Gymnastics Coaching.com

Called up my old friend Kelly Manjak today. Former coach of Olympic Floor Champion Kyle Shewfelt.

Kelly’s at Oakville Gymnastics in Ontario, Canada. And one of the best coaches I know.

Here’s some training footage of one of his girls, Sabrina Gill, on bars.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Legendary Canadian coach Eugene Galperin told us many years ago to train 2 fast giants, 2 slow giants, in series, on strap bar. I see Kelly is still using that drill.

Kelly mentioned that his gymnast Aisha Gerber had just departed for UCLA. Good luck!

I was really surprised with the Olympic coverage on GYMmedia.com.

They are normally one of the very best sites. The European perspective. But I hardly linked to them at all during these Games. Their excellent analyst Dieter Hoffman was in Beijing. But updates and translations were slow. GYMmedia really needs a site overhaul.

For the 2008 Artistic competition, their coverage was sketchy. Somewhat better for Rhythmic.

GYMmedia was fairly good for Trampoline.

In fact, they are the only site reporting on a bit of a scandal in Men’s Trampoline.

The Bronze medalist from 2004, Henrik Stehlik from Germany, did not qualify to the Final. Germany protested. After a meeting 90min long, the Jury d’Appel voted 3:0 to add him as a 9th and extra Finalist.

Then F.I.G. President Bruno Grandi (ITA) talked to the Jury for an hour after their actual meeting. The Jury of Appeal reversed their decision. Stehlik was not allowed to compete the Final, after all.

… Now, FIG must make decisions on athlete selection all the time. But why did the President intervene? Is that part of the documented appeals process?

It seems very strange to me.

Click through to read the details, as well as Germany’s trampoline head coach Michael Kuhn’s opinion.

F.I.G.- President overrules Jury d’Appel – GYMmedia.com

The Women’s competition was terrific. One of the highlights of the Games. Nastia needed a near perfect meed to win.

But the Men’s All-around Final at the Beijing Olympics was a bit of a mess.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Winner Yang Wei was almost unchallenged. Certainly it would have been far more entertaining if a healthy Paul Hamm had been there to put on the pressure.

From

“2008 Olympic Vault Fiasco” by Judy Schalk – Brevet Judge

Was it blatant cheating that allowed Cheng Fei of China to receive a bronze medal in vault finals to edge out Alicia Sacramone of the U.S. by .025?

I’ve been asked about this controversial event so often that I thought I’d give you my take on what may have happened.

There were no Chinese or American judges on the panel that judged the Vault Finals. No country represented in a finals event may have a judge on that event. However, Cheng Fei is the 3-time World Vault Champion and highly respected world wide for her unquestionable talent.

My opinion is that the judges flat out didn’t do their job. There are only 8 gymnasts in Event Finals. With falls being a whopping 0.80 deduction, they may have assumed a fall would knock anyone out of standings, certainly out of medal contention, without having to disgrace a revered athlete with a humiliatingly low score. I doubt that it was a calculated manipulation. It’s hard to subtly manipulate scores with these rules especially in vault finals since they average both vaults together. But since Cheng’s combined Start Value is 0.90 higher than Alicia’s, they’re pretty much on equal ground if you just take the 0.80 fall and don’t conscientiously score the vault.

The rules used in the 2008 Olympics are more severe on execution than the old rules. All deductions are “flat” with no incremental fractions. That is, deductions are 0.10, 0.30, 0.50 or 0.80. Obviously the judges did not evaluate all the categories of deductions when they scored Cheng’s missed vault. Her legs were apart in the first flight – 0.10. Her arms were staggered on the table, 0.10 or 0.30. She lacked her usual height in the second flight, minimally 0.10 but probably 0.30. She had body position errors in flight, (pike, knees) each 0.10. She piked down before landing, 0.50. Dynamics, 0.30. Fall, 0.80. Her score should not have been above 8.00.

So, yes, Alicia Sacramone earned the bronze medal for Vault in the 2008 Olympics though she’ll never own it. …

Judge Judy

(via the JustGymnastics.com email newsletter)

I appreciate Judy’s honestly. How else will judging improve unless feet are put to the fire?

Judy is from the USA. I know others did not score it the same way.

We really should ask the judges on the panel:

B1 de JONG E V MOLEMA Aukje Netherlands
B2 GRATT Johanna Austria
B3 MURTONEN Satu Sirpa Finland
B4 SABOGAL de DOMINGUEZ Blanca Cecilia Colombia
B5 GOTHBERG Agneta Birgersdotter Sweden
B6 DIDILESCU Olga Fanica Romania

I cannot seem to find their individual scores on the internet. (Leave a comment if you’ve seen them.)

FIG needs to do something with future regulations so that a full fall (almost always) eliminates a gymnast from getting on to the podium. It’s embarrassing for our sport to be handing out medals to people sitting on their butts.

Alicia – Vault

People still love Alicia. She got a heroine’s welcome on arrival back home.

I’ve seen a number of comments that Italy was ripped off in the last Gymnastics Sports competition at the Olympics.

That the hosts were gifted a medal ahead of Belarus. (scores)

Leave a comment if you agree. Or disagree. Or with links to commentary on that.

The rules of Rhythmic are so complex that you really must be an athlete, coach or judge to understand the scores.

Like father, like daughter.

Nastia just get’s more beautiful the older she gets!

Live Breathe Love Gymnastics

Nastia and Valeri have said several times that the “Olympic Champion” plans to continue to compete internationally. I suspect Shawn Johnson will retire.

The London 2012 Olympic Preview at the Beijing Closing Ceremonies was so … weird. Those Games are going to be either super cool. Or a huge letdown after China.

But when Jimmy Page took to the top of the bus, I decided to give London the benefit of the doubt. It could be just awesome in England.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, left, and British pop singer Leona Lew perform the song “Whole Lotta Love” during the closing ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympics at the National Stadium, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008, in Beijing.

(AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan) – ESPN

The Olympics are over. I’ve just downloaded (free) the next WAG draft code.

The most talked about change (so far) is that only the 8 highest value skills including the dismount will be counted on UB, BB and FX. That will hopefully mean shorter routines with more room for Artistry. … It is called Artistic Gymnastics, after all. And hopefully there will be fewer injuries due to fatigue.

This change sounds like a good one to me. But the inevitable unintended consequences will only start appearing with the first competitions under the new rules.

The Yurchenko 5/2 twist is still 6.50 start. Double twist only 5.80.

It’s available as a PDF document from this page on the FIG website. (Left side navigation WAG > 2009 > English.)

FUNNY.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet has purchased the entire Chinese women’s gymnastics team for an undisclosed sum and will use them to establish a Gold Medal Hedge Fund for the 2012 Summer Olympics. “I’m an American and I support the American athletes,” explained Buffet. “But I lost my shirt betting against Gates on women’s gymnastics and I won’t let that happen again.” …

Capitalist Banter

Gymnastics is one of most hyped Olympic sports. But — for some odd reason — FIG continues to tack on the “Gala”. That’s display gymnastics more appropriate to Gymnastrada.

Does any other Olympic sport do this?

Jon Horton

USA Gymnastics posted photos of the 2008 edition.

Paul Ziert blogged live from the event commenting at one point, “Someone needs to require a higher standard here in this gala.”

It’s a bit of an embarassment, in my opinion.