Gymnastics Coaching.com

Just arrived Houston.

2008 Visa Championships and first Olympic Trial for Artistic Men is the headline event. But I’m expecting Rhythmic, Trampoline and Tumbling to be excellent too.

official competition home page

From this competition 14 Men will be selected to fight it out at Olympic Trials on June 19-22 in Philadelphia, Pa.

The Olympic selection process will name the Men’s Team of 6 on July 1st.

JAMD – Sean Golden

USA Today has an inspiring feature on one guy who has a realistic shot at Beijing. Sean Golden has struggled and suffered to get himself into position to make this team. His is a compelling story …

Olympic hopeful Golden leads by example – USA Today

At Chinese National Championships the arena was near empty. Can’t a totalitarian state demand school children fill the bleachers?

Don’t tell me China is preparing those girls for the intense uproar of Olympic Team finals. I see no evidence that Chinese coaches have much understanding of how to prepare gymnasts psychologically for the BIG MEET.

They need to bring in an NCAA coach to help.

… 85 NCAA women’s gymnastics teams listed on the Troester rankings drew well over a half a million fans for the season; a remarkable 50,000-plus fans attending NCAA women’s gymnastics meets for any week of the regular season. Small wonder that many of us feel that NCAA women’s collegiate team gymnastics is the premier form of the sport, worldwide.

Average Home Meet Attendance

NCAA Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics – the fan’s favorite – GymGemz

The shergymrag commented:

The popularity of NCAA gymnastics has nothing to do with Performance and everything to do with accessibility. NCAA gymnastics outdraws all other forms of gymnastics simply because it’s the most accessible form of gymnastics. Hands down, case closed. NCAA teams have a schedule. They’ll have several home meets per season. Instead of going to a movie some night, a local gymnastics fan can go on down to see their team compete against some other team. When the team has an away meet, they are performing largely in front of the local fans of the host team. You don’t have to be a hardcore traveling fan to enjoy NCAA gymnastics in person several times a year.

Elites have a meet once in awhile, here or there, maybe, maybe not. There is no opportunity to build a local fan base for “home meets” because elites come from all over the place and USAG gymnastics clubs generally do not treat their teams as TEAMS. They are just a bunch of girls who train together at the same gym. Most gyms do not have enough elites to field a full team and there’s no current structure for Elites, level 10s, and level 9s from one club to compete all together as one team on a regular basis against teams from other clubs that are also mixed level. If you want to follow elite gymnastics you either have to do it over the internet or be rich enough to travel all over the place to attend meets held everywhere. Once in a blue moon you can watch it on tv. If you want to follow JO gymnastics – what’s there to follow? The local club is going to have a meet like once a year.

All very good points.

Having just attended JO Nationals where a few of the “performances” were just as good as the NCAA, I must say the meet was far less entertaining. It was incredibly drawn out with 8 rotations / flight.

Sprinter Oscar Pistorius may or may not be advantaged by his carbon-fibre prosthetics.

I have mixed feelings on that.

But in competitive sport we have to draw the line somewhere. A mechanized ectoskeleton, obviously, is WAY over that line.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Straight to the Bar – Robotic suit amplifies human strength)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

If you like those, here are more soccer celebration dance and acrobatics.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

And I thought North American professional sport was bad.

Ohio State coach Miles Avery:

“We’re going to win,” Avery insists. “That’s why we’re going. We want to win. We don’t want to finish third, or second.”

AVERY: U.S. TEAM IS IN IT, TO WIN IT – Inside Gymnastics

Everyone thinks China is going to run away with it, but everyone thought that in ’04 [too]. …

I do think the USA does have an outside chance of winning the Olympics. They certainly will make the Team Final (top 8 of 12 teams). At that point any team that hits 18 of 18 routines has a chance.

We will know better after this weekend’s VISA Championships and first trial in Houston.

source – Getty Images – M. Hamm’s comeback – NBC Olympics

Fans are hopeful Morgan Hamm looks good. The team could really use him in Beijing.

Shannon Miller poses the most important question for Olympic Team selectors:

“Should the men focus on forming a team that will be sure to qualify to the finals or focus on putting together a team that will excel once in the finals?”

These could be two completely different teams.

