Gymnastics Coaching.com

A detailed post on THE COUCH GYMNAST lists the 12 “greatest” international gymnastics teams of all-time.

… I love them for various reasons. Sometimes it’s a about sheer gymnastics greatness, sometimes its about achieving feats not achieved before by certain countries. Sometimes it’s about politics, sometimes its about combinations of personalities. Sometimes it’s just because i love them. …

Ukraine, 2000 Sydney Team (fourth)

U.S.A 2004 Athens Olympics Team (silver)

Italy 2006 European Champs (gold)

Australia 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Team (gold)

Spain 2001 Ghent (fourth)

Brazil Beijing 2008 Team (eighth)

Australia 2003 Anaheim Team (bronze)

Russia 2000 Sydney Olympic Team (silver)

U.S.A 2008 Beijing Olympic Team (silver)

Unified Team 1992 Barcelona (Gold)

USSR 1985 Worlds Team (gold)

Romania Athens Olympics 2004 Team (gold)

Click through for the details – The Couch Gymnast’s Top Twelve…

Pretty subjective. From this list, without question, I’d choose the USSR 1985 Worlds Team. After the Olympic boycott of 1984, the USSR had much to prove.

Shushunova and Omeliantchik tied as AA Champions. Yet they did not even qualify for the AA final. Two girls had to “claim injury” in order for those two to get into the top 36. Head Coach Rodionenko replaced Mostepanova in the AA Final, but years later Mostie is quoted as agreeing with the decision. (She had her age altered, as well, as a young gymnast.)

It was an awesome lineup: Irina Baraksanova, Vera Kolesnikova, Olga Mostepanova, Oksana Omelianchik, Yelena Shushunova, Natalia Yurchenko.

source

The Men’s meet was even better. The old veteran Yuri Korolev unexpectedly defeating Tong Fei, Li Ning, Artemov and the rest.

Those athletes impress me more than our current stars. They had to train 12 routines for Men, 8 for Women. Compulsories normally decided the winners.

Truly the good old days.

wikipedia – 1985 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships

An interesting historical retrospective of Gymnastics in Australia 1956 – 2006.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

There are 7 more videos posted by Gymnastics Australia on the Gymclips channel. These are often played at major competitions Down Under.

(via Australian Gymnastics Blog)

The TV cameo by Nastia Liukin on Gossip Girl is linked from Gymblog.

It’s not nearly as cute as Shawn Johnson’s cameo on Secret Life of the American Teenager:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It’s nice to see gymnastics celebrities doing well.

The 5th annual — and the biggest yet — AYOF runs 14 – 18 January, 2009 in Sydney.

With 1,600, 550 officials, 17 sports, and 25 invited nations, this is one of the most important Junior multi-sport competitions in the world.

Rhythmic, Artistic and Trampoline are scheduled.

Australia has named their WAG team:

Britt Greeley – VIS/VIC
Emily Little – WAIS/WA
Mary-Anne Monckton – AIS/NSW
Georgia-Rose Brown – MBC/QLD
Emma Collister – Waverley/VIC
Ashley Cooney – WAIS/WA
Natalia Joura – WAIS/WA
Karina Brooks – QAS/QLD

Australian Gymnastics Blog

The British competitors are listed on British-Gymnastics.org.

Official Gymnastics home page on the Australian Youth Olympic Festival site.

The USA and Canada are attending in some sports, but I’ve not heard if any gymnasts are going.

Urejanje Lojze Kolman from Slovania, born 1967 most would say.

He won Bronze on Horizontal Bar at the 1990 European championships with an original move: a Kovacs with a 1/1 twist.

But I was there in the early morning session at the 1985 World Championships when unknown Tony Pineda from Mexico threw this MONSTER routine. It was one of the highlights of the entire meet.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Tony was coached by Hideo Mizoguchi in Oregon. Truly one of the most unique and explosive gymnasts ever.

The code tries to differentiate the Pineda (Gaylord 2 with half out) and the Kolman (Double back with 1/1 twist).

I don’t buy that distinction. Fabian Hambüchen added what he calls a “Pineda” to his horizontal bar routine last weekend, setting a new world-record for difficulty.

This should be the same skill, regardless of where the twist happens.

Tony Pineda was first to compete the Kolman. It should be named after him alone.

Tony is still coaching, by the way.

UPDATE: Check the comments for a discussion on who did the Gaylord first … Mitch Gaylord or Tony Pineda.

Henrietta Ónodi from Hungary was one of my favourite gymnasts when she unexpectedly won Vault at the 1992 Olympics.

Her name is known worldwide now for the gorgeous Onodi on beam: backward handspring with a half turn to forward walkover. (Olympic Champion Nastia Liukin does it beautifully, for example.)

However, here’s Olga Mostepanova from the former USSR competing an Onodi back in 1984.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Here’s another video clip of her performing it in 1983.

I’ve seen it referred to as a Mostepanova-Onodi.

But truly it should be called a Mostepanova.

UPDATE: MostepanovaFan notes that Onodi, as a gymnast learning the trick, called it the “Mostie”.

(via Past & Present Gymnastics)

related: Whatever happened to Olga Mostepanova

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Triple Full posted some interesting news:

— Two years from now, Dutch ring specialist Yuri van Gelder will be seen doing something quite spectacular: Performing his ring routine while suspended from Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge, so as to promote the 2010 World Championships, which will be held in Rotterdam (also site of the 1987 Worlds).

The stunt was announced yesterday by the organizing committee of the 2010 Worlds. …

International News Roundup

larger original – flickr – name

The Couch Gymnast has posted 6 leotards to choose from in a poll: World’s Worst Leotard Heat 1…

I voted for …

#3; Nineties Geometric Uzebekistani style (Oksana Chussovitina) – larger version

Agency: The Richards Group, Inc.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Triple Full has a scathing review of the FIG (International Gymnastics Federation) website. Especially their photo galleries.

… Have you ever had the feeling that the FIG didn’t really know what it was doing? That it was just making things up as it went along, with nary a thought for the consequences of its decisions? We most definitely have. Over the years we’ve had countless discussions about how the FIG was ruining our sport with its trillion stupid rules, none of which increased the appeal of the sport in the slightest. Over the years we’ve spent days if not weeks lamenting the fact that gymnastics is no longer the artistic sport it once was, that competitions are no longer held the way they once were, etc. Often these conversations ended in a mega-frustrated “Can’t the FIG see what it’s doing? Don’t they watch their own competitions?”

Well, it appears they don’t. Or at least their press people and webmasters don’t. …

Triple Full – In Which We Say Unkind Things about the FIG

The FIG website for years barely worked at all.

The current edition I would say is “not bad”.

Federation International Gymnastique – official website

At least it provides RSS feeds like this one: Main RSS. If you are one of the 10% of people who use an RSS Reader, that feature is critical.

Certainly I ignore their site, visiting it as infrequently as possible.