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Monday 3 June 2013

News

This is one exciting month for competitions. Coming up in just 3 days is a juniors friendly between Romania and France. Romania are sending Andreea Munteanu, Silvia Zarzu, Andreea Iridon, Diana Teodoru and....Madalina Blendea, who has not competed in more than a year! Let us hope for videos. Silvia also has not been seen for a good while. Right as that ends is the Gym Festival Trnava in Slovakia, which has more Romanian faces emerge from the crypt..Ana Maria Ocalisan and Daniela Andrei! Ocalisan is a new senior who really should have been at Euros just for experience. Andrei has not had an assignment for quite some time despite being one of the very few seniors they have left. Unfortunately, the mother of Asiana Peng who is also at Izvorani has said that Andrei has left the National team. That would not be particularly surprising given that the girl has not competed in so long, but truly astonishing just as news broke that she actually has a competition coming up. We will see! Anna Pavlova, Kristina Yaroshenko (who competed at the WOGA Classic), Anna Myzdrikova and Oksana Chusovitina are competing and in the younger category, the wonderful Varvara Zubova. I'm thinking Myzdrikova's place here means she won't be at Universiade. Coming up in the middle of the month are Chinese Junior Nationals and Romanian Junior Nationals, another chance to see Blendea. Parkettes Elite Qualifier is also taking place, at which Norah Flatley and Alexis Vasquez of Chow's hope to make the cut. Then right at the end of June there will be a world cup in Portugal. The roster for this includes Noemi Makra, Shang Chunsong, Zeng Siqi, Larisa Iordache, Diana Bulimar, Alla Sosnitskaya, Anastasia Grishina, Ekaterina Baturina, Anna Rodionova, Jade Barbosa, Hannah Whelan and Rebecca Tunney. Rodionova has been injured and this marks her return, similarly this is the first opportunity to see Rebecca Tunney in quite some time.

Speaking of China, here is a great montage of the girls of Coach Wang/Xu's training group of the National Team, including Yao Jinnan, Sui Lu, Huang Huidan and juniors Liu Tingting and Yuan Xiaoyang at the recent Chinese National Games prelims. These girls captured the AA, VT, UB and FX (shared) titles. Love 0:27-33 especially.

Eythora Thorsdottir of the Netherlands placed first in a NED v SWE competition recently. This forms part of the Dutch qualification for EYOF- European Youth Olympic Festival which takes place in July. She beat the very promising Emma Larsson even with a fall on beam. Sadly she is quite shaky on this event, hopefully it can be ironed out before she turns senior next year.

Rebeca Andrade competed at two internal competitions recently- Brazil Trophy and Circuito Caixa and won both decisively. She is not doing her amanar yet but she did unveil a fabulously straight DLO, which is oddly piked in the first salto. Unfortunately her choreo has gone downhill, hopefully just a blip. Her beam continues to be wonderful, very light and floaty as well as super springy and ripe for upgrades. Floor is here and beam is here.

Here is a news excerpt of Mai Murakami to get your hopes up about her again. Watch it here. I don't know if ads can be skipped on youku but I just sit through them anyway. She shows a new skill in training here- a 1.5 DLO! It also reportedly mentions when showing Kohei Uchimura's triple twisting double that she wants to compete it in the future. Bonus- a cute confession about her:

Source- gymfanconfessions.tumblr.com
USAG have said they will post videos of the ongoing National Team Camp. Here's a group photo in the meantime:
Copyright- USAG
L-R: Hundley, Ross, Maroney, Nichols, Price, Shchennikova, Dowell, Locklear, Baker, Priessman, Desch, Milliet, Skinner, Gowey, Dennis, Key, Hults, Gaskins, Quinn, Schild, Biles, Flatley and Vasquez.

Notable exceptions are Sarah Finnegan, Katelyn Ohashi, Laurie Hernandez and Peyton Ernst. Laurie was out because her coach just had a baby (she..does have more than one coach though) and the rest are recovering from injury. The return of McKayla Maroney is momentous though. She had better show up in a video! Amelia Hundley, who performed well below her standard in Europe, has one shin heavily wrapped. Nia Dennis has been added to the junior National Team. Deafening silence on the inclusion of Laurie Hernandez (at the last camp- which she won) and Mykayla Skinner- but the new national teams will be chosen fairly soon I suppose. Plenty of new floor routines debuted during verification AND.... McKayla Maroney looked better and had higher difficulty than expected. Bring on Classics!

