8 posts tagged “alicia sacramone”
IG2 confirms that Alicia Sacramone is making a comeback. Surprising and yet, not totally for two reasons:
1.) Alicia can still fill a hole within the U.S. team. We need vaulters like whoa because it still hasn't caught on that if you train at the very least a DTY and another relatively mid-to-high level tariff vault (like a Rudi), you're likely to be named onto international teams.
2.) Olympic team final = Desire for redemption.
Spoilers, if you weren't a numbnut and stayed up all hours of the night, scrambling over the Internet trying to catch live feeds on CCTV-5 and elsewhere trying to watch live. BTW, NBC, you fail. Instead of wasting the energy shutting down the few decent live feeds there were, maybe you should have realized that amongst the casual fans you want the ratings from, there are a grand many hardcore fans that are counted in those ratings. So you had a couple of options: 1.) show qualifications live or 2.) have a live feed like you did for podium training. Quit being greedy bitches and actually appeal to the fans. I can guarantee it would work better for you in the long run; in any case, I'm sure there would be less profanity-laden e-mails in your inbox.
Anyway.
My thoughts, in bullet form (I would be more coherent, but I just found out that Issac Hayes died and now I'm all discombobulated again):
- He Kexin falling on UB was a little unexpected and her nearly missing out on qualifying for UB finals could have been one of the biggest upsets of this Olympics.
- Deng Linlin almost booted Jiang Yuyuan's AA spot. Also surprising.
- Alicia Sacramone missed out on qualifying for FX EFs. Devastating, but when one thinks about it, the writing was on the wall all year. Her floor has been regressing since Stuttgart and I will go out on a limb and say that's where she peaked. I love A-Sac, mostly because she's not your robotic sound bite gymnast in interviews ("It's such an honor!" "I just want to go out and hit my routines!" and so on), but she hasn't really hit a floor routine all year.
- In that vein, Nastia Liukin ended qualifying for FX finals, as well as the expected BB and UB EFs! WTF, yo?
- Chellsie Memmel did not qualify for UB EFs. She fell on her Tkatchev, thus taking her out of contention. That pisses me off. She is only doing one event, much to her fans' chagrin, and she fails to hit that one event so she could at least go for an individual title. Wasn't UB her specialty or something?
- Sam Peszek kind of confirmed my suspicions that she would become the dead weight of the US team, despite her being one of the guarantees (I will never understand how she got into that golden position). Not only has she regressed (her FX has downgraded and she's barely hitting that and Sloan has surpassed Sam on vault), but she sustained an ankle injury and did not compete on FX or VT, that is, THE EVENTS SHE WAS PUT ON THE TEAM FOR. And it's now past the point of no return, so we can't put in Lothrop, who would probably be the best alternate for this position, given that she's pretty good on VT and FX.
- Sloan, however, is rocking the casbah. Her UB was off, but hot damn did she bring in the scores on every other event, even BB, and everybody was saying that would be her lowest score. Go Bridget!
- Shawn, unsurprisingly, hit every set. Her nerves from podium training have seemingly dissipated and she went out there like she owned the joint. But, her flexibility skills have also regressed, and that's really saying something in her case because her splits and leaps were rudimentary at best in the first place. It seemed like they were improving last year, but looking at the pictures from TQs, she's is really cheating the hell out of them:
There are a couple more, but you get the point.
- Japan made Team Finals!!!!! すごい！ おめでとうございます！ 私は、日本がうれしい！ (Yeah, my Japanese is a little rusty, but the main point is I'm so happy for them!). Koko Tsurumi qualified for AA, however Mayu Kuroda did not qualify for UB finals, which is a shame because she's rather good on them, even if she doesn't have a 7.0+ A score.
- Australia also made TFs, but not without an implosion from their stars, Dasha Joura and Lauren Mitchell. Dasha failed to qualify for the AA or any EFs, and we're all heartbroken along with her. Apparently, she crunched her ankle (hot damn, what is with this Olympics and ankle injuries???) in training and continued to compete on it for the sake of her country. Somebody predicted that not only did she not qualify for any individual rounds, but this Olympics would probably be the last we see of Joura. I really hope not. Are we going to lose everybody with a modicum of originality in this sport?
