Gymnast Ivana Hong poses for a portrait during the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Media Summitt at the Palmer House Hilton on April 14, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois.
… Getty has posted a photo shoot of all the gymnasts who are the main front runners for Beijing.
Compare that with her near identical Bronze medal Finals bar routine on (YouTube).
I don’t like the hand shifts. Or very small form breaks.
However, I understand she’s upped her A-score considerably.
The toughest competition on Bars at the Olympics may be which two of the Chinese team qualify for Finals. If everyone HITS in finals … expect the medals to go CHN / CHN / Nastia Liukin 1-2-3.
With two-time NCAA All-Around Champion Courtney Kupets sidelined with a ruptured Achilles tendon, the competition for this year’s all-around title is wide open.
The natural selection as the favorite to replace Kupets rests with two-time all-around runner-up Ashley Postell, but if regionals proved anything, then the all-around championship is still very much up for grabs.
A favorite has emerged over the past month, it’s an Ashley of a completely different spelling.
After LSU’s Ashleigh Clare-Kearney posted a 39.600 to win the all-around competition at the SEC Championships on March 29, she followed it up with a 39.875 to win the Central Region’s all-around competition. In a sport where the winner and loser are often decided by a hundredth of a point, Clare-Kearney’s .275 bettering of Postell’s regional all-around score has made the LSU junior the woman to beat come April 23. …
… World and Olympic rhythmic champion Alina Kabayeva is set to marry outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin, a Russian newspaper printed Monday.
“Moscow Correspondent” published that Putin, 55, divorced his wife two months ago, and plans to marry Kabayeva, 25, in June.
Kabayeva won the all-around bronze medal at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and the gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. She has won numerous world and European titles, and was stripped of her gold medals at the 2001 World Championships for testing positive for diuretics at the Goodwill Games a few months earlier. …
International Gymnast
How many Olympic Champions turned out to be great coaches?
Not all that many.
It’s great to see 1980 Olympic Champion Yelena Davydova coaching a wonderful gymnast, Kristina Vaculik from Canada.
Yelena was one of the coaches on the Floor when Canada took the silver medal as a team at Pacific Rim. Kristina finished 6th all-around. (58.425)
… Davydova said that, although the Canadian women did not qualify as a team for Beijing, their performance in San Jose indicated potential for the next Olympic cycle.
Vaculik, who will turn 16 in July, may well be part of the next Olympic cycle, as well. …
Davydova said the Canadians’ team silver medal will benefit not only Vaculik, but the next generation of Canadian talent.
“For the future, it gives us confidence that we can do well,” Davydova said. “It will give confidence to the whole team.” …
That victory must have been bittersweet for the very modest Davydova. Those Games were boycotted. And her friend Elena Mukhina was paralysed in a training accident during a National Team Olympic training camp the same year.
… USA Gymnastics believes some of the points made in the study are misleading. The study is based on injury information that was entered in an emergency room database from different hospitals, which means there is little consistency in what may have been classified as a gymnastics-related injury.
Also, the study did not differentiate whether or not the injuries occurred in a proper setting with appropriate supervision. In addition, the study represented participation numbers at 600,000, which represents those who compete in events, rather than the 4-5 million recreational and competitive participants cited in some industry surveys. Although it was not featured prominently in media reports, the study documented a 25 percent decrease in gymnastics-related injuries during the period of the study and that 97 percent of the injuries were treated and released. …
The study is not perfect. But few coaches deny that gymnastics is a dangerous activity.
The message from USAG should be: Keep your kids safe. Send them to a USAG affiliated program. Search out experienced, competent USAG affiliated coaches.
broken wrist from gymnastics – original – flickr – Dave Parker
Please leave a comment if you’ve got an opinion.
PS
Let’s not gloss over the fact that the coach education non-system in the States is far inferior to any other developed gymnastics nation. The mandatory safety certification for professional members is not nearly enough.
In sadly Socialist Canada, for example, we have mandatory coach training called the National Coaching Certification Program. It’s not great. But our NCCP is far better than the hodge podge of coach education schemes in America.
The top 3 from each session (left column and right column) in preliminaries will fight it out in the Super 6 Final.
All year I’ve been predicting #1 ranked Stanford will win. Gymblog’s calling a battle between three schools: Stanford, Oklahoma and Penn State.
And what about #4 Cal Berkeley. They do wonderful gymnastics, for sure. But does Cal have the depth to win a team title?
The judging requirements are so demanding in the Men’s NCAA that it’s easy for disasters to happen. I’m expecting a close and thrilling finish in the Team competition.
A favorite has emerged over the past month, it’s an Ashley of a completely different spelling.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 