Gymnastics Coaching.com

Though their old website was already one of my favourites, owner Darlene “The Bean” Fedyna just launched a new look site just in time for the start of the school year in Canada.

… Darlene has used her early childhood education, gymnastics background and her astute business skills to develop and grow GYMTASTICS into one of the premier gymnastics clubs in western Canada. Darlene is also a pre-school consultant, specializing in children’s emotional and physical development, as well as rhyming things with silly words whenever possible (a big hit with the pre-school crowd.) She is extremely passionate about gymnastics and works to be a positive influence to all her customers and coaching staff.

To Darlene, every toddler, child, teenager and adult that walks through the doors of GYMTASTICS is a star!

Though the site is clean and easy to navigate, it’s packed with features — including the very cool “explore the gym” page.

Of course they have online registration. (A web feature that causes as many problems as it solves, for many clubs. I’ll bet this one works perfectly.)

Compare Gymtastics vs your club website. Then email Darlene to see who does her site!

Yours is due for a makeover.

Gymtastics.ca

… That Age Finder on the home page is brilliant!

By looking at the site you might assume Gymtastics is mainly a recreational club. Not so. They have a huge team program and recently graduated Stephanie McGregor to powerhouse Oregon State.

Now that it’s clear this could become the biggest scandal of the Beijing Games in all sports, the International Olympic Committee simply wants the problem to go away.

Despite persistent questions about the ages of several members of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team that won the gold medal, the International Olympic Committee said Friday there is still no proof anyone cheated and believes the controversy will be “put to rest.” …

What about the promised investigation? Assign someone to interview the families of the athletes, perhaps. To ask for newspaper articles from competitions in past years that include age.

Show me those articles and I’ll apologize for questioning the age of He Kexin.

It’s comedy that official documents from a totalitarian state would be considered evidence. Passports and birth certificates have been altered in the past, why should I believe the were not falsified this time?

… the Chinese gave the FIG documents Thursday evening that included the current and former passport, ID card and family residence permit for double gold medalist He Kexin. Lu said the documents all say she was born in 1992, which makes her eligible to compete. Gymnasts must turn 16 at some point during the Olympic year in order to be eligible. …

IOC: Despite questions, no proof – NBC

Personally, I don’t think the issue has been put to rest.

And what about the promised investigation into Yang Yun?

… Even China’s own Yang Yun, a double bronze medalist in Sydney, said during an interview aired on state broadcaster China Central Television that she was 14 in 2000.

Best case scenario, FIG removes the age requirement so we do not have to go through this again in future.

That won’t happen while Bruno Grandi is in charge.

Our predictions for Beijing.

How did we do?

Women’s Artistic:

Team – USA GOLD winner China

Vault – Cheng Fei GOLD winner Un Jong Hong

Bars – He Kexin GOLD winner

Beam – Nastia Liukin GOLD winner Shawn Johnson

Floor – Shawn Johnson GOLD winner Isbaza

All-around – Shawn Johnson GOLD winner Nastia Liukin

Oops. Only one correct out of six.

Men’s Artistic:

Team – China GOLD winner

Floor – Kyle Shewfelt or Brandon O’Neill GOLD (neither qualifed for the Floor final) winner Kai Zou

Pommel – Xiao Qin GOLD winner

Rings – Chen Yibing GOLD winner

Vault – Leszek Blanik GOLD winner

Parallel Bars – Li Xiaopeng GOLD winner

Horizontal Bar – Fabian Hambüchen GOLD winner Kai Zou

All-around – Yang Wei GOLD winner

Much better in the Men’s competition. Correct on 6 of the 8 medals. (I sure wish Shewfelt or O’Neill had qualified.)

How did you do on your predictions?

The 2000 Olympic Champion Laura Wilkinson impressed me in getting back to the Final. But, in her 3rd Olympics, competing against athletes half her age, another podium finish was not to be.

full results

Everyone else in the world tries to find a way to compete against the astonishing Chinese. Another veteran, in her 3rd Olympics, Emilie Heymans did it with extreme consistency. After “choking” in Athens in 2004, Heymans credits sports psychology with her success this time.

