Gymnastics Coaching.com

Reports are that the 4 time defending NCAA Champions have some problems early in the season.

But a Georgia team with problems is still (probably) the best team in the NCAA. Courtney Kupets is back in the line-up, happily. See her Floor routine on Gymnast.

As part of their regular Wednesday Workout series of videos, Gymnastike posted highlights from their November 13th practice on Floor and Beam.

A few of the challenges set by the coaches:

2 beam routines in a row 9.9 or higher for each girl

15 stuck beam series in a row as a team

15 stuck “flip” elements in a row as a team

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.
http://www.gymnastike.org/assets/portal/add_ons/mediaplayer-3-16/mediaplayer.swf

Visit Gymnastike For More Videos

Yelena Produnova is one of the most exciting, dynamic gymnasts of all time. Her front somersaulting skills are freaky great.

From 2000 Olympics Team Prelims – Floor Exercise:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Produnova has three skills named for her in the Gymnastics Code of Points:

On the Balance Beam, a jump forward with ½ twist – piked back salto

On the Uneven Bars, an uprise/clear hip to handstand, Half turn to L or mixed L grip

On the Vault, a handspring double front salto.

Wikipedia

This video was linked from Past & Present Gymnastics – Unusual Cool Skills

related post: Produnova – Handspring double front vault

International Gymnast posted the full lists up to #30.

The top eight gymnasts on each event qualify to the World Cup Final, Dec. 15-16 in Madrid. A gymnast who declines his invitation will be replaced by the next gymnast in the ranking. …

A number of gymnasts chosen are injured. Or not training.

Many of the most motivated are those that did not qualify for Beijing, I believe.

I’m looking forward to seeing Krisztian Berki and Prashanth Sellathurai on Pommels, for example. Both those two could have been on the podium at the Olympics. Pegan is #1 on Horizontal Bar … but was not allowed to compete in Beijing due to the inflexible selection process.

Prashanth Sellathurai

FIG World Cup Rankings
Nov. 19, 2008

Women’s Vault
1. Oksana Chusovitina GER 754.19
2. Cheng Fei CHN 615.64
3. Anna Pavlova RUS 408.65
4. Alicia Sacramone USA 344.37
5. Yelena Zamolodchikova RUS 279.91
6. Jade Barbosa BRA 246.50
7. Hong Un Jong PRK 236.70
8. Carlotta Giovannini ITA 211.37

Uneven Bars
1. Beth Tweddle GBR 489.76
2. Daria Zgoba UKR 358.80
3. Nastia Liukin USA 330.00
4. Ksenia Semyonova RUS 262.50
5. Steliana Nistor ROM 230.98
6. He Kexin CHN 230.00
7. Jana Sikulova CZE 229.17
8. Yang Yilin CHN 202.50

Balance Beam
1. Catalina Ponor ROM 324.51
2. Nastia Liukin USA 320.13
3. Anna Pavlova RUS 310.83
4. Cheng Fei CHN 262.52
5. Shawn Johnson USA 216.50
6. Steliana Nistor ROM 201.04
7. Sandra Izbasa ROM 196.60
8. Zhang Nan CHN 194.74

Women’s Floor Exercise
1. Cheng Fei CHN 394.87
2. Sandra Izbasa ROM 384.50
3. Daiane Dos Santos BRA 377.31
4. Beth Tweddle GBR 255.02
5. Shawn Johnson USA 247.50
6. Jiang Yuyuan CHN 227.00
7. Alicia Sacramone USA 194.61
8. Vanessa Ferrari ITA 176.75

Men’s Floor Exercise
1. Diego Hypolito BRA 596.72
2. Marian Dragulescu ROM 411.06
3. Zou Kai CHN 338.36
4. Anton Golotsutskov RUS 334.97
5. Brandon O’Neill CAN 251.81
6. Gervasio Deferr ESP 241.21
7. Fabian Hambuchen GER 221.15
8. Eleftherios Kosmidis GRE 210.00

Pommel Horse
1. Krisztian Berki HUN 800.58
2. Xiao Qin CHN 624.27
3. Louis Smith GBR 411.45
4. Robert Seligman CRO 299.21
5. Zhang Hongtao CHN 297.78
6. Filip Ude CRO 240.66
7. Prashanth Sellathurai AUS 186.43
8. Hiroyuki Tomita JPN 176.27

