Gymnastics Coaching.com

Suzanne Yoculan’s Gym Dogs kick off their 2009 campaign tonight.

I’ll post only unique and interesting highlights of the coming NCAA season. (Other sites cover the blow-by-blow of every meet.)

Georgia certainly gets the best PRESS of any College Team. (Only Utah comes close.)

Here’s another cute article: Five Reasons Why You Should Follow Georgia Gymnastics

1. Courtney Kupets’s senior season.

2. Yoculan’s last stand.

3. The chance for five straight national titles.

4. Commentary by Katie. Tonight’s season-opening meet against West Virginia will feature live streaming video and audio, with commentary provided by Katie Heenan Dodson.

5. A gymnastics meet is a great date event. Guys, I tell you this every January and I’m going to keep repeating it, because it’s good advice. If you’re a poor young male college student at the University of Georgia, ask a gal to go to the gymnastics meet with you tonight. …

click through for the details – DawgSports

Canadian Olympic gymnasts David Kikuchi and Crystal Gilmore both competed at the 2006 World Gymnastics Championships in Aarhus, Denmark.

Now they’ve embarked on a bigger challenge.

Kaede is Japanese for maple leaf. And it rhymes with ‘Friday.’

CONGRATULATIONS.

Our Olympic Champion is getting some amazing photo shoots.

Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Nastia Liukin with front the Max Azria’s Spring/Summer 2009 ad campaign, set to debut online later this month.

“For the Max Azria campaign, we wanted someone iconic — someone timeless. We met Nastia at our last runway show, and she was everything we were looking for,” said Lubov Azria, creative director of Max Azria. “The spring collection was inspired by movement and modern dance so she was perfect. It was meant to be, and the magic just sort of happened.” …

Popcrunch – Nastia Liukin Max Azria Spring/Summer 2009 Ad Campaign

Thanks Claudine.

Another Desert Devil gymnast shows a unique skill on Bars. (Recall the Shaposhnikova 1/1 by Chelsey Colman?)

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

That’s Christina Pelaez who went on to compete for the University of Washington.

Here’s the most up-to-date list following the Elite Canada Competition in December.

Corbett-Methot, Sky

Damianova, Nansy

Keates, Caitlyn

Leblond-Chartrand, Coralie

Lee, Christine

Lemieux-Guillemette, Cynthia

Liu, Ti

Mackie, Charlotte

Pacitto, Stephanie

Pegg, Dominique

Pepin-Gagné, Laurie-Ève

Rogers, Brittany

Sawa, Sydney

Vaculik, Kristina

Willis, Emma

These young ladies get a monthly cheque from Gymnastics Canada to support their training.

Congratulations.

Đỗ Thị Ngân Thương (born March 10, 1989 in Hanoi) is the Vietnamese Olympic gymnast who tested positive for the banned substance furosemide.

“IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist stated that Thuong’s use of furosemide was likely to be accidental, and the result of receiving poor information on doping restrictions. Nonetheless, she was expelled from the Olympic Games and her athlete accreditation was revoked.”

Turns out she purchased the drugs herself. Took them deliberately. Did not consult medical.

Stupid.

She deserved to be banned from competition.

… The Athlete informed the Disciplinary Commission that she wanted to lose weight to look slim and lean, not to enhance her performance. …

read the full story on Gymblog – Do Thi Ngan Thuong resumes training

Zing

This is personally disappointing.

It’s bad press for our sport.

Here’s the list of athletes Gymblog is tracking …

Posted late last month and early into this one, here are my picks for who will make waves in 2009:

Sabrina Gill, Canada

Kohei Uchimura, Japan

Jeffery Wammes and Epke Zonderland, Netherlands

Viktoria Komova, Russia

Fabian Hambuchen, Germany

Larissa Iordache, Romania

Samantha Shapiro and Jordyn Wieber, USA

Alexy Bilozerchev, USA

Tatiana Nabieva, Russia

Nathan Gafuik, Canada

Cui Jie, China

Benoit Caranobe, France

Gymblog – 12 to watch in 2009 — a recap

Click that last link to see the list of honorable mentions.

UPDATE: Gymblog notes that a website dedicated to the 2008 Junior European Champion Tatiana Nabieva has just launched.

photo – France Gymnastics Federation

MoonKid points us to Annie Fogerty from Parkettes. (Yes, one of the girls featured in the infamous Achieving The Perfect 10 CNN documentary.)

Click PLAY or watch Annie on YouTube.

She’s quite the queen of forward somersaulting!

Annie is currently at Umass Amherst on the diving team.

UPDATE: Lee in the comments says “The family won the case, but only got a little over $8,000 for compensation.”

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Surprising and odd story.

Twelve year old gymnast Gao Shuai and his parents are suing his gym,the Xiannongtan Sports School in Beijing, accusing the gym of abuse. They are demanding 150,000 yuan (approximately $21,000 US) from the gym.

Gao Shuai had won major titles, including national champion in his age group. Now, he is unable to perform many skills that he used to be able to perform easily. They claim that he was withheld from training, which is strongly supported by the fact that the Xiannongtan Sports School does not have any record of his training in his last four months of attendance.

They also claim that Gao had received corporal punishment during training. Some of the punishment examples were “lengthy handstands” and kneeling for hours. Gao’s mother showed videos of what they claim to be abusive training in court. In addition to this, Gao’s diaries have entries stating that the older boys would beat on him and threaten him so he wouldn’t tell anybody.

Gao is has been diagnosed with depression and is currently receiving medical treatment. …

Mom looks pretty upset …

All Gymnastics, All the time – Chinese Boy Sues his Gym

Loughborough in the U.K. is regarded as the country’s premier sport university.

The Loughborough Students Gymnastics Club facility is impressive.

There’s a slideshow on Chalk Bucket that gives us a good look at the gym. Thanks zooky41216.