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Thursday 9 May 2013

Yao Jinnan fights back

Presenting the top qualifier to the Chinese National Games Quals AA! Considering she had one or two little errors on bars, a watered down floor and missed connections on beam as well as the traditional extremely harsh execution scoring present in internal Chinese competitions- scoring a 57+ is amazing. Her injury last year kept her from performing anywhere near her best in London and it was said this year that she was having trouble with her hip. So it's great to see (or read, as the case may be so far) a strong performance from her. Tied for second were Shang Chunsong and Huang Qiushuang. Zeng Siqi biffed her bars dismount, again, but happily was the first qualifier for beam, just ahead of Sui Lu. He Kexin hit bars and vault, but it was a sad day all around- so.many.falls. Saddest of all was Tan Jiaxin the UB superstar, who fell on a Jaeger and then had some sort of disaster on floor, with an even 5.0 for her d and e scores. Wu Liufang crashed her layout on beam. Good news from my favourite bright young things, Lv Jiaqi and Liu Tingting have both upgraded and scored very well with execution. Liu Tingting, a 2016 senior, placed fifth in the AA qualifiers, and Lv Jiaqi placed tenth. The fight for the second AA-er at worlds will be interesting. Yao Jinnan is the obvious choice for first, if healthy. Shang Chunsong hopefully for the second, but she's still a flake. And THAT floor choreography is a disgrace. Huang Qiushuang may yet make another major team! Especially since one of her mistakes was so ridiculous- she incurred an enormous 0.5 deduction on vault for running more than 25 metres. You can never predict what silly mistake she'll do next but I doubt she'll repeat that one. Shanghai (including Sui Lu and Tan Sixin) beat Guangdong (including Wu Liufang and Huang Qiushuang) into second and Hunan (including Zeng Siqi, Tan Jiaxin and Shang Chunsong) into third, helped along by an utter disaster of a bars rotation by Hunan.

Never underestimate what Huang Qiushuang has up her sleeve! Today in the AA final she repeated the exact same mistake, starting her vault run from too far back, again carrying a massive 0.5 deduction. Smooth coaching there. She also brought her bars dismount to her knees, which is apparently a new mistake for her, and placed outside of the medals. Yao Jinnan fell on her standing full on beam, but still won gold with a 56.701, which wasn't exactly surprising given the enormous amount of falls and major errors, again. Shang Chunsong placed second and Zeng Siqi was third. Shang nailed her very difficult 6.7 bars routine, but had some very expensive wobbles on beam and an OOB on floor. Zeng Siqi generally had less difficulty, she is rumoured to have a DTY but did not do it. I really don't think she has it in her anymore, but at any rate I don't want to see one from her until she looks stronger with better endurance. I'm really sad that Huang Huidan looks to be falling off the radar, just like Wu Liufang. Huang had a nightmare on bars, her pet piece, so too did Deng Linlin. Liu Tingting placed sixth, an amazing result for a girl so young. She is the most promising junior all-arounder that China have. She consistently gets execution scores in the 8.3 range, which in China is like a 9.3.

Gabby Jupp has had her ACL surgery. Wishing for a very speedy recovery. In more ACL news, Yvette Moshage of the Netherlands has torn her ACL for the third time, after a heroic battle to comeback the first two times. Really devastating. This is the third ACL tear so far this year, the other besides these two being Mariya Livchikova.

Kohei Uchimura's wife has given birth to a baby girl. Her name is not released. His parents were gymnasts and his sister is too, so hopefully his daughter will at least try it out with genes like that! 

13 comments:

  1. God how do you tear your ACL for the third time? I didn't think there would be anything left to tear. IMO I think she should retire.

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    1. Well, presumably each time round it gets surgically repaired, so seems possible to tear it repeatedly. Must have been heartbreaking... I would think it would be so difficult to muster up the motivation to try to come back, and it would probably be so inadvisable to with how weak the knee would be. (Also not sure if it's all 3 on the same knee or 2 on one, and 1 on the other.)

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    2. I used to think it was usually from doing skills that were too much..ie. not fully rotating something before landing. But it seems to be moreso sheer bad luck by landing in any way awkwardly, even if you land chest up, fully rotated, knees bent to absorb the landing.

      The first two alternated different knees,not sure which one this is. I can think of several who have comeback from multiple Achilles tears but not ACL? Maybe it is more common in MAG given their longer competitive timespan, but then it is a more common injury in female athletes. I think Chuso tore hers twice, but could be wrong.