Still Rings
1. Yuri van Gelder NED 935.65
2. Chen Yibing CHN 493.51
3. Alexander Vorobyov UKR 483.98
4. Jordan Jovtchev BUL 452.59
5. Regulo Carmona VEN 398.72
6. Alexander Safoshkin RUS 316.77
7. Andrea Coppolino ITA 262.00
8. Yang Wei CHN 248.06

Men’s Vault
1. Leszek Blanik POL 567.41
2. Marian Dragulescu ROM 512.53
3. Anton Golotsutskov RUS 351.57
4. Jeffrey Wammes NED 332.10
5. Thomas Bouhail FRA 308.59
6. Yevgeny Sapronenko LAT 244.84
7. Ri Se Kwang PRK 244.25
8. Daniel Popescu ROM 226.83

Parallel Bars
1. Mitja Petkovsek SLO 1,016.34
2. Yann Cucherat FRA 461.56
3. Li Xiaopeng CHN 453.05
4. Feng Zhe CHN 316.81
5. Huang Xu CHN 294.34
6. Won Chul Yoo KOR 241.34
7. Anton Fokin UZB 239.67
8. Samuel Piasecky SVK 234.81

High Bar
1. Aljaz Pegan SLO 714.12
2. Fabian Hambuchen GER 479.65
3. Vlasios Maras GRE 411.36
4. Philippe Rizzo AUS 315.28
5. Zou Kai CHN 290.42
6. Igor Cassina ITA 252.81
7. Epke Zonderland NED 229.43
8. Yann Cucherat FRA 174.17

See the full list on International Gymnast

Do you think the Americans will attend?

Inside Gymnastics Radio Debuts Thursday at 5pm EST

A KCRA Sacramento interview hit the blogs yesterday.

The C Score linked to the original article where famed Romanian gymnast Emilia Eberle (now Trudi Kollar) speaks damning charges against her former coaches.

It’s on the Romanian newspaper site Cotidianul.

In the article, Trudi talks about wanting twice to commit suicide due to the intense training program. About physical beatings. And — mostly — about the “starvation” imposed on the girls while training under the Karolyis.

Dominique Moceanu convinced her it was time to “break the silence”.

I was surprised to see that Bela had already responded to these allegations. In Romanian.

… From Google Translate:

Some of the girls who have trained at the end of 70 years you blame the harsh treatments. Emilia Eberle still has nightmares …

Bela – Indeed, for many girls of yore, the memories are twisted. I can not comment on what each believes. Eventually, the memories are personal. Some of the girls have negative memories, others may consider that the time was the most beautiful of their lives.

…

Girls talk about starvation, food restrictions …

Bela – Gymnastics is a sport where the diet is important. I believe the girls were part of a balanced menu, I did so to secure their calories required for work performance. To see that the food was good and useful. Sure, some may have been frustrating that they had access to chocolate.

How would you describe your attitude towards them?

Bela – We had a paternalism, I tried to be a father before coach, to guide the steps in life. In those days, coach-athlete relationship was much closer than today. I am sorry to know that these girls see things this way, I think he would deserve to have a better opinion about that period. I personally I do not find any fault, but even they did not consider that the guilty feelings.

You chat with Emilia ever after withdrawing them?

Bela – We saw only once in the United States, but time does not permit us to be sitting talking. I try to talk to Trudi, maybe I will improve those memories.

Coach trenchant avoid responding to allegations of his former students.

Here’s the original article in Romanian translated to English: The story gymnast Emilia Eberle: Glory torture

The C Score:

The big question is whether the American media will pick this up. Karolyi is a darling of the American media.

It took months for the Chinese Olympic gymnastics age falsification scandal to make it from blogs to the New York Times.

Will this story make it to the mainstream media?

I believe it will.

There are rules. And the “real rules”.

William2004 on the College Gymnastics Board started a discussion:

Does anyone else think that there are some unwritten truths and rules in NCAA gymnastics? …

1. Juding is easier in the beginning of the season than at the end.

2. At NCAA nationals, how a team or individual did at their Regional meet affects their score at nationals.

3. Where you are in the lineup really does make a difference. especially in NCAAs.

4. If there are two gymnasts with identical start values, and both have the same deductions, the routine with the higher difficulty will score higher.

5. An NCAA gymnast gets minimal, if any deduction, for her physical shape and size; unlike elites where having “the skinny gymnast look” is critical.

6. There is home team advantage in the scoring.

7. Scores creep up higher at the end of the meet especially the floor and vault scores.

8. …

9. 9.8 seems to be the top score for many gymnasts

10. A perfect 10 is nearly impossible at nationals, and is rarer than ever in regular meets.
…

Unwritten truths and rules in NCAA gymnastics

A good example of #5 is the Floor Exercise routine of Courtney McCool from Georgia.