Congratulations.

The noose tightens.

Initially not wanting to be dragged into the mud, the International Gymnastics Federation must now at least make the appearance of taking action:

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed to The Epoch Times today that it has asked the International Gymnastics Federation to investigate the Chinese gymnastics underage fiasco, following new evidence that at least two gymnasts competed under the legal age in the Olympics.

…

More evidence has emerged in the last two days that two of the girls, He Kexin and Yang Yilin, were 14 years old and not 16, as claimed by the Chinese authorities. …

Philippe Filacci, Head of Media Operations for the International Gymnastics Federation, presently in Beijing, confirmed that he was aware of the new evidence. “We are investigating it,” he said in a phone interview.

Epoch Times

As many have pointed out, this is not new evidence. But it reached enough of a buzz in the media that IOC finally felt compelled to act.

In the end, this will be the story of the 2008 Olympics. And that’s a shame.

If only the Chinese authorities had been savvy enough not to select the underage girl(s). They would have been very strong with older girls on the team.

An anonymous Chinese speaking hacker known as Stryde Hax has been blogging his search for information on Olympic Bars Champion He Kexin’s real birth date. UPDATE – his name is Mike Walker.

A consultant with a high-tech security firm, Stryde Hax states that He’s age can hardly be called controversial anymore, writing Wednesday, “At this point, I believe that any reasonable observer already understands that age records have been forged.”

His findings are linked from the highly respected website Ars Technica:

… Google, rather suspiciously, has been scrubbed clean—searching the engine’s cache reveals references to He Kexin, but He’s name and data have been removed. As for Baidu, the main search function returns only government-approved data—a spreadsheet that purports to show information on Kexin has also been deleted—but checking the engine’s cache proves that a copy of the document is still preserved. He Kexin’s age, as listed in the preserved copy of an official Chinese document? 14. …

read more – Baidu cache offers more evidence of underage Chinese gymnasts

Olympic Champion He Kexin – by Grace Chiu

Sooner or later, I expect, it will be confirmed that He Kexin was too young to compete at the Beijing Olympics.

Next question. If that happens, should she lose the Gold medal?

I think not. A better solution would be to punish the Chinese Gymnastics Association. Certainly He Kexin did not falsify her documents. The coaches and administration are mostly to blame.

… Of course, all this is hypothetical. There is not enough proof … yet.

(via Live.Breath.Love Gymnastics)

The best article I’ve seen yet on the new code of points …

Athens was a disaster for Men’s Judging. It was far, far better 4yrs later in Beijing with the new open ended judging scheme. The best were separated from the rest by the difficulty A-score.

But it’s not perfect:

… “The B panel is always the problem,” said John Roethlisberger, a three-time U.S. Olympian who is now the FIG’s athlete representative. “The B panel scoring is where they’re not getting that separation. … ”

Grandi has been harping on execution since the new code took effect in 2006, saying he didn’t want it to become an X-Games-like competition where gymnasts tried harder and harder skills with little regard for how they looked. There’s a reason it’s called artistic gymnastics, and Grandi said he will instruct the technical committees to make it an even bigger priority in the upcoming quadrennium.

“The new system is certainly not perfect yet, but we’re on a good way, taking us to a very positive solution,” he said. “The first thing we will closely have to look at is to make some corrections in the balance between difficulty and execution. At this time, we’re trending a little bit too much toward the difficulty.”

That’s fine to emphasize that, Roethlisberger said. But it seems as if too many judges are more concerned that their marks fall within the average than the mark itself.

