Competitions :D and more things

The Italy Serie A competition is taking place now. It's a competition between the various gyms,and will see Vanessa Ferrari, Erika Fasana, Georgia Campana, Chiara Gandolfi, Carlotta Ferlito, Elisabetta Preziosa, Serena Bugani, Enus Mariani, Elisa Meneghina, Tea Ugrin, Anna Pavlova and more battle it out. I'll add videos if and when they become available, I'm most excited to see any upgrades the juniors have as out of the countries battling their way into the top 4, Italy have the biggest chance I think. Time will tell. Edit: Fasana, Ferlito and Anna Pavlova did not compete, the latter due to a problem with her flight and the others due to minor injury/illness. There's a full report with scores on TCG but no videos as of yet. Great to hear that Enus Mariani had such a strong showing, though it appears to have been a meet full of falls as it's sooo early in the season.

Elsabeth Black decisively won the AA at Elite Canada. Ellie was injured in the London vault final, so it's thrilling to see her back on form. Victoria Moors did not compete AA, but since she is down for SCAM it would be unwise to go all out now. Some videos here. Hope to see more from their juniors. Edit: Moors' floor is up, and it's a bit worrying. Not because she has watered down, but because she looks sluggish, tired and just not interested. She seems to have grown quite a bit in a short space of time and was dealing with a minor back muscle injury at the end of last year, so hopefully she'll recover soon. Black has watered down too and has issues with coming up a bit short on her tumbles, but she seems much more 'on' than Moors. Yay, junior videos are going up here. I really like Heaven Latimer, she is such a great tumbler and has the best layout full on beam ever done. As I'm typing, there's only 3 routines up. Shallon Olsen needs to have her coach back AWAY from new skills and clean up her form, it was already bad and seems to be getting worse. And I haven't even seen her beam yet..it's so dissapointing given the enormous natural talent she has.

The WOGA Classic is taking place next weekend. Its main star will be Katelyn Ohashi of course, with an ideal chance to show what she has planned for her first year as a senior. She's known for her beam and bars but her vault will be the most interesting aspect, as it looked extremely troublesome last year. If she actually does vault as she may not do AA. What I liked most is that Mariya Livchikova and Krystyna Sankova of Ukraine are both competing and that their trip was mostly funded by WOGA due to Ukraine's gymnastics federation's money problems. Mariya's strengths are floor and beam, with some gorgeous original combinations on beam and beautiful elegance and textbook tumbling on floor. Krystyna is quite powerful and has done Arabian double pikes recently, so she'll be interesting to watch too. Other international competitors are Ellie Downie and Ryhannon Jones of GB and Kristina Yaroshenko and Alexandra Yazydzhyan of Russia. Domestically, ones to watch are Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian, Nica Hults, Kennedy Baker and Peyton Ernst. There are tonnes of girls attempting to qualify elite as well. The ones I'm most interested in are Jordan Chiles and Irina Alexeeva. Irina is only 10, but so promising. Lots of videos to come hopefully. IG forums are down, which is where I got both rosters from, and WOGA's own links open in Excel which I'm not happy with linking to. Edit: Nevermind, TripleTwist have all rosters written out, divided into junior and senior. Important to note that Irina will have to qualify as an elite to compete in the junior session later in the day, though since she is from WOGA they might be able to have her compete if she doesn't make it. Rosters are here. TripleTwist also have a nice succinct guide on what the girls trying for elite have to achieve here.

Lloimincia Hall got a perfect 10 on floor, LSU vs Mizzou. It's the third 10 this season, after Mackenzie Caquatto on bars and Vanessa Zamarippa on vault. I know that on first viewing this routine is baffling, and seems like an insult to the name 'artistic' in the sport. Like, WTF is she doing? It takes a few goes. I am in love with it and her and I want her to win the national floor title. She is living her routine, so involved, so passionate, and selling the life out of it. It is the definition of artistry, taking your music and bringing it to the next level. In general for NCAA the time difference makes it very difficult for me to watch meets, as well as only a handful of them being free. I catch up with the odd routine on youtube and follow quick hits. That's why I'm thrilled that UCLA's meet tomorrow is both free like theirs always are (THANK YOU..and since they're hosting national championships..any chance of them being streamed free??) and on early.. it starts at 10PM for me, much better than the usual midnight, 1AM starts..bleurgh.

You can see part two of Gymnastike's Off the Mat series with Nia Dennis here. I love seeing how well grounded her and her family are. GREAT height on her releases. I'm so excited that one of her coaches is Li Li, the exquisite former Chinese gymnast with killer extension, leaps and DAT back spin. It bodes well for Nia's form, beam and bars work. You can hear and see her in the footage but she isn't interviewed, sadly.

European Championships are going to be streamed live, via eurovision, the same crowd who did the Olympics (without commentary, but still). I will give the link and timezone information closer to the time. I will say that it will not be possible to watch it outside of Europe unless you *cough* shield/change your IP to a European one. The timezone will be gross for Americans, Moscow is 4 hours ahead of me currently (might get clocks going back before that) and therefore 9 hours ahead of EST and 12 hours ahead of PST. I suppose it depends what time the competitions start at for how non appealing that is to those in the US. Still, EXCITING :D

Florida vs Alabama from last night is on free replay, thanks to Spanny Tampson for broadcasting that info. YES! I was so sure it was free and then when I got on the site and found out it wasn't..very dissapointing. But here it is, and at a much more suitable time for me ha. I'm going to subscribe to the growing view that Florida are going to win this year. The link should be here. If not, just click on game replay and it should show up there at the side. Considering Florida had to drop Kytra Hunter's scores on bars and beam (she's had stomach flu this week but that beam fall is just..so odd and unlikely), the fact that they broke 198 is HUGE. A team with Bridget Sloan, Ashanee Dickerson, Kytra Hunter, Marissa King, Alaina Johnson and Mackenzie Caquatto looks unstoppable, as they don't have a weak event at all. If you do rewatch the meet, make sure you read Aunt Joyce's hilarious live hits.

Alexander Alexandrov did NOT sign a contract with Brazil. There will be more negotiations at another stage. Personally, and obviously not knowing anyone involved, I think he'll wait until Aliya is done before moving on. He clearly has a lot of motivation to leave the gymnastics federation that screwed him over like they frequently do their head coaches, but the bond those two share is very strong. I hate the idea of her being dumped a second time. The original source is in Portugese, but you can read/translate it from here.

My laptop might break in two at any time so blogging might have an abrupt hiatus (can't blog on phones outside US). A DIY screen replacement weakened the hinges and now more than a year later it falls back and has to be propped up. Damnit! I'm going back to college in September (unrelated to my degree, but much more likely to get a job out of it..) and obviously this one won't withstand transportation. Check this out:

Looking healthy. I'm not sure what the silver thing stabbing my screen is, but it needs to GTFO. Or back in, whichever. The other side is lifting too. Sigh. Also, 200th post! 200 posts in just under 8 months of blogging is pretty good going, though since a lot of my obsession burst in a torrent in the first 2 months, I don't expect to maintain that frequency.