Not that I'm upset, just saying it's not a surprise. Results from International Gymnast's Quick Hits and pictures from Gettyimages (obviously).
Team
1. USA 245.275
2. Canada 233.475
3. China 233.075
4. Australia 232.675
5. Russia 230.250
6. Japan 224.925
7. Mexico 214.325
8. Chinese Taipei 191.400 (poor Taiwan. They were putting up scores on UB that resembled the old code)
Senior All-Around
1. Nastia Liukin USA 62.850
2. Jana Bieger USA 59.925
3. Dasha Joura AUS 59.200
4. Ashleigh Brennan AUS 59.025
5. Qiushuang Huang CHN 58.850
6. Kristina Vaculik CAN 58.425
7. Mengsi Tian CHN 58.025
*. Lauren Mitchell AUS 57.950
*. Xin Zhang CHN 57.025
8. Alyona Zmeu Russia 56.575
9. Ericka Garcia MEX 56.000
10. Chinami Otaki JPN 55.325
11. Marisela Cantu MEX 55.175
12. Nanaho Hidaka JPN 54.475
13. Jessica Gil Ortiz COL 53.550
14. Nathalia Sanchez COL 53.200
15. Hiu Ying Angel Wong HKG 52.625
16. Jia Hui Tay SIN 51.975
17. Heem Wei Lim SIN 51.275
18. Noor Hasleen F. Hasnan MAS 49.275
*. Xi Hui Tay SIN 48.650
19. Nim Yan Choi HKG 46.850
20. Chun Min Chen TPE 46.725
Junior All-Around
1. Rebecca Bross USA 61.050
2. Samantha Shapiro USA 60.100
3. Viktoria Komova RUS 57.600
4. Charlotte Mackie CAN 57.575
5. Peng-Peng Lee CAN 57.375
6. Wenli Guan CHN 56.925
*. Brittany Rogers CAN 56.875
7. Jie Cui CHN 56.750
*. Rebecca Clark USA 56.725
8. Shizuka Tozawa JPN 56.225
9. Erica Lynn Danko JPN 56.050
10. Britt Greeley AUS 55.700
11. Emily Little AUS 55.675
*. Akiho Sato JPN 54.875
12. Nailiya Mustafina RUS 54.375
*. Violetta Malikova RUS 54.275
13. Karla Salazar MEX 53.200
14. Britt Reusche-Lari PER 50.350
15. Yu Chun Chen TPE 50.050
16. Paula Martinez MEX 49.650
17. Yu Ju Lo TPE 47.350
*. Chen Hsuan Wu TPE 46.975
*. Daniela Espinosa MEX 46.400
18. Wei Zhang CHN 42.825
19. Frances Audrey Munoz PHI 41.300
20. Ka Man Leung Hong Kong CHN 38.475
* Two athletes per country may qualify for all-around rankings
Darlene Hill tweaked her shoulder, so she did not compete BB or UB, unfortunately. This doesn't help her already long shot at the O-Team. She did put up good scores on VT and FX, though (14.9 and 15.125, respectively).
Samantha Shapiro (pictured above) did quite well for herself last night. She put up the second-highest score on UB for USA (15.225), had a 15.8 on BB (witnesses say it was a gorgeous routine), and was just solid all night. I've watched some of her previous competitions and she's just impressive. She needs new floor music because Blues for Klook isn't quite working (literally. Her music cut out on her last night. To her major credit, she kept going and the audience clapped along. She was the very last competitor of the night and received the biggest cheers). New favorite junior, y/y?
Peng Peng Lee (CAN) didn't have such a good night. She had gone OOB on almost all of her tumbling passes on FX, had a scary crash on the LB attempting a Bhardwaj(!)(pak salto full), and fell and wobbled on her BB set. I'm going to say points for her for being the first gymnast I've seen this quad attempting the Bhardwaj (or rather heard. There are no videos yet). I do wish her coaches would slow her down. We're all more than aware this kid is capable of incredible difficulty, but she's not eligible for the Olympics until 2012 or a Worlds until next year. I think the best thing to do for her is start teaching her consistency, work on the little stuff in her routines, and refine the skills she already has. Clean her up a little and she'll have a World beam medal in the bag. Let's not burn her out and cause a career-ending injury before then, please. This little American wants to see her on a World stage, kthx.