17 comments:

  1. We'll finally be able to see Blendea this month!! It's great there are a few competitions since I really can't wait for Classics...

    I was filled with joy when I saw Mckayla back at camp. ALso, I read that Martha said "Mckayla exceeded our expectations for her first camp. We were quite impressed with her level of difficulty at this time."

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    1. I just saw that, great news! It would be crazy if she yurchenko double backed all over camp...I'd imagine she at least had a good floor and if not an amanar then a DTY.

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    2. apparently her bars were much improved too :)

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    3. It's weird to imagine McKayla with anything other than an Amanar!!
      I really hope she surprises us at Classics! I have a good feeling!
      Where didi you read her bars were improved??

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    4. She did mention a few months back that she'd been spending a lot of time on bars. She would need to be scoring 14.5 at least for them to be worth using so much time on (she spends twice as long on beam and bars than the other two). Lovely geinger, dismount, lines...and yet I could only ever watch her last year through my hands. Sigh. Hard to get hopes up about them..

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  2. It's great to see Andrei back. Although, I don't really see how she's competing when off the national team...

    I really hope Blendea does well even if she hasn't competed for a while...I wish her good luck and can't wait until she turns senior!

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    1. It's not known if she is or not, yet anyway. Yes super excited to see Blendea..and there WILL be videos!

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    2. She has been pulled. I highly doubt she is at Izvorani now.

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  3. So excited for nationals and visas. I can't remember being this excited for classics or visas especially the year after the Olympics where its usually not as exciting and kind of boring.

    I can't wait to see what mykayla brings. I hope she surprises us.

    I'm looking forward to the vids from camp. I know Nia had some upgrades. They must have been good if she made the team.

    What is everyones thoughts on next years Youth Olympic Games. I really think Marta should send one oe two Juniors to this event. Even if that Junior misses nationals, they can be added to the nat team at a camp before or after nationals.

    I think Marta should send a junior like Bailey and a new junior who makes the nat team this year.

    Juniors who will be turning senior during this quad should see how the score in intl competitions outside of Jesolo and pac rims which imo might as well be scam.

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    1. Probably because it's more up in the air, and exciting with a lot of girls having new floor routines. And the return of Maroney.

      Nia looks to be working on a Gabby-esque routine, great height in her releases and I believe her piked Tkachev is not crooked. USAG have said videos will probably be next week.

      They can only send one, one per country. I kind of hope they send Bailie, but in a way I hope they don't because she needs to peak for 2015 and 16 when it matters most. But Andrade V Bondareva V Blendea V Key is amazing..

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  4. I'm really excited about Maroney! According to tumblr, she has landed the TTY onto competition surface! BTW even though this isn't true, it's funny:http://gymcoffeetawk.tumblr.com/post/52143050360/itsdesipuspandini-bekahthegymfan-was-nastia

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    1. I'm not sure about this. On the one hand- it's quite quick to have it, considering injuries etc. And on the other- she has said vault and floor takes much less training (half!) than the other apparatus and given her muscle memory and insane block and the fact that this could be her last chance to shine...it's actually not that crazy. We'll see at Classics anyway what the story is with her and vault :D

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  5. For the Gym Festival, I heard that Romania (according to their gymnastics federation site) replaced Anamaria Ocolisan and Daniela Andrei with Andra Stoica and Andreea Ciurusniuc (both juniors).

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    1. I'm pretty sad about this- I really liked Andrei. Looks like she HAS gotten fed up.

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  6. I don't know if you saw that it was just announced that Alexandrov will be coaching in Brazil- http://rewritingrussiangymnastics.blogspot.com/

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    1. I was following it all yesterday on my phone. Those in the know who speak Russian (so jealous) are of the opinion that little will change, which is reassuring. I just posted about it, pretty late to the party!

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  7. The Mai Murakami confession is just too cute.

    I'm so excited for McKayla's bars!!!!

    -Brouhaha

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