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I had never seen this before. Epke Zonderland, Netherlands, in training. Cassina direct Kovacs direct Kolman.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
What! No pit?
This next one has been done in competition.
Gaylord piked with half out. Or, you could call it a piked Pegan. I prefer to call it the “Maras“, after the inventor Vlasios Maras from Greece.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
These were linked from Andrew Thornton’s Smooth Skills series, posted Mondays on Gymnast.com.
Fan favourite, Russian gymnast Anna Pavlova will have a tough time coming back from this one, I fear.
LBLG blog posted information on Anna Pavlova from the editor of her website:
I have heard back from Anna on her condition. She has torn two ligaments and is recovering from surgery now. Surgery went well for her!
Unfortunately it will be hard for her to recover, and recovery will take a lot of time so she won’t be at any future competitions this year.
She was injured at the DTB World Cup on (not a particularly dangerous looking) beam dismount — 2.5 twist. Video.
Nice!
Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnast.
http://gymnast.com/flashplayer/FlashPlayer.swf?v=http://www.gymnast.com/media/gymnast/1/pub/u/5/9/9//599/5/3/7/c/u-189c4e49-11c348dc13a–7ead.flv&eb=1&ap=1&av=sportnet.gy.videos&pv=video&szv=320×240&apv=doubleclick
That’s Casey485 from Louisville, USA.
UPDATE: Or is it Anatoli Dronov?
This video is 9min long. But well worth watching. Another terrific peek into a top American Gym from Gymnastike.
NCAA Gymnastics is a totally different sport than club gymnastics.
Auburn Facility Tour, part 3: The Gym
Head Coach Jeff Thompson gave me a tour …
Auburn’s old gym, aka “The Barn” burned down in a large fire in 1996 and left the Tigers without a facility for a few years. Jeff told me that when he came in as head coach 10 years ago, the old coach had already planned the layout for the new facility to be built with everything going into one large pit in the center of the gym, but he was not satisfied with those plans. He was given three days to refigure the layout and draw it out to scale. He managed to get it done and this beautiful facility is the result. …
Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.
http://www.gymnastike.org/assets/portal/add_ons/mediaplayer-3-16/mediaplayer.swf
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I like that “trench pit”. It’s probably even better than the Forster Sliding Platform bar at Georgia.
Even with this unbelievably great gym, Auburn is “only” ranked 15th in the NCAA Preseason Coaches Poll.
related:
Here’s a weird bar routine you really should see.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Lia Parolari from Italy scored 14.700 (6.1/8.60)
I’ll bet the judges had to look up that dismount in the Code.
This vid is one of those linked from an International Gymnast post: He Kexin Scores Another 17
There was a small but elite field in the Italian Grand Prix, held last Saturday in Milan. Sandra Izbasa took away one gold and one silver.
Results are linked from Triple Full.
Olympic gold medalist sprinter Tim Montgomery:
… said he took testosterone and human growth hormone before the Sydney Olympics, and does not deserve the gold medal he won in the 400-meter relay.
The admission was made during an interview scheduled to air Tuesday night on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.” …
Montgomery never tested positive for drugs, but he was banned from track for two years and his world record in the 100 was erased after he was linked to the BALCO investigation. He retired after the ban was imposed in 2005. …
What happens to his Relay teammates if Mongomery is retroactively stripped of that medal.
What happens to the teammates if gymnasts Dong Fangxiao or Yang Yun are (someday) confirmed to have been too young to compete in Sydney? China won the Bronze medal as a team.
Retroactively disqualifying athletes is a tricky business.
There’s no perfect solution. But better, I think, is to punish the offending nation in the future. In the case of Montgomery, for example, perhaps the USA should not be allowed a 4x100m Relay Team at the next World Championships.
That, at least, would provide some incentive for the nation to police their own athletes.
A shout out for the Cheer team that trains out of my gym, Altadore.
There’s a pep rally tonight at 9PM — Monday Nov. 24th — for the Open team before they leave for Canadian Nationals!
Our top gymnast from last season joined the squad this year. And made the transition easily. Cheer teams are always looking for gymnasts!
At Power Cheer Calgary we are 100% committed to our athletes. Our focus is to supply them with the best instruction and the most up-to-date, safe training techniques. We are focused on providing our athletes with individual attention, helping them to set and attain their goals, to learn the value of hard work, team spirit and commitment. …
PCC Cobras – home page
From Romania.
Gymblog — bored of contemporary EASY mounts — linked to a terrific video.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I miss the era of the “originality” bonus. There’s no incentive now to do anything unusual. Judges are more likely to deduct, than credit you.
Including Aisha Gerber, Alexandra Marinescu, Andreea Munteanu, Catalina Ponor, Charlotte Mackie, Daniela Silivas, Daniele Hypolito, Dominique Dawes, Dominique Moceanu, Elene Zamolodchikova, Elise Ray, Elvire Teza, Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs, Emilia Eberle, Grace Taylor , Hollie Vise, Ivana Hong, Kim Zmeskal, Kristie Phillips, Lavinia Milosovici, Li Li, Ludivine Furnon, Ludmilla Ezhova, Melanie Sinclair, Mo Huillan, Natalia Shaposhnikova, Olga Korbut, Olga Mostepanova, Shannon Miller, Shayla Worley, Svetlana Khorkina, Tatiana Groshkova, Tatiana Lysenko and Terin Humphrey.
by editor Rick McCharles
During the pre-Olympic furor of the book launch, I was as loud a critic of the media hype as anyone. In fact, I called the author a liar.
As a response to the critics, Jennifer often fell back on this position:
Chalked Up is a coming of age story that is about my early life spent as a gymnast. I hope you’ll find it has relevance beyond athletics. It’s intended to be the story of one child – me – not an exposé about the sport. It touches on broader issues than gymnastics: athletes who are willing to do anything to be the very best, a culture in which second place means nothing because only winning matters, mother daughter relationships, eating disorders, coming into one’s own. Ultimately, it is for anyone who has ever felt they weren’t good enough, ached to be better than they are, and has grown up to accept the person they were meant to be.
I did not criticize the book (as I had not read it), only the sensationalist media coverage surrounding it. The author was an enthusiastic participant.
Chalked Up finally arrived in my local library.
Many had told me it was not nearly as bad as I would expect. And they were right.
It’s engaging. Fast paced. And tries to be … brutally “honest”. An interesting, if unrelentingly depressing, horror story of a gymnastics career.
There are enough factual errors to make it obvious Sey did very little research. No editor did a fact check.
By the end of the book it was clear that Jennifer Sey was the wrong child to train in the world’s most difficult sport. And that Parkettes was the worst possible club for her.
She sums up:
If my friends — some of whom have known me since my days as a gymnast — were asked to describe me, I think that they would say I am well adjusted and confident. A dedicated mother, friend, sister, wife, daughter. I am a part of all these things. But I am also anxious, sad, self-loathing, impatient, angry, frustrated, competitive, bordering on unhinged at times. …
I wonder if she regrets airing her demons.
related posts tagged with “Jennifer Sey”
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