Rebecca Bross is on her own little winning streak. Looks like she'll be the new "It Girl" come the next quad. Only to be replaced by Wieber in 2011 and start being called "old" and "washed up" and "crippled" if she's been out with injury. I'm going to be really pissed if that's how it'll play out. I don't like predictability like that.
Videos next post.
Coach Rick of Gymnastics Coaching (also linked on the sidebar) gave me a sweet mention in his blog! Thanks! He mentioned something about the RSS feed. There is an option in the sidebar. It's kind of buried in there in between the credit for the blog's design (above the poll) and the blog archive.
Also thanks to difficulty plus execution who I noticed had linked me as well.
I think I'm long overdue for another Beijing Watch post. Since she was given a nice Pacific Rim (formerly Pacific Alliance) assignment, meaning good videos and another opportunity to see what she can do, I'll do a post on Darlene Hill. Her chances to make it on the O-Team are pretty slim, but there are still 130 days. Who knows?
This article was wholly depressing to read. It's driving home the fact that for the first time in God only knows how long, we may not see Romania on the team medal podium in Beijing. This, after they've won two consecutive Olympic team golds.
With the seemingly permanent retirement of Catalina Ponor last year, Romania's women's gymnastics team is barely holding on. One of their stars, Steliana Nistor (yes, of the famed ugly DTY), has this to say:
"I can successfully compete on only three apparatus," said Nistor. "This lowers my chances to win more money. But I hope for some medals on the floor and balance beam."
No, she cannot compete on vault.
Sandra Izbasa, who will put on a brave smile for the camera through tears of pain after injuring herself on a beam dismount, is the other leader of the team. I have no idea about her AA abilities or if she's a specialist. Either way, that still leaves four spots if Romania wants to successfully contend for a medal.
One of the screwed-up things in that article is that more money is spent on track-and-field and rowing than gymnastics in Romania. Really? Are those sports really that popular in Romania? Are there standout rowers in Romania? Is there a track-and-fielder that everybody in the world, even those who aren't track-and-field fans, know by name and why they're so famous? I highly doubt Comaneci's inspiration powers have subsided, it's the fact that it seems that things are just falling apart and all attempts to piece it back together are futile.
This is definitely a lovely photo, with exception to Alicia's butt being front and center and Shawn not following suit and having her face being quietly elegant and looking out to the horizon like the other three. It's okay to not smile for everything, dear. But other than that, I really like this photo and am glad that this was in a publication other than a sports-related one and one as widely read and highly regarded as Vogue.
The small article on the other hand, blech. It was poorly written for many reasons, grammar, voice, and purple prose being the least of them (so. Many. Commas). Here, read for yourself (since my scanner didn't want to do its job, I had to type this up myself):
Miles down a dirt road through deep woods somewhere outside Huntsville, Texas,is the 2000-acre Karolyi Camp, command central for the United States women's gymnastics team. Its remoteness is no coincidence. NO VISITORS OR PARENTS ARE ALLOWED ON PREMISES DURING CAMP PROGRAM, warns a sign posted on the gym building across from a cluster of "Goldilocks"-style cabins for athletes and staff.
Here national team coordinator Martha Karolyi, a Romanian who, with her husband, Bela, famously trained Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, gathers gymnasts and their coaches every few weeks to review and refine their skills. "They bring us out here, almost in the middle of nowhere, to have us clearly focus," explains Olympic hopeful Alicia Sacramone, 20. Right now, that focus is especially critical: After beating the Chinese to win the gold medal in last September's World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, the American team is riding high. Expectations for this summer are intense, to say the least. "Once we hit 2008, it was really nerve-racking to me," says Nastia Liukin, eighteen, the daughter of two world-class Russian gymnasts who emigrated to the U.S. in 1992 and settled near Dallas. "It's starting to get really scary-and really exciting."