- Great Britain failed to make TFs (Japan just squeaked by them). Beth Tweddle, however, proved she's hardcore by saving her awesome combo after hitting her feet on the low bar. That was crazy.
- Romania was looking rough. I'm going to go out on another limb and say that the two consecutive Olympic team champions will find themselves not on the podium at all. Russia could easily surpass them. Romania is barely a team; it's Nistor, Izbasa, and friends. Though frankly, it's difficult to watch both Russia and Romania while they're rebuilding. There was no infrastructure left in place after everybody and their mom retired so now they have to start from square one.
Got all the way to Beijing, only to sustain yet another injury. Alicia Sacramone is also still struggling with her leg injury.
Goes to show how the marathon of competitions before the Olympics is NOT a good idea, USAG. What good does it do if our girls show up to the granddaddy of all competitions broken and exhausted? Are you trying to make China's win a cakewalk?
Shawn Johnson
Alicia Sacramone
Samantha Peszek
Chellsie Memmel
Bridget Sloan
Jana Bieger
Ivana Hong
Corrie Lothrop
More thoughts at a time when I didn't just work 10 hours.
Did Vox eat my Nationals Day One post? I swear I made one. Oh well.
Anyway. The Trials have come and gone and to nobody's surprise, Shawn and Nastia locked up the two guaranteed spots. If you were surprised, either you only just started watching gymnastics or I need to start drawing you pictures with crayons.
The 12 girls going on to the selection camp are:
Shawn Johnson
Nastia Liukin
Alicia Sacramone
Samantha Peszek
Bridget Sloan
Ivana Hong
Jana Bieger
Shayla Worley
Mattie Larson
Corrie Lothrop
Chelsea Davis
Chellsie Memmel
The only actual surprise on that list is Lothrop (who is coached by USAG staple Kelli Hill). Lothrop apparently agrees because she was in tears once hearing her name called. Just getting to Trials was a major accomplishment for her. I think she's awesome and wish her a lot of luck.
Chellsie Memmel pretty much sealed her spot on the O-Team, leaving one spot left (aside from the four locks of Johnson, Liukin, Sacramone, and Peszek). Bieger seems to be everybody's current #6 despite not even being on their short list for so long and Sloan, who was the lock up until Trials, is now out. God, we go through these girls like they're fads or something.
Mattie Larson made her case for an alternate position. Larson's FX was the favorite of both evenings and her DTY, while could use some improvement on the landing, is usable. There's the added bonus in that Larson isn't putting a lot of pressure on herself to make this particular team because she knows most of the spots are all but sown up and she has every intent on going for London 2012. Whatever you all are doing to those AOGC girls, please keep it up. Shapiro and Larson are just such a treat. They're what gymnastics should be.
Ivana, Ivana, Ivana. She's pretty much out at this point. An alternate position would be her highest attainable position. Nationals didn't go so well and Trials wasn't much better, culminating in a botched BB dismount that revealed her headcasey side. A damn shame because she's in the same category as Larson: what gymnastics should be. Her double front is a thing of beauty.
Shayla Worley is broken and others have surpassed her on UB, the event that she would have been taken for. I would say that she would be alternate. Too much of a liability to put her on the team.
I don't know much about Chelsea Davis or her gymnastics, except that she is coached by former Golden Girl/World Champion/Karolyi favorite Kim Zmeskal. It's almost nepotism with Davis getting to the camp (I'm only half serious).
Juniors:
- When Rebecca Bross broke her foot and couldn't compete at Nationals, everybody predicted that Jordyn Wieber was going to run away with the competition. After preliminaries, Wieber is...well, winning. But Samantha Shapiro is not making it easy! Shapiro was actually leading the competition with her precision, grace, and poise (and that 15.75 on BB sure didn't hurt), despite Wieber's big tricks. It wasn't until nearly the end of the competition that Wieber took the lead by .1. Day 2 will definitely be interesting between these two.
- Randi Lau had a good night; solid and with good form. She looks to be on her way to making her first National Team.
Seniors:
- Shawn is leading. Big surprise. She also received the biggest gifts of the night, what with her whip-triple being not being fully rotated, her Rudi and Amanar kind of iffy, and her splits still not where they should be for the Olympic favorite. And seriously, what the hell was she wearing? That leo was pure chaos. In fabric form. Oh, and everybody who reads this has to take a large swig of the liquor of their choice if she shows up on Day 2 with any hanzi (Chinese characters) on her leotard.
