Gymnastics Coaching.com

Arriving home from a competition, I logged in to see who won the showdown tonight.

official results

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 season

Nina 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

Baskett, Kim have fueled U.’s success

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.

From Utah Coach Greg Marsden on Facebook: Utah Gymnastics

If you can’t make it in person, we will provide FREE live internet video

and real-time scores

read press releases:

read newspaper articles

Marsden uses the internet better than any other College coach.

From FIG:

One of the biggest competitions in Canada, the University of Calgary Gymnastics Jurassic Classic starts tonight in the terrific Jack Simpson gymnasium venue.

If you are in Calgary, be sure to drop by for some of the action.

official website – JurassicClassic.com

The other day International Gymnastics Federation President Bruno Grandi was quoted as saying:

… there were believable indications that China had cheated with the age of some of their gymnasts at the Beijing Olympics last year.

Did he know this study was about to be announced?

BEIJING — X-ray bone analysis of 15,000 young Chinese athletes shows about 20 percent have lied about their ages, provincial sports authorities say.

The analysis was conducted by sports officials in southern Guangdong province and reported on the Web site of the Southern Metropolis Daily.

The confirmation of age-faking again puts pressure on Chinese sports officials. Several of China’s gold-medal winning female gymnasts at last year’s Olympics were widely suspected of being underage, although they were later cleared by officials of the sport’s world governing body.

…

The southern city of Guangzhou will host next year’s Asian Games, and provincial officials appear to be cracking down beforehand.

“We won’t allow those who faked their age to get any benefit at all,” said Ye Xiquan, deputy director of the provincial sports bureau.

ESPN – The Associated Press

How long before the IOC and FIG must decide what to do with age cheat Olympic medalists from 2000 and 2008?

If they do penalize those athletes, why not go back to other admitted age cheats from earlier Olympics?

I expect the coming media storm will focus on He Kexin, our Olympic Bars Champion.

Telegraph – One in five of China’s athletes lie about their age

Likely it’s coincidence, but new FIG Scientific Commission chair Keith Russell comes from University of Saskatchewan, a world leader in bone density research. Professor Russell did a study on wrist x-ray of gymnasts many years ago.

It’s very difficult to determine exact age by any scientific means. But the scrutiny of real assessment, rather than the blanket cover-up we had during the Beijing Olympics, will result in some athletes coming forward and admitting their actual birth date. Baby photos, date stamped, will turn up.

The truth will out. It’s only a matter of time.

Another video from Misha Koudinov in New Zealand.

Some skills you’ve never seen.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

http://www.gymnastike.org/assets/portal/add_ons/mediaplayer-4.2/player.swf

YouTube became the largest video site in the world because it was FREE. And because the ugly little videos PLAYED on almost any computer.

But with ad overlays and all the new features being introduced, it’s starting to get confusing. And even annoying.

If you’re an avid YouTube viewer, you’ve probably noticed the growing number of videos on the site that contain clickable links within the display screen. That’s the result of Video Annotations, a feature introduced last June that allows other clips to be embedded into videos. Lately it’s been increasingly used to string together several (or even several dozen) individual videos to create interactive video series. Many resemble a 21st-century version of those old “choose your own adventure” kids books or the original, laser disc-driven Dragon’s Lair, and suggest new ways to package future video content. Here’s a sampling to give you a sense of what’s possible in this evolving sub-genre — or at the very least, something to watch during your next lunch break.

NewTeeVee

This is an interactive video game on YouTube.

… a stop-motion animated breakdance competition between The Joker and Batman, using highly articulated action figures based on The Dark Knight. You choose one of the characters, then try to mirror your competitors’ moves by memorizing their sequence and choosing the correct one from a quickly-flashing multiple choice menu at the top of the video. Watching Boivin’s impressive and complex animation sequences are just as entertaining as the interactive feature, if not more so. …

Click PLAY or watch the introduction to Bboy Joker on YouTube.

Created by Canadian animator Patrick Boivin.

I’m missing the OLD YouTube more every day.

Already gaga over the Facebook photo editing app Picnik, most recently the girls in my gym are getting into Face in Hole.

One example …

… Many of us have tried to manipulate pictures in order to try something different or just to have fun but not only it takes loads of hard work but also the results aren’t usually all that great.

Well, not anymore. With FACEinHOLE.com you can easily and in a matter of seconds create a totally “new look” for you and your friends. You just have to select a scenario, upload and adjust a photo (or use your webcam) and there you have it; a great FACEinHOLE that you can send to your friends, post in your blog or make available to the world.

Maybe you are wondering how much would this priceless tool cost? The answer is: totally and absolutely free! …

official website – Face in Hole