Tall gymnasts

This blogger is 5′9″ and her little girl has expressed an interest in gymnastics.  The blogger thinks her little girl will never be good at gymnastics because she will be tall.  

I can already read the comments to this post:  Relax, she will find her niche.  She’s only three years old, why are you so worried? You are over-analyzing the situation, chill out and let her enjoy whatever sport she wants.  So what if she is not an elite anything, let her follow her passion. She’s going to have a million interests over the next 20 years.

Well, I’m not going to say that.  What I’m going to say is that tall gymnasts can be good at gymnastics.  What matters most is the coaching.  There’s actually A LOT of gymnastics coaches out there that barely know what they’re doing.  Get one of those and it doesn’t matter if you have the “perfect” body type for the sport.  With a bad coach, you’re unlikely to be successful unless you’re uber talented.  

Here are a few tall elite gymnasts.    

Sophie Hindermann is about 5′7″.  Here she is in the bar final at 2007 worlds.  

Ashley Miles is also 5′7″.  She was on the 2001 world team for the USA. She went on to compete for Alabama and was a sensation on floor throughout her college career.  There’s plenty of tall gymnasts competing in college on scholarship.  

Gymnastics is also a great base for other sports.  Many former gymnasts have switched to Diving.  Two time Olympic Gymnast, Amy Chow, switched to Pole Vault.  Laura Gerraughty competed in gymnastics up until level 10 when she was 5′9″.  She then switched to shotput and became an Olympian in 2004.

Morgan Hamm

So Morgan didn’t file the paperwork for his shot.  Okay.  This blogger thinks USAG doesn’t have the guts to toss him because that might alienate Paul Hamm.  I think they won’t toss him because there’s not a whole bunch of guys available to fill his spot.

Pics from trials and Nationals.

Flaw13 has posted tons of photos.  

Randi Lau

Randi is training at What’s Up Gymnastics in Hawaii.  Apparently, she left WOGA earlier in the year or late last year.  This article has a little interview but it quits halfway through for me.  Here’s a different clip.  

Mattie’s floor routine

Mattie Larson’s choreography is wasted on her.  It wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have Dasha Joura to compare her to.  Then you might just get the feeling that everything was fine but something was just a little off.  Dasha uses a different (and I think, better) cut of the same music and knows how to work a room.  When you go look at Dasha after seeing Mattie, the problem becomes immediately apparent.  I’m not the biggest fan of Dasha’s actually choreo.  All of her hip movements just look so blocky and out of place to me.  

Ivana Hong vs. Elvire Teza

This vid compares a skill they both do.  It’s a German Giant to Tkatchev.  Teza gets a lot more height than Ivana.  Actually, during the 2007 nationals, Tim Dagget slipped some actual educational content into the broadcast by saying Hong was really doing “just a straddle back”.  It’s actually a straddle cut backwards but that was close.   Martha was able to get Hong’s technique for this skill valued the same as Teza’s technique but she couldn’t make the judges ignore the amplitude deductions.  So Hong no longer does her german giants to straddle cut release skill.  

Ivana’s double new double front on floor is really great.  She keeps her knees together.    

Corrie Lothrop was adopted from China

You think you have to hear too much about how Shawn’s coach is from China and now they’re going back together.  Blah, blah, blah.  Imagine the DRAMA if Corrie was one of the top contenders.  

It’s interesting that Corrie should end up being a top US gymnast.  With her body type, I wonder if Chinese coaches would have ever selected her for training.  She is beefy with a capital Brick House.  

Corrie is another gymnast who was trained by her parents.  She is at Hill’s now but up until elite she was training at Yellow Jackets Gymnastics club which her parents own.  Then the family decided to take Corrie to a more experienced Coach.  Corrie and her mom moved so Corrie could train at Hill’s with Kelly Hill.  Her dad is holding down the fort at YJGC.  This is kind of opposite of what Chellsie Memmel’s parents did.  Chellsie’s parents own M&M Gymnastics but they had Chellsie train with Jim Chudy at Salto Gymnastics starting when she was eight.  It was only after Chellsie missed the 2004 Olympics and was going to quit that her parents began training her again.  

The Yellow Jackets website is probably the most boring looking gymnastics club site I’ve run across in recent memory.  Yuck.  They have a lot of videos of their gymnasts up though.  

 

Johnson gives Liukin props

Articles about the new code are popping up.  I think this article does a good job of explaining it.  

Liukin says:

“Even though there is no Perfect 10, I feel it’s kind of still there. I’m striving towards that.”

She does pretty good on three events too.  She has her problems on bars but she also does very nice work there.  I think her form issues on floor pretty much stem from pushing the envelope in order to continue to be a top AA.  

Shawn talks about Liukin’s giganormous A score on bars:

“It plays to her advantage; it’s a very smart thing to do,” Johnson said. “It’s just whoever can play the field the best that can win.”

::UPDATE::

To clariy.  When I say Nastia is “pusing the envelope” on floor, I meant that I think she is pushing her personal difficulty threshold in order to get all the points she can using the type of skills she is best at doing.  Many times gymnasts who have problems on a skill that is difficult for them, can do an easier version of the skill with cleaner form.  One really example is Elise Ray.  Elise did a full - twisting double layout dismount from uneven bars with beautiful form.  At the 2000 Olympics, she upgraded to a double twisting double layout at some point and her form suffered a little.    

Martha says Jana’s form has improved

It’s hard to trust what Martha says.  She lies about the athletes for the sake of strategy.  Wouldn’t want the top girls to think they’ve got it locked up.  From this article:  

”Jana has done an excellent job,” Karolyi said. “She is a sturdy gymnast and one who shows high difficulty. She worked hard to improve her form and presentation.”

So that’s good news for Jana, I guess.  The article also says that Jana and her mom, Andrea, talked about the differences between gymnastics in Andrea’s time and gymnastics today.  I would love to have heard that conversation.  I’m nosy.  

You can’t coach your own kid

Remember that gymnastics myth.  I think it’s safe to say that it’s been blown out of the water.  Many of the top national team gymnasts are coached by their parents these days.  Bieger, Liukin, Artemev, Memmel.  Top prospects all coached by their parents.  

I think the real deal is you can’t coach your own kid if you don’t know what you’re doing.  Can you help your kid with her back handsprings at home?  According to the myth, no.  According to reality, as long as you know what you’re doing, go for it.