- Jana Bieger 2008 Nationals = Natasha Kelley 2007 Nationals in terms of scoring.
- Chellsie Memmel is kicking some definite booty. Her sets are still watered down, but she's making her case.
- Alicia Sacramone needs to get back into a competition state of mind. She had a nice long break, but vacation's over. I agree with those who said that she didn't quite seem herself.
- WTF happened to Priess? Why'd she drop out and retire at the 11th hour?
- Shayla is also out of Nationals and is petitioning to Trials. Since Priess is out, her status is back up (it was slipping dangerously out of reach because her only ticket was UB), but being constantly broken and leaving camps and comps early is not making it better.
- Mattie Larson is still not consistent enough to warrant a spot on the team, but she'll be at Trials. And her gymnastics is as lovely as her AOGC clubmate Shapiro.
- Ivana Hong is a huge disappointment. The double front on FX is impressive and I definitely had my doubts about her getting it around, but her bars are abysmal and her best events are more than covered already by the O-Team locks. Plus, the DTY, the one thing that could have won TPTB over was majorly flawed. She'll get to Trials and probably the selection camp, but alternate will likely be the highest attainable position she'll get. Hopefully Day 2 is better. Her gymnastics is still pretty, though.
- Nastia, Nastia, Nastia. We understood the meltdown at Nats last year. You're supposed to be healthy and better this year. WTF is with the UB dismount? That shizz is just fugly. The FX isn't improving. In fact, it almost seems to be regressing. And methinks you need a new BB mount or to speed the one you have up because you're dangerously close to going overtime and you're not holding the scale long enough.
- It's starting to look more and more that ScAm was a fluke for Samantha Peszek. She was shaky, to say the least, here. Given the rumor that Janssen-Fritsen equipment (that is, what will be used in Beijing) was disguised to look like AAI equipment (that is, who USAG (and Nastia Liukin) has deals with) and that Peszek has issues with anything but AAI equipment, plus the fact that Peszek always had consistency issues, I'm not surprised. But no matter. She's on the team, barring injury or her performances on the level of FUBAR.
- Darlene Hill has quite a few injuries and is backing off in order to prevent some of them from getting worse. She scratched bars and only got a 12.75 on BB after two falls. This does not help her case, as endearing as she is.
- Bridget Sloan competed only two events, BB and UB, and put up a 15.2 and 15.75, respectively. Word on the street that she's probably on the team, barring further injury or meltdown. These scores, especially the UB, would cement her spot.
- While I realize China kind of backed the U.S. against the wall with their overscoring at their Internal Test Event and Nationals, I wish the U.S. was scoring more fairly and closer to what the girls would score internationally. Overscoring the stars and busting the
ballsovaries of the unliked does no favors.
Since USAG is not posting information yet, these are tidbits from the gymn boards (thanks to various peoples).
AA Results:
1.) Ivana Hong (YUSH!)
2.) Ashley Priess
3.) Chellsie Memmel
4.) Mattie Larson
Darling (not a typo, actually her name) Hill is supposedly injured, but there is no confirmation yet. A-Sac made her three events her bitches, including a 16+ on BB.
Gymn.ca had this to say about the Canadian reps:
Emma Willis of Bluewater Gymnastics club was the top Canadian all-around gymnast at this week’s friendly international competition in Houston, Texas. Willis scored 55.95 after hitting all for events to rank 8th in a field of gymnasts representing the United States, Canada, Germany, Columbia, Italy, and Venezuela. Also competing in the all-around for Canada were Sydney Sawa (10th) and Catherine Dion (13th). Aisha Gerber competed two events only (vault and floor) while Alyssa Brown competed all events but floor. Competition was to conclude today with apparatus finals, with each Canadian planning to compete on two events. This friendly competition was held at the conclusion of a week long training camp.
Nothing about EFs yet and those are what will really tell us anything. This blogger wishes to know about Ivana Hong's upgrades and especially her bar routine, especially since she recently said that she's taken out her signature German giant to reverse hecht because she was getting killed for that.
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?
