows, who was an NCAA gymnast at Oklahoma under Mark Williams, Horton’s current personal coach, was on hand to watch Horton at the Olympic Trials and celebrated with Horton’s friends and family when his protégé made the 2008 team. Meadows even traveled to Beijing …read more on Inside Gymnastics – HORTON HEADS HOME, PART 1
I had a good talk with Shawn Chapell of Northern Athletics, the Canadian American Athletic (AAI) representative.
He brought in the equipment for the Jurassic Classic.
Shawn’s happy with the growing market share of sales his American company is seeing in Canada.
For decades, Spieth Anderson (now branded SA Sport) has had a near monopoly. Manufactured in Orillia, Ontario, Spieth has supplied the equipment for National Championships since forever. Clubs bought Spieth so their top gymnasts would be best prepared for the highest level meets.
Times have changed.
The 4 biggest meets my club in Alberta is attending this season are supplied by AAI – Great West Gym Fest, Jurassic Classic, Wild Rose and Alberta Provincial Championships.
In Quebec, GYMNOVA equipment from France has made great inroads. Their representative is respected coach and all around good guy Robert Majeau.
In the west, Chinese equipment companies are beginning to look to the Canadian market. I have Gaofei products in my own gym.
Coaches agree that more choices are a good thing. Competition will benefit the consumer.
Now … I’ve got to get back to Shawn. My girls were instantly smitten with the AAI neoprene beam pad. It’s kept snug with Velcro.
And I’ve always loved the AAI sting mat. The best I’ve ever seen.
Leave a comment if you have other pieces of AAI equipment to recommend.
Another great video from Don Eckert of Salto Cafe.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Coach Sed Basset at Woodward West Gymnastics Camp.
This is a favourite challenge of the top athletes at Woodward.
See more videos like this on the Gibson Saltocafe YouTube page. Subscribe. Comment. And link to those videos.
(via Straight to the Bar)
Australian Gymnastics Blog pointed me to another excellent interview with Olivia Vivian, Olympic gymnast, now a freshman at Oregon State.
… Back in Australia, I trained 32 hours a week. That’s a full-time job without the benefit of getting paid. Of course, the rewards in the end far outweighed the hours of practice. But training became so boring, I lost the joy I used to get out of it.
Just over a year ago, when I was in preparation for the Beijing Olympics, my passion for gymnastics was almost on empty …
source – at Western Australian Institute of Sport
… Now that I have experienced college gymnastics, I have found my passion for gymnastics again. …
The atmosphere here at OSU is so much fun. The training assignments change all the time and small games are created to help keep things different and challenging – not to mention that the coaches are wonderfully refreshing and my teammates never fail to entertain me with their amazing traits.
I used to think about retirement and how great life would be when I stopped training. After experiencing what I have here with OSU gymnastics, I never want it to end. …
Barometer – Flipping back into love
Notes from Jurassic …
I love the venue — Jack Simpson gymnasium at University of Calgary — used by the hosts of the Jurassic Classic Gymnastics Invitational, one of Canada’s largest meets.
The equipment is excellent. AAI.
This despite the fact that one of the AAI trucks was delayed crossing into the Canadian border.
On the other hand … at least 6 coaches told me today, “This is the last time I’m ever coming to Jurassic.”
Why?
The competition flights take over 4hrs. Girls wait an hour between routines, at times.
At the recent Great West Gym Fest, the flights last about 2hrs. GWGF schedules 6 flights a day. Jurassic only 3.
Thanks to Jurassic organizers, despite the complaints. And THANKS especially to the judges. It’s not a fun meet to work.
official website – JurassicClassic.com
Arriving home from a competition, I logged in to see who won the showdown tonight.
It was the farewell home meet in Salt Lake City for Kristina Baskett and Nina Kim. A new attendance record was set tonight in the NCAA.
And — for the first time — I logged in to the (nearly) live video feed on CBS Sports.
Let me tell you. I was impressed.
The best feature was Floor music. It is streamed without the background crowd noise.
I highly recommend it!
Utah looked great on the apparatus I watched — Floor and Beam. Balanced routines: difficulty, execution, and artistry.
Florida … much less impressive. Especially amplitude of jumps and leaps. They’ve really had a problem season. I knew for sure when I saw Ashley Kerr in the beam line-up. Her score of 9.5 was generous. That routine really is not worthy of a top 12 school.
Trivia:
Today’s meet is the last home meet for Baskett and Kim. Here is a look at some of their season highlights:
Kristina Baskett
» Leads Utes with 23 victories
» Ranked No. 2 in the all-around, bars
» Ranked No. 3 on vault
» Has hit 34 of 36 routines this seasonNina Kim
» Second on team with eight victories
» Ranked No. 11 in all-around, No. 6 on beam
» Has hit 33 of 34 routines this season
Nina had the highest AA score of her career – 39.60
Utes gymnastics: Seniors have master plan for gym team
UPDATE: I changed the name of this post from “impossible skills” to “possible skills”.
A video clip from perhaps 1991 — Monica Shaw from Rocky Mountain Gymnastics — doing Pak to Endo on low bar.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
WOW.
Pak Gyong Sil did the skill at the 1989 World Championships. (Video.)
This clip was linked by mandusky on the International Gymnast forum.
The thread is Are These Skills Possible?
A 90-minute film by director Gu Jun is the official documentary about the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
“Dream Weavers – Beijing 2008” is the official title in English translation. It was submitted by China as a contender for Best Foreign Language Film in the Oscars, but was not chosen as one of the finalists.
The full documentary broken into 10 min YouTube clips starts here.
Here is a short section with some gymnastics bars training:
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The athletes are Deng LingLing and Nai RuoRu.
This documentary seems to provide evidence that Jiang Yuyuan actually was age eligible for 2008.
All these Chinese produced documentaries include a theme of perserverance under extreme coaching demands. And injury. Always injury.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 