Guillermo Alvarez edged first-day leader Jonathan Horton by .05 to win the U.S. Men’s Qualifier, which finished Saturday at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.
Alvarez, .2 behind Horton on Thursday, outscored Horton 88.250-88.00 to take the title. Both Alvarez (13.200) and Horton (13.450) took their lowest score on high bar.
David Durante finished third all-around ahead of Sho Nakamori.
Alvarez won pommel horse and tied Horton for the title on floor exercise. Other titlists were Kevin Tan (still rings), Sean Golden (vault), Justin Spring (parallel bars) and Joseph Hagerty (high bar).
Reigning national champion Sasha Artemev, who finished seventh on Thursday, scratched from today’s competition.
The competition served as a qualifier to the U.S. National Championships, scheduled for Aug. 15-18 in San Jose, Calif.
All-Around 1. Guillermo Alvarez 178.100
2. Jonathan Horton 178.050
3. David Durante 174.900
4. Sho Nakamori 174.300
5. Todd Thornton 172.600
5. Sean Townsend 172.600
7. Bryant Hadden 171.650
8. Tim Gentry 170.850
(I won’t post the second attempt where Horton crashed.)
Incidentally, the full twisting double back to regrasp should be called the “Pineda”. I filmed Tony Pineda catch it at the 1985 World Championships in Montreal.
Because he was from Mexico, in an early morning flight, it seem to get ignored.
Dave poses a good question. And gets some good feedback on the Chalk Bucket forum:
I’m getting ready to purchase new foam for our loose foam pit. This will be the first complete re-fill in years. …
Types & Sizes of Foam: The foam I’m looking at comes in 6″ cubes or 8″ cubes. I’ve gotten a couple conflicting recommendations as to what is best to use.
I’ve heard that larger is better, creating more ’empty space’ between cubes to better absorb the landings.
I’ve also heard that for smaller children, the smaller cubes are better to keep them from getting to the bottom too quickly (slipping through basically).
Our pit (like most I gather) is used by 1 year olds, and full grown competitive gymnasts. I guess it’s not uncommon to have a mix of sizes to best accommodate the variety of shapes, sizes, and weights of the gymnasts. …
From the suppliers I’ve limited it down to, I have available:
Every gymnastics gym has super flexible girls (and, once-in-a-while, a boy). They often get steered into Rhythmic Gymnastics.
In some countries those girls may be selected to be contortionists.
A non-acrobatic coach asks this question:
Are there any studies of the contortionist/gymnastics training these children are receiving?
Are there any local or international monitoring agencies? Are there health agencies involved to evaluate the stresses of the training? Is there any oversight at all for the training and pre-training of potential future athletes?
Astonishingly, some people are born with a range of motion far beyond the norm. The most flexible girl I ever coached seemed to have no limits in hip mobility. It was not from training. She could do extreme oversplit in every direction without pain the first day she walked into the gym.
But is it possible to injury such an athlete?
Certainly. The stretching I’ve seen done by contortionist coaches has been too severe, in my opinion. I particularly worry about the lower spine and knees.
However, the bigger story is just how uninjured are contortionists compared with the normal population. Perhaps there are some advantages in having such lax joints.
Leave a comment if you have an opinion. Or if you’ve seen any research into contortionist injury.
Some girl, somewhere, is already catching Kovacs. You can’t stop her.
So … routines getting longer. Difficulty increasing, long-term.
What are we to do?
Two things:
Promote the concept of specialists. That’s a done deal in Men’s Gymnastics already. Fewer and fewer of the best in the world want to do the AA.
It’s even more necessary in Women’s gymnastics. And can’t happen fast enough for me. The all-arounder in Artistic Gymnastics should be like the Decathlete in Athletics.
I want to see what the best vault specialists can do. The best beam specialists.
Specialists will need less training hours. Have fewer overuse injuries.
Secondly, we need to devise more sensible developmental regulations for age group gymnasts.
The goal should be a healthy, safe set of rules where most of the kids in any division can get through the routine, scores are fairly high, and the “winners” are those who stick landings, have slightly better rhythm and “perfect” execution.
It happens now-and-again already in some lower levels of competition. I love those meets — where one wobble drops you 10 placing on the apparatus.
Kids really focus. They learn.
That’s an exciting competition!
Oh — and they should do the All-Around for as long as possible.
Leave a comment if you have other ideas, not on how to make gymnastics EASIER, but how to make it BETTER for gymnasts and coaches.
I’ve been avoiding weighing in on a rekindled controversy buzzing on the internet right now.
But the time has come to put things in perspective. I’ve heard too many alarmist and wrong statements.
Parkettes in Pennsylvania, one of the top elite women’s gymnastics programs in the world, invited CNN into the gym a number of years ago to do a documentary.
Now … CNN editors could have done a piece showing how strong, dedicated, determined and fantastic are elite gymnasts — but that would not get good ratings.
An expose sells far better.
If you did not see the original documentary, it’s on YouTube:
Aside from trying to generate ad revenue for CNN, a secondary purpose of the documentary was to bring some facts to light:
elite women’s gymnastics is very difficult
coaches (in all sports) sometimes get emotional; say and do harsh things
injury rate is quite high, especially overuse injuries
All true. I commend CNN for that. The general public needs to be better educated.
I advise athletes and parents of athletes NOT to accept invitation into an elite program unless you understand the risks.
Any coach who steps “over the line” should be disciplined and reprimanded. Even jailed.
Elite gyms should have an open door policy, parents welcomed to bring cameras and camcorders any time.
Girls who are unhappy with their elite training in Artistic have many other options: diving, cheer, circus, dance, fitness, etc. (I know a half dozen girls who switched to pole vaulting and were nationally ranked within a year.)
Here are the facts waiting to be highlighted by a future CNN documentary: (Don’t hold your breath.)
there are no better “protected” young female athletes than gymnasts
gym clubs are one of the few places in their lives where there is no profanity
gymnasts are the fittest females of any Olympic sport
ex-elite gymnasts go on to be disproportionately successful in their adult lives
Gymnastics, trampoline and tumbling are still, in my opinion, the best sports available for girls. From that starting point they can do anything.
I go to many multi-sport coaching conferences. Each and every time I come away thinking that gymnastics coaches are the most impressive and dedicated of all. Our sport is the most difficult — and it develops the best coaches and athletes. Period.
Leave a comment below if you have something to add.
The bad reputation of Elite Women’s Artistic Gymnastics, especially within the medical community, is one of the biggest issues faced by all gymnastics coaches.
And I’m expecting a flood of bad press surrounding the selection of the American Team to the 2008 Olympics. There are many good candidates — but only a few can qualify.
The stories of those who do not make THE TEAM is are stories the media can sell.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 