In five days, the first competition of the Champions Trophy will be held in Frankfurt, Germany. Olympian Joseph Hagerty of the USA is one of eight gymnasts, who compete in the all-around for a lot of prize money.
Anne Phillips of Gymnastike shows us in the Workout Wednesday Hagerty´s great form in training. He´s in a very good shape: “These routines, I do now, are very easy for me, cause I´ve done them four years for the Olympics. I´m very consistent with them.”
Not only the “Workout Wednesday” on Gymnastike sweetens our life, but also the “Technique Tuesday”. It´s interesting to see a coach – Tom Forster of the Colorado Aerials – not teaching a gymnastic skill (backflip) to a gymnast, who already knows how to do it, but teaching it to a non-gymnast! His technical advice is clear and helpful – it works out.
Have you ever seen a floor routine without any roundoff or front handspring?
This powerful girl, who placed 2nd in the age class 12/13 at the Pre-Olympic-Youth-Cup, shows a really interesting routine with four tumbling passes but without a roundoff or front handspring.
“Artistic gymnastics is getting a new “kiss and cry” area, the FIG announced Saturday.
“The Federation is taking steps toward making its competitions more entertaining, while it champions and furthers the concepts of ethics and justice in sports,” […]
“The posting of scores was completely revamped. Judging will be honed and the time frame used to post scores cut down,” the FIG stated. “Scores given by judges will be even more closely monitored, and Artistic will be brought up to speed with Rhythmic, Trampoline, Aerobic and Acrobatic with its very own Kiss and Cry corner.”
Oh yes, that´s what we want! Just take a look at the 2008 Rhythmic Gymnastics all-around in Beijing, where Anna Bessonova waits more than three minutes for her score. When I watched it live in 2008, I can remember, that I got something to drink or to eat in this time. I can´t imagine something more boring than watching athletes waiting for their scores. Well done, FIG!
I don´t really know much about college gymnastics in the USA. But this year I followed the competitions and teams on different blogs in the WorldWideWeb. And I have to say, that it´s on the one hand very American (I can´t imagine such an excitement in Germany.) but on the other hand the gymnasts just show of solid and very nice routines. So, this weekend I watched the NCAA Super Six on YouTube from start to finish and it didn´t bore me at all! It was great!
The twelve year old Russian Yuna Nefedova (50,45) won over Cagla Akyol from Germany (49,55) and Sarah Di Lascia from Suisse (49,00). Though Yuna fell twice on the piked Jaeger on uneven bars and on floor doing a double tucked, she won over the other 21 girls from Germany, Suisse, Nederlands and Uzbekistan.
Naoula Quazzani-Chahdi (NED) had the highest all-around score of all the girls: 56,300. In her uneven bars routine she showed a Shaposhnikova immediately into a Gienger and a Tsukahara dismount.
Here´s her floor routine: good music choice, nice dancing and solid tumbling (Tsukahara, double piked, 1.5 twists backwards into 1 twist forward)!
Sara Catanzaro (53,800), SUI, placed second, Tatiana Solovyeva (53,500), RUS, third.
Sanne Wevers tied for first place on balance beam (5.7/14.075) at the recent Glasgow Grand Prix showing her great ability to do difficult turns.
She does four different spins: A single turn (C) and a double turn with a horizontal leg (D or E? – I couldn´t find it in the Code), a double turn (D) and a triple turn (E).
Once again the phenomenal Katie Axten, who won gold with her new partner Nicholas Illingworth at the British Acro Championships 2009 in the senior mixed pair category. This clip is from the World Championships 2006 (partner: Christian Beecher).
These are the results of the 