Gymnastics Coaching.com

You can get one of these cakes for yourself … if you live in Israel.

original – flickr

lilach cake company

In Second Life, some avatars are gymnasts.

larger version – flickr

Here’s a Second Life balance beam.

Senior – 2008 U.S. Classic, May 23, 2008, Reliant Arena, Houston, Texas.

* All-Around – Ashley Stott
* Vault – Mackenzie Caquatto
* Uneven Bars – Christa Tanella
* Balance Beam – Ashley Stott
* Floor Exercise – Randy Stageberg

UPDATE: full results – USAG

This small, little publicized competition actually drew a good crowd.

A number of NCAA coaches were in the audience, as well. Randy Stageberg, for one, has already signed with Florida.

Click PLAY or watch Randy on Floor at Gymnix 2008.

Inside Gymnastics magazine posted by far the best detailed coverage I’ve seen:

What’s Up in Warm-ups

As We Saw It …

Check also: News, Notes & Quotes from Nats, Thur

The layout of the site is much improved. Congratulations.

Watching from the stands, I was hopeful it was a minor finger “jam”, a very common occurrence on P Bars. Especially on Stutz to one bar.

Sadly, it was worse than I thought.

HOUSTON — Reigining Olympic all-around champion Paul Hamm has a broken right hand and will miss the U.S. Olympic Trials in June, his coach Miles Avery announced Friday.

“He won’t be able to do the Olympic Trials,” Avery said. “The course of action for that is to petition him to the team. And try to prove his readiness later in the summer, closer to the Games.”

Hamm suffered the injury on parallel bars in the final rotation of the first day of the U.S. Championships for men in Houston. During a stutz to one bar, his finger shifted on contact with the rail and he felt something pop, he said.

X-rays on Friday showed a fracture in the fourth metacarpal. Hamm will likely undergo surgery to put a pin in, and he will take four to six weeks to heal.

read more on International Gymnast

original – flickr

If it was any other gymnast, they might be off the team right now. But here is how Paul did last night under the official “point program” for selection:

Paul Hamm – 46
David Sender – 29
Joseph Hagerty – 25
Jonathan Horton – 24
Morgan Hamm – 24
Kevin Tan – 23

David Durante – 22
Raj Bhavsar – 22

Justin Spring – 15
Kyson Bunthuwong – 15

(Leave a comment if you know how they arrived at these “points”.)

Certainly from the point of view of the athletes, they simply want to have a good competition on day 2 (Saturday) and qualify in the top 14 through to Olympic Trials in Philadelphia.

Everyone expects Paul to be given every possible opportunity to compete in Beijing. He has 77 days before the start of the Games.

Wang won gold medals in all four individual events — ribbon, hoop, clubs and rope Thursday — and her combined score of 66.500 has her in first place after the preliminary round of the all-around competition. Rachel Marmer (62.575) is in second place and Ava Gehringer (62.200) is third. …

The Visa Championships likely will be the last major competition of Wang’s career. She plans to enroll at Yale in the fall and is not looking ahead to London in 2012 or torturing herself over what might have been this summer in Beijing.

Wang overcomes heartache
Defending champ eyes third title despite missing cut for Olympics – Houston Chronicle

We can ready for Lisa’s coronation as 3 time USA Champion after finals.

larger photo – NYTimes

Too young to compete in the Beijing Olympics.

… Or it may be that the reporter for the People’s Daily Online made a “mistake”.

Gymblog and Shergymrag jumped on this “mistake”.

This is the biggest scandal waiting to happen in our sport right now.

Great routine. Amazing landings. Aussie record score = 15.750

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Thanks Emily.

More routines from that competition on YouTube.

Read more on the Australia Gymnastics blog.

Another reason to promote fitness.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

…

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

Reuters

Global Warming Trends

Men’s gymnastics needs a media “superstar”.

We really haven’t had one since Sexy Alexei Nemov.

Paul Hamm is popular in the USA, but he’s no Nemov.

The best candidate on the horizon, I think, is Germany’s Fabian Hambuechen. Everybody loves this guy. And he is GOOD.

source?

One cute story:

Fabian Hambuechen was celebrating his high bar title with an adoring fan club that only sounded as if it included all of Germany when he spotted an unhappy Alicia Sacramone.

The term “bad mood” simply doesn’t exist in this gymnast’s vocabulary – in English or his native German – so he walked over to the American and put his arm around her, determined to make her smile.

“I was upset after (finishing second on) floor exercise. He was like, `Come on, baby, walk with me,”’ Sacramone said, laughing at the memory. “He’s all about having fun.”

And with the run he’s on, Hambuechen is having a blast.

“I love it,” he said recently. “I just try to take the good things out of it, take the good motivation.”

Just 20, Hambuechen will be a multi-medal threat at the Beijing Olympics. …

NBC Olympics – Olympics could give world `Fabi Fever’

Analyst John Roethlisberger at the USA VISA Championships said that Paul Hamm is now ahead of Fabian in the All-Around, with a higher start score particularly on rings.