Sports Illustrated

She’s certainly not the “skinny gymnast” yet dominated that apparatus last season, winning Championship, without even a double somersault.

I really admire NCAA judges for that. (Her winning Floor routine is liked below.)

Courtney McCool is injured right now, unfortunately.

… a stress fracture in the navicular bone of her left foot. She will be on crutches for the next eight weeks and will wear a walking boot.

Past and Present Gymnastics posted a A Brief History of Vaulting.

Of the many famous gymnasts mentioned, the one that jumps out at me was Nellie Kim at the 1976 Olympics.

Click PLAY or watch the Tsuk 1/1 (Kasamatsu) on YouTube.

She finished with a score of 19.8, 0.35 ahead of the field including Nadia Comaneci.

Nadia only competed a then fantastic Pike Tsukahara.

more great vault history – A Brief History of Vaulting

I’m always impressed with world class gymnasts who reach the top without wearing hand grips.

Koko Tsurimi of Japan, winner of the Uneven Bars event of the Apparatus Final in action during the 4th Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships at Aspire in Doha, Qatar, Monday, 17 Nov. 2008.

(AP photo/Udayan Nag) – ESPN

… Japan added three more gold medals Tuesday to its haul at the 4th Senior Asian Gymnastics Championships in Doha, Qatar.

Japanese Olympian Koko Tsurumi picked up a fourth gold on floor exercise to go with her team, all-around and uneven bars gold medals in Doha.

details and results on International Gymnast – Asian Championships Conclude

The Gymblog broke a very important story to the blogosphere.

For decades we’ve heard rumours of physical abuse in the gyms of Bela and Marta Karolyi.

Even in the USA.

But this is new. Geza Pozar is the choreographer who worked with them for 30yrs. If anyone knows where the bodies are buried, it’s Geza.

… Trudi Kollar, known to the world as Emelia Eberle, was a 12-year-old when she was summoned to join Romania’s national team in 1976. She earned 13 individual medals in international competition, including an Olympic silver medal.

In Romania, Kollar trained under legendary coach Karolyi and wife Martha for six years. She lived full time at the Karolyis’ gymnastic center in a small town in Transylvania — isolated, bars on the windows, very little food and terrified.

“In one word, I can say it was brutal,” she said.

Kollar said mistakes in training or competition brought physical pain — frequent beatings from Bela Karolyi.

…

Pozar said Kollar’s story is absolutely true.

“I saw all the activities that went on. Of course I saw the beating and the abuse, you know, as Trudi told you,” Pozar said.

Pozar said Bela Karolyi was large and powerful, and that Kollar was a frequent target.

“Trudi was the most abused, I mean physically. And when he hit her on the back, you can see that big hand, you know, landing on her back. That is something you would never forget,” Pozar said.

Pozar is now a gymnastics coach and runs his own gymnasium in Sacramento, where Kollar has worked for 15 years. He’s hadn’t previous spoken out about the Karolyis. …

Olympic Gymnast Claims Karolyi Beat Her – Stories Of Abuse Supported By Eyewitnesses – KCRA Sacramento

Bela must respond to these charges. He’s first to point his finger at others.

larger original – Geza Pozar – Olympic Gymnastics Academy

This story just gets worse and worse.

Jade Barbosa is a mess.

… some rather alarming news has reached us concerning the anti-inflammatory drug with which Jade claims the Federation overdosed her during the Olympics and the preceding months, Prexige. …

Flamengo Talk – Triple Full

That drug has since been banned in Brazil.

That’s easy.

Philippe Rizzo. Australia’s first-ever world gymnastics apparatus champion.

… The greatest female gymnast?

A much tougher question.

It’s been debated on Gymblog. (Read the comments.)

And discussed on the two great blogs from the Down Under:

Australian Gymnastics Blog – Simply the Best (Bwarmp. Bwarmp. BWARMP. Bwarmp…)

The Couch Gymnast – Australians All Let us Rejoice….!

Most would agree, Dasha Joura is #1.

Personally I was inspired by the wonderful Joanna Hughes at the 1991 World Championships. In fact, because of that inspiration I travelled to Australia in 1993 to research what they were doing RIGHT in that free nation to develop such wonderful athletes. (Read my report from that trip.)

Whatever Happened to … Joanna Hughes