Or maybe she wishes that thang hadn’t been backed up. I posted about Jennifer Sey’s blog some days ago. Now the post has been removed. You can read a copy of it over at Gymnasticscoaching.com though.
Canada doesn’t have any WAG all-arounders that could challenge for a medal and they don’t have any specialists that could do so either. Their system for selecting the two athletes to go to the games is designed for specialists though. Currently, their best two all-arounders are in second and third place. Some people are decrying this as a huge mistake. To me, it seems like a strategic move on Gym Canada’s part.
It’s pretty clear that if you can’t field a team full of strong all-arounders, the next best way to place well is by having good specialists - that can stay healthy. This point system and emphasis on specialists isn’t going to do anything in the short term but perhaps during the next quad, they’ll start to see more girls coming up through the ranks who can pull high 15s or 16s on two or three events. This would be good for Canada’s gymnasts vying for the next games. It’s better to have 6 spots to compete for rather than only two.
I love the all-around. I don’t like to see their two girls get chosen based on events they have no chance of winning. However, I can see how this might lead to a stronger team Canada in the future.
This article is supposedly about how attractive Olympians can expect to get more endorsements. Whatever. We know it’s really just an excuse to post some great pics of great looking people. Alicia is the subject of the first pic. Forcing myself to go through all 77 pics, led to the discovery of more gym-hotties. I don’t think these pics are in order of hotness.
12 - Alina Kabayeva
14 - Sasha Cohen is not a gymnast but she’s flexible like one.
28 - Liu Xuan
Male gymnasts are apparently, NOT HOT.
Melanie Roach owns a gymnastics school and is an Olympic hopeful for weightlifting.
In a previous post, I wondered what the heck USAG collegiate nationals was all about. This question has been asked over at gymnasticscoaching.com too. So I decided to investigate. I came up with an old post from gymn-L (Mar 1999 from Dean Ratliff) which explains it this way.
“USAG Collegiate Nationals is mainly Div II teams. There are very few teams at
this level and NCAA would no longer support a national meet for this level.
USAG took it over to these teams could still have a national meet. However,
this meet is not limited to only Division II teams. Division I teams can be
eligible if they have a certain number of scholarships (a rather low number I
believe) and I think all Division III schools are eligible, but since
qualification to the meet is by score, they don’t
often qualify to the meet. To compete in this meet, however, all athletes have
to become members of USAG as well as the coaches have to follow all the same
membership regulations as all profesional members of USAG.”
I think there are two more collegiate national meets. One is Division III (NCGA) and the other isNAIGC for college club teams.
People, people. It’s NOT a tell-all. Really. It’s not. And other thoughts from Jennifer Sey.
This article has some snappy quotes from the press conferences before NCAA championships. Apparently, there was an exchange between Suzanne Yoculan and Valerie Kondos Field.
SY: UCLA won that year, she said, because “She out-coached me that night in 2001.”
VKF: ”I plan on doing it again,”.
Fast forward and UCLA didn’t even make finals. Goodness. Maybe she meant she planned on doing it again - eventually. Not necessarily at this particular championships. Anyway, I fully expect to see this exchange to be referenced again in 2009.
Wanted: Experienced male gymnast (aka someone who can do a round off, back handspring; round off, back tuck; a clean dive roll; maybe even giants - WOW!) $21.00 an hour.
Sam trains six days a week from 1 pm to “6:30 or 7-ish” according to this article. The article also says that this routine is required in order to be part of the team in Beijing. I thought Martha preferred two-a-day workouts. three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. Not one six hour block everyday. I don’t see why she would require a routine that she doesn’t prefer. I’m not even sure the writer is talking about the number of hours Sam trains. Shawn Johnson famously trains 25 hours a week. I’ve heard she has added more hours to work on her flexibility but I doubt it’s 10 or 11 more hours to make it 36.
northernriver at Difficulty Plus Execution has a post about the Chinese and their age faking. There is no way to truly prove that they do it because it can be chalked up to “sloppy paperwork” rather than just sloppy cheating.
I really can’t stand cheating and if the rules have to be rewritten until such time that age limits can actually be enforced across the board then that’s what should happen. Then the chinese can fill their team with 13 year olds all they want and play the” young kids big tricks” gamble. That is, great when they hit but seemingly so much more prone to crumbling!
The Chinese coaches seem to love to gamble even though it’s bitten them in the ass so many times. I wonder if they do it because they don’t want to lose with a less risky team and have to explain why they didn’t take the gymnasts that could’ve gotten the highest scores. On the one hand, losing is losing. On the other, I can understand if they would rather take a big risk and lose big rather than take a smaller risk and lose by just a tiny bit. With all the Chinese have to offer, if they could learn to diversify they would finally be as unstoppable as they can be.
You want to know what legendary team was masterful at diversification? The Soviets. It always seemed like when they stood on the podium, nobody was ever the same size because their team was made up from their best new tricksters up to their elegant grande dames. Knowing how to put together a team was an important part of Soviet success in gymnastics.