“They need to get judges to judge the B panel the way it’s written in the code. I don’t know how you’re ever going to get them to do it,” Roethlisberger said. “Again, I’m not saying the results are wrong. That’s the part of the system—they’ve got to find a way to let judges judge, and not let them be worried about whether they’re in the average or not.” …

FIG President Gives Gymnastics Judges High Marks – Nancy Armour on Gymnast.com

Roethlisberger is right. Especially in the Women’s competition, judges “boxed” the B-scores. A fantastic routine scores 9.0 while an average routine scores 8.0. There should be as great a separation between the B-scores as the A-scores if execution is going to be weighted as important as difficulty.

Expect Australian judge Helen Colaguiri to box the scores next time after getting so much flack over a comparatively large 0.3 range between Ke Hexin and Nastia Liukin on Bars.

Chris Grabowecky, one Olympic judge not afraid to put up the score he feels is correct, regardless if the rest of the panel sees it differently.

Was Bars in Beijing the greatest Olympic Gymnastics Final ever?

So says Andrew Thornton:

… far and away the best bars final of any competition in history – maybe the best final of any event in history! I know that’s a big statement, but I believe it to be absolutely true – and I’m not talking about the results, I’m talking about the gymnastics. No two routines were even alike – every single routine was completely different than the one before. We had the unique opportunity here to see many of the best bar workers to ever walk the planet all competing in the same final, and all hitting their routines. The only thing missing was a few stuck landings. …

If you watched NBC TV in the States, you’d know the biggest controversy in America was whether Nastia or Ke Hexin should have won the apparatus — after the tie break.

Andrew the Analyst reviewed all the Bars routines and concluded … that the Bronze medalist Yang Yilin actually should have taken home the Gold.

source

… Yang Yilin had the exact same A-score as Liukin and He Kexin (7.7), and there is simply no way you can convince me that she had the most deductions of the three. In fact, I felt she should have won by a few tenths. …

read the entire article – Cracking the Controversy – Gymnast.com

Normally I defer to Andrew. But, in this case, the greatest Bars final in history, I think the judges got it right.

Gold – He Kexin
Silver – Nastia Liukin
Bronze – Yang Yilin

Andrew’s analysis counts a 0.5 deduction for both Nastia and He on a pirouette. That’s too severe, in my opinion. But watch all the final routines and decide for yourself.

Of the 10 Olympic gymnastics apparatus, the new code has worked best on Bars. It’s astonishing what these gymnasts have been capable of doing.

Leave a comment with your own ranking of that Final. Certainly Beth Tweddle had the most “difficult” routine.

related: Nastia’s score correct, says beleaguered judge

Cassidy was just featured in her local paper, happy to have a photo of her with Nastia at the WOGA gymnastics camp earlier this summer:

It’s not every day that an 8-year old from Anaconda, Mont., … can say that they are friends with an Olympic champion (Liukin won the women’s all-around late Thursday night), but for Cassidy McAlpine, that’s just another day in the gym.

What happened next is the stuff of fairy tales for a young gymnast.

After the first seven-hour day of training, when all the rest of the campers headed for the swimming pool, Cassidy asked if, instead of swimming, she could drive over to the Plano facility, where Nastia was training, in order to watch the current world champion. Valeri, who remembered Cassidy from her first visit, gave her permission.

“Her dad Keith drove her over, and, with Valeri’s urging, Cassidy just sort of walked right through the observation area, in to the gym and plunked herself down,” … “During the run-up to the Games, Nastia was training by herself, so the gym was pretty quiet. After about 10 minutes of watching from the sidelines, Cassidy just got up, walked over to where Nastia was getting ready to do uneven bars, and started talking to her.”

It’s unlikely that most gymnasts would have had the guts to walk across the gym of her idol — uninvited — during practice, but Cassidy isn’t your average 8-year-old. …

read the entire article – CDA Press

Cassidy isn’t the only little girl inspired by the Olympics. There are hundreds of thousands just like her.

Our weekend dash to climb the second highest mountain in Washington State was a ton of fun. AND we did get to the summit.

Here’s Lisa Adlard from Funtastics on the windy summit.

trip report – …and so they pressed on – Dave Adlard