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U.S. Nationals Day One

nobody@vox.com(janghwa_hongryeon) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:20:37 -0400

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 ~~balls~~ ovaries of the unliked does no favors.

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U.S. Nationals Roster

nobody@vox.com(janghwa_hongryeon) — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:19:02 -0400

Full roster with accompanying article here.

Exciting prospects:

the return of Ashley Priess, aka, America's Olympic Uneven Bars Hope
Randi Lau, the Hawaiian wunderkind who trained at WOGA but did not qualify for Nats last year and is now back in Hawaii
The world can finally see these rumored upgrades from Ivana Hong that her camp has been so tight-lipped about
Shawn Johnson's new floor routine ('bout bloody time)
The official American Amazing Race to Beijing begins and everybody is on tenterhooks hoping that nobody (especially the locks) gets injured

UPDATE:

Here's the draw.

U.S. Nationals Draw Roster.jpg

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Super Duper Secret International Camp Meet

nobody@vox.com(janghwa_hongryeon) — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:26:20 -0400

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.

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