In the qualifying round it’s a 6-5-4 format. Six men on a team, 5 men compete on each event and 4 scores count. In the final round it’s a 3 up 3 count format. Three athletes compete on each event, all scores count. For the qualifying round you would likely need athletes that can do more events, thus more all-arounders. This would mean the less events you compete (no matter how good), the worse your chances of making the team. However, if you want to focus on the final round and assume you’ll make it there, you would need only 3 men on each event that can throw huge scores. This means a ringman like Kevin Tan or a specialist like Sean Golden may have a much better chance to make the team.

From the Podium

If they are in it to win it, the USA must choose the best team 3 up 3 count for team finals.

That’s a no brainer.

China will do exactly the same thing. Team preliminaries will be low priority.

This is NOT the case for every nation, however. Canada, for example, will likely send their best apparatus specialists as opposed to those who would contribute to the highest possible team score. Canada does not have a chance for a team medal. But could certainly medal on an apparatus as they did in 2004 Athens.

He goes by the flickr name of johnny caboosehead.

At Sport Seneca in Toronto.

more johnny caboosehead photos tagged “gymnastics” – flickr

An inspiring article on the former University of Minnesota great who will be trying out of the US Olympic Team at VISA Championships.

Olympic spotlight: Former Minnesota Gophers gymnast Guillermo Alvarez. Ex-Gophers gymnast eyes Olympic berth to show other Hispanics they can dream big.

Since graduating summa cum laude as a psychology major in 2005, Alvarez has mostly shelved his aspirations of an advanced degree and focused on his longtime Olympic dream.

The nation’s top collegiate senior gymnast in 2005, the former Gopher doesn’t drive a luxury vehicle. He doesn’t live in a tony downtown loft. And, despite training full time the past three years, Alvarez isn’t assured of a spot on the medal-contending U.S. men’s Olympic gymnastics team.
…

“I’ve been lucky to grow up in this country and to actually have the opportunity to train in this sport, because that’s something my father and his family didn’t have.

“The work they did paid off to give me the life that I have now.”

His father, Amando, emigrated with his parents and five siblings from Rio Verde, Mexico, in the 1950s, and they endured potato fields and labor camps in Idaho to fulfill their American dream.

“It’s pretty important just to have the face out here, especially now that immigration is such a big issue and there’s so much negative publicity about it,” Alvarez said of his Mexican roots. “To be able to show that, ‘Hey, I came from that.’ I want to give back, so other kids who don’t grow up in the richest neighborhoods can aspire to similar things.” …

read more …TwinCities.com

Alvarez is actually eligible to compete for Mexico. But would prefer to qualify for the American team.

UPDATE: Talked to him. He’s not eligible to compete for Mexico. Lesson learned: Can’t believe everything I see on the internet.

One of the best of many good things about Australia is that Aussies value sport. That’s how they became one of the most successful sporting nations in the world, per capita.

Down Under you can purchase for your kids …

Personalised Growth Charts
Personalised Birthday Cards
Personalised Special Occasion Cards
Personalised My Heroes Post-e-cards DVD’s
… more

… with an autographed photo of a sports star.

For example:

details – My Heroes

International Aussie gymnasts are available too.

Nice.

(via Australia Gymnastics Blog)

Some of the most original, most interesting photos I’ve seen this year were shot by Kelly Lambert.

This one is from her NCAA 2008 Championships “Practice Set”.

see more – flickr collections – Kelly Lambert

Gymnastics British Columbia has an interesting pilot scheduled. And check the price:

ACRiX Instructor Training Course

ACRiX Program Description:

The new ACRiX Program (Applied Circus: Radically Extreme), falling under the Youth CanMove initiative, aims to get youth more active in the sport of gymnastics.

ACRiX merges Circus Arts and Gymnastics into seasonal programs that can be put into place within schools, community centers, gymnastics clubs and neighbourhood houses. The goal of this program is to provide unique opportunities to disadvantaged youth and to offer sustainability in the program by training the youth in the classes to become ACRiX and gymnastics instructors.

Some of the skills presented within the program include acrobalancing, juggling and object manipulation, with equipment such as balls, rings, clubs, flowersticks and diabolos.

… This one day certification course

Date: Sunday, July 6 , 2008
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Where: Vancouver Phoenix Gymnastics
Conductor: Aaron Johnson and the Vancouver Circus School
Cost: Free !!*

They’ve found a way to make gymnastics training COOL. (add the words “extreme” and “circus”)

More information on the Gymnastics B.C. e-Xtra newsletter.

ACRiX has been added this year to the BC Coaching Intensive workshops:

Related post: great idea – Gymnastics Intensive (2007)