      I think she should do whatever works for her. Even getting back to a Level 10 equivalent would be a massive accomplishment and this girl is so determined!

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  2. Curious, how does the run more than twenty five meters thing work? Did she just start too far away?

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    1. Yup. And that girl IS just that unpredictable..she did the exact same thing today in the AA and unsurprisingly, incurred the 0.5 deduction. Again.

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  3. Facepalm at Huang Qiushuang. After competing for so long surely one would think these things would be second nature? Really lovely that Yao Jinnan sounds in pretty good shape, with the way things are going in China she'll definitely make Worlds if she can stay healthy. I'd rather see Shang Chunsong at Worlds than Qiushuang, who has had a million chances already.

    I wonder who is retiring in China? I watched a news report of the Nationals and it sounded like Sui Lu and Jiang Yuyuan are continuing. Wonder about He Kexin? I'm quite surprised she hit bars - in the years before London she had so many consecutive missed bars routines..

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    1. I think it may be a new rule. Still, they should have known and especially not repeated it! There was huge confusion over the deduction because people thought it was an OOB but photos showed her definitely on the centre line..and the 0.5 deduction for OOB is gone anyway. It's a bit of a stupid rule really. I remember being amazed when a Spanish gymnast in Sydney (I think Sydney) only started her run halfway up and still cranked out a good vault, amazing.

      Yes, it's great to see Yao healthy. Reports vary a LOT about retirement. Jiang Yuyuan and Deng Linlin were a mess at this comp, whereas He Kexin was very good- personally I think all 3 will retire later this year. Sui Lu and HQS will probably continue. If I had to pick one of the 08 team (minus alternates) to not retire it would be Deng.

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    2. From what I saw Jiang Yuyuan didn't look in great shape and she's now the oldest on the China team, so I can well believe she's on her way out. Puberty seems to have hit her pretty hard, while Deng Linlin and Sui Lu have looked about the same for the last 4 years or more. Sui Lu definitely looks like she's got more in the tank and I don't remember her being bogged down with too many injuries, so hope she can continue. It would be nice if Kexin could too, sometimes I think it was really all that pressure plus injuries and puberty that has hindered her in the past few years.

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    3. Jiang was pretty good last year. It would be great if she could get back to that, even just as a last hurrah.

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    4. Ooo, Deng has confirmed she will retire in September. Interesting to see if He Kexin will, there's a new interview with her out but not translated yet!

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    5. Just watched the interview, He Kexin has decided to retire and plans to go back to school. She was quite relieved after the Nationals because she wanted her last performance to be good and was worried that it wouldn't end on a good note.

      Other news from the reports:
      - Yao Jinnan has a slight leg injury now (so did DLL). Hoping she's back to 100% by Worlds.
      - Huang Huidan won UB EF, He Kexin with silver. HKX was still happy because she said 2nd is quite good as she had injuries etc, and this was like when she and those of around her age were younger, there are always younger girls coming up able to beat them
      - China is trying to improve their training of all-rounders and their weak events, they have implemented some new rule where the gymnasts must at least be able to compete 2 events to be able to take part in EFs because the team format competition doesn't allow for many single eventers
      - China is preparing for 2016, but they don't really have any outstanding juniors and the juniors don't have very difficult skills yet

      HHD is lovely! I really like how much swing she gets, not a single dead hang, probably helps that she's a bit taller than most Chinese gymnasts (though HQS still had dead hangs). Hopefully she can get her consistency up since there's more space for a UB specialist.

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  4. I hope Yao Jinnan can come back fighting at this year's Worlds. If she wants a World AA title, now would be the time to do it.

    And Huang Quishuang has become nothing more than a joke. To be honest, I will be utterly disappointed if I see her on another World team. She has been given an unlimited number of chances, and every single time she screws up. I calculated that, if she had even an average hit rate in competition, she would have probably earned six world medals (AA, bars, and team) in 2010-11, and an Olympic team bronze. And that's not even counting the mistakes the rest of her team makes!

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    1. They still don't have the depth to outclass her, and they have more headcases. HQS did still qualify in second to the AA. But Wu Liufang and Huang Huidan (despite being the new bars champion) just aren't living up to their promise as all-arounders at all. They really only have 3 very good ones as seniors- Yao, Shang and still HQS!

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