Asian Championships and news

Introducing team North Korea! Hong Un Jong is the one looking fierce third from left. I would imagine the three new girls who were only recently registered with FIG are the one on the left and the two on the right. WAG competition does not start until tomorrow, so these are just podium training leos. Interesting that they look straight from the wardrobe of Nastia. In more exciting news, Hong Un Jong unleashed an Amanar and Cheng! Seeing as both still have their 6.5 values, China's Li Yiting has some stiff competition.

I will update this with more news as the competition unfolds..and hopefully some videos. China's CCTV are covering some of the comp, so that will help. As of now, I predict that China will win team, and Zeng Siqi and Shang Chunsong will medal in the AA. Li Yiting and Hong Un Jong will place on vault, China will dominate bars and beam, while Japan and North Korea will have more of a say on floor.

China are a bit up and down in team finals, though since they can drop a score, they should still win. Shang Chungsong fell on bars, it looks like Luo Peiru fell on beam judging by her e-score, Huang Huidan fell on floor and went out of bounds, Luo Peiru fell on her DTY and Li Yiting crashed her second vault. Hmm. Vault and floor d-scores were very low, with the exception of Shang Chunsong on floor and Luo Peiru and Li Yiting on vault. Bars seems to have been exceptionally strong, with Huanh Huidan in particular scoring a huge 15.4 there. Likewise, Zeng Siqi put up a monster 15.3 on beam. Very interesting!Zeng Siqi has an AA total of 57.4, which will be hard to beat. Shang Chunsong is not far behind, with 56.45.

Team:

1. China
2. North Korea
3. Japan
4. South Korea

China's lead was sizeable, something like 10 points, but well done to North Korea for placing second in their first outing in quite a while. They also had very impressive vaulting on the mens side, as well as two Cheng's on the women's- a vault that was not seen this year in competition.

AA:

1. Zeng Siqi
2. Sung Ji-Hye (South Korea)
3. Shang Chunsong

Event finals results are not out yet, I am a bit confused about time and I'm not sure if they are underway/have taken place/yet to take place. In any case, as mentioned before, vault is a toss-up between Li Yiting and Hong Un Jong, beam should be easily won by Zeng Siqi and Huang Huidan should do the honours on bars. Floor is a bit more undecided, but Japan's Risa Konishi had the highest score there today. Shang Chunsong will place too. Great competition for China, and for Zeng Siqi in particular who is cementing her place as a top AA-er (certainly in Asia, but she obviously needs to get her DTