The Paralympics in Beijing have ended. The Boston Globe posted 36 amazing photos from the spectacular event.
2008 Summer Paralympic Games photos – Boston Globe
No gymnastics sports are included in the official 20 sports of those Games.
gymnast Zou Kai auctions Gold medal
Zou Kai has decided to auction one of his three Olympic gold medals and donate the earning for his hometown Sichuan that was ravaged by an 8.0-magnitude earthquake on May 12.
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The Sichuan native Zou claimed the titles of men’s horizontal bar, free exercise and group competitions at the Beijing Games.
The initiative came out right after the youngster grabbed his third gold in the horizontal bar event, saying it’s a return for the good luck brought by his countrymen.
Champion to Auction Olympic Gold for Sichuan – CRI
This personable young man is destined to be the “face” of Men’s Gymnastics in China.
most powerful woman in the world – a gymnast?
Politically powerful, that is.
Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel:
In an interview with a woman’s magazine Merkel said she wished she could be a gymnast and conquer the art of turning and leaping on the beam, the 1.25m-high apparatus used in women’s gymnastics and which requires a great deal of elegance, endurance and precision. …
Merkel, 54, who was voted the most powerful woman in the world for the second time by Forbes magazine last month, has admitted in the past that she was often terrified of sports lessons, especially jumping and gymnastics. …
Angela Merkel: I wish I’d been a gymnast – Guardian
The Beatles and Cirque
Trailer for the forthcoming film release of All Together Now, the story of the making of Love. Love is the music and stage collaboration between The Beatles and Cirque Du Soleil.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
‘All Together Now’ faithfully recounts how the “LOVE†project came into being, borne from the personal friendship between George Harrison and Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte. George saw how the twin talents of Cirque’s artistry and The Beatles’ music could be fused into something new and totally original. …
documentary – The Red Race – BAD
Last night I went to see the Canadian premiere of a Chinese gymnastics documentary called The Red Race.
It’s the worst of the many similar features I’ve seen in the run up to the 2008 Olympics.
Clearly the editors neither understand nor care about gymnastics.
The movie had nothing to say about our sport nor much to say about the Olympic obsession in China. Nothing redeemed the movie for me.
The Shanghai coaches featured in the film were not only harsh but also inefficient, bad instructors. The female coach should be thrown in prison.
There must be many bad coaches in China along with some brilliant ones. In the Chinese coaching tradition they’ve yet to discover “progressions”. Shaping skills with drills.
The Soviet school of coaching is far more sophisticated.
Skip this movie unless you want to see much of 70 minutes devoted to footage of very young children crying.
Some clips from the film are included in this very depressing YouTube montage: Little Chinese gymnasts – Training
Related: A thread of outraged commentary on Chalk Bucket.
training 1-arm chin-up
Myspace gymnastics theme page
Looking for a hideously cluttered new template page for Myspace?
Gymnastics Myspace Layouts: Tribute to Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin
age evidence for gymnast Jiang Yuyuan
There seems to be a backlash to all the allegations that China falsified official documentation in order to qualify underage gymnasts to their 2008 Olympic team.
Most experts assumed those charges were highly likely to be true based on the many verified cases of age falsification in the past.
Commenter pommy pointed us to an important new video.
Here’s the best evidence I’ve seen that gold medalist Jiang Yuyuan (also Yuyan; traditional Chinese: 江鈺æº; simplified Chinese: 江钰æº; pinyin: JiÄng Yùyuán) was actually old enough in Beijing.
This video is an excerpt from the documentary film “Dream Weavers 2008” (ç‘梦2008, Zhu Meng). It was the opening film of the 11th Shanghai Film Festival that ran from June 14-22, 2008 …. The documentary, which took director Gu Jun seven years to make, captures events leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and how various lives were affected by this major international event in China. …
Footage from 2003 shows two of the eventual Beijing Olympic Team training:
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
[01:09] The Chairman of the National Gymnastic Association, Gao Jian, states that the purpose of the training event is to “select women gymnasts of the appropriate age for the 2008 Olympics.”
[01:21] Four of the gymnasts state their names: Jiang Yuyuan, Nai Ruoyu, Shi Juan, Li Hanghai. Of the four, only Jiang Yuyuan eventually competed in the Olympics.
[01:26] The interviewer actually asks the girls for their ages!!! Their answers are: Nai Ruoyu “10”, Jiang Yuyuan “12”, Shi Juan “13”, and “11” for Li Hanghai. The girls have absolutely no reason to lie at this point. None of them are on the National Team yet and the age controversy is still many years away. …
If Jiang Yuyuan was 12 in 2003, that would make her at least age-16 in 2008, age eligible.
While far from conclusive, it’s far stronger evidence than any documents published by the People’s Republic of China. Leave a comment below if you have an opinion.
Olympic teammate Deng Linlin (é‚“ç³ç³) is shown in the 2003 footage, as well, but does not give her age.
He Kexin is still most suspected of being underage.
a history of gymnastics hair
The Couch Gymnast posted a somewhat comic review of trends in gymnastics hair styles. We’ve come a long way since 1968.
VÄ›ra Čáslavská (left) looks away in protest during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics. Source – Wikipedia.
… we will be moving into some deeply, deeply shallow territory…..hair trends in gymnastics. Mostly because there have been definite fads over the years in a sport where the best-kept hair during competition is hair kept out of the way– but also because, over the years, along with some winning coiffures, there have been some highly dubious choices- something I think we should all celebrate together! …
click through to see the entire post with photos – Couch Gymnast
Gymnastics Coaching.com 