A decade ago, U.S. gymnastics was in the doldrums. At the 1999 Worlds, the country came away without a single medal, which is when the Karolyis stepped in, introducing European-style team-based training to competitors who had previously worked alone with their coaches and barely knew, let alone liked, one another. That's all very well in the quest for individual medals but a disaster for teamwork. Now, says Shawn Johnson, just sixteen and the darling of the sport since she swept awards at virtually everything she entered last year, "we're still competitors, but we're teammates, and we're pushing one another to get to the top." At the victorious 2007 Worlds, you could see Sacramone, the self-appointed den mother of the group, rallying the team on to a collective win.That they have become close friends is in no doubt. As they arrive at the camp, they greet one another with hugs and girl talk, comparing nail tips and discussing movies they have seen. During training in the vast, hangar-like gym, hung with inspiring national flags and club banners, they gather round to encourage Chellsie Memmel, nineteen, All-Around Champion at the 2005 Worlds who recently returned to competitive form after shoulder and ankle injuries, when she falls from the uneven bars. She tries again, to cries of, "There you go!" and "Attagirl!"
The atmosphere in the gym alternates between apparently casual pauses and intense spurts of activity. Prince and Teena Marie play on the sound system as the gymnasts wrap and chalk their hands before springing into action, marked by the squeak of feet on mats, the crunch of trampoline springs, and the wumph of vaults.Witnessing their practice is like watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as runs and jumps turn into multiple flips and somersaults. Any doubt as to the seriousness of the proceedings is dispelled as the girls, in descending height order from Liukin's five feet three to Johnson's four feet nine, line up in front of Karolyi like privates on parade to receive her verdict.
The four members of the team featured here are each, needless to say, extraordinarily talented, and each is surprisingly individualistic in style. Johnson most clearly fits the image of a gymnast: Tiny, compact, and astonishingly powerful, she moves like a miniature wrestler propelled by her muscles. (Her parents knew something was up when she started walking at nine months.) Liukin, by contrast, is all grace, a willowy sylph who high-kicks like Sylvie Guillem and bends like a string of spaghetti on her favored apparatus of beam and bars. Sacramone is a pistol, highly charismatic on the mat and vault, and Memmel turns into a superheroine in performance, executing near-perfect routines on every piece of equipment. Two, Liukin and Memmel, are trained by their fathers-Liukin's is a two-time Olympic gold medalist; Memmel's was a collegiate gymnast who now owns a gym in New Berlin, Wisconsin-and the other two are from non-sporting families.
Their discipline extends to everything they eat-since they are constantly lifting their own body weight, any extra pounds are unwelcome-as well as never missing a workout. "All your decisions are pretty much based on, Is this going to affect me at the gym tomorrow?" says Memmel. But despite the rigor of their training, these young women are refreshingly normal. They cope with nerves at competitions by picturing themselves at their local gyms or zoning out with their iPods. "I play Justin Timberlake," says Sacramone. "We're getting married. He just doesn't know it yet."
Rather than being tutored, each of them went to high school, and Johnson still attends hers in West Des Moines, Iowa. Sacramone, a Massachusetts native is currently taking a semester off from Brown, where she's a sophomore studying sociology. Liukin and Memmel are working to fit college degrees around their schedules. They like Gossip Girl and Dance War. "The biggest misconception about gymnasts is that we don't have lives and that we're in the gym 24/7," says Sacramone. "Sure, we're in the gym a lot" -around six hours a day, six days a week- "but I still have time to have a social life and a boyfriend."
With the heavy toll it takes on the body, a gymnasts' professional life is typically short. Since they must be at least sixteen in the year of an Olympics in order to qualify, and they may well retire in their early 20s, for these young women, 2008 may be their one shot at the ultimate international glory. They don't like to think about this, citing the Russian gymnast Oxana Rakhmatulina, still competing at 31. But they also have plans for the future. Sacramone would like to be a fashion designer (she loves Dior and Vuitton); Liukin would like to do more acting (she played a gymnast in 2006's Stick It). Meanwhile, Beijing is the elephant in the room: something they are ever-conscious of but don't like to discuss, preferring to focus on each challenge as it arises (there are some three major competitions to go before the Olympics). "When you're out there, you're not thinking about the big picture," says Liukin. "You just have to live in the moment and enjoy it." - EVE MACSWEENEY
The point of having the four girls in Vogue was to "celebrate" different body types while also cheering on Team USA on the lead up to the Olympics. In the sixth paragraph, note how Shawn was mentioned as having the perfect body type for a gymnast and Nastia was "willowy." Now look again. See how nothing was actually mentioned about Alicia and Chellsie's body types, instead going about how they're charismatic or how good their gymnastics are. Pfft. In all the attempts to straighten out the general public about gymnasts and gymnastics, they couldn't work on the body thing a little better? Not all gymnasts are going to have a Kim Zmeskal or Svetlana Khorkina body type.
It's always a "close, but no cigar" when anybody other than gymnastics-oriented publications write stories about gymnastics. I truly want this sport to gain more positive attention or at least gain back the attention it had in the 1980s, especially when these girls are figuratively (and sometimes literally) breaking their backs for this sport for little payoff, but then we get drivel like this. Where are the Dasha Jouras of the sports journalism world?
Finally. No, they're not bringing the 10 back. It's dead and its corpse is a feast for the maggots now.
The biggest change for the WAG side is the change from counting the 10 highest skills to 8. Still too many, IMHO, because BB will still be skill-pause-skill-pause and UB will be hour long sets with gymnasts trying to fit in a bunch of D and E elements, but hopefully this will end the side double full pass on FX. I doubt it'll be the end of the double pike dismount, though.
"Gymnasts from all disciplines will have to show exemplary mastery in their exercises. Execution will be favored."
These principles are not new, and exist within the philosophy of the current Code of Points. However, beginning in 2009, the women's Code will reduce the number of required elements from 10 to eight. That should lead to shorter routines and longer careers.The proposed changes for the men's Code focus mainly on the juniors, for which eight skills will count toward the A-score. Also, the A-score will be halved for juniors, thus further de-emphasizing difficulty. Other safety measures for juniors include the prohibition of diving elements that end in a roll-out on floor, and saltos to upper arms or bent arms on parallel bars.
A "G" category, worth 0.7, will be added to the difficulty table, and skills listed there include a Ri Jong Song (triple-twisting double back) and Liukin (triple back) on floor, and a Cassina (layout Kolman) and Shahan (Kovacs with 1.5 twists) on high bar.
Nellie Kim in an International Gymnast interview had said that when they picked the original number for skills to be counted, they picked some arbitrary number and it ended up being 10. Glad they all thought this through before putting it into practice. But she also felt it was too many and wanted it to go down to six. Six is a much better number. The gymnasts can put in a few big skills, don't end up getting tired halfway through, don't have to have five tumbling passes, can have their skills connected and flow much better on BB and UB, etc. Speaking of tumbling passes, I'm hoping they'll put a cap on the number of passes in a routine, four being the max. Five is just excessive.
There's also the question about vault. With the rush to upgrade to Amanars, the main complaint is that even with a fall, an Amanar can score as well as a good DTY, which doesn't seem right. How will the FIG resolve that? Devalue the Amanar a few tenths? If a gymnast falls, give it the value of a DTY and deduct the fall as well? Somebody pointed out that a fall on vault is essentially a blown routine.
What about falls in general? Another person had an idea that you don't get the credit if you fall on a skill. If you don't show "exemplary mastery" on a skill, then why should you still get the full A score?
The "longer careers" comment is debatable. That's not happening as long as they keep putting emphasis on risky high level elements and chucking skills that are beyond a gymnast's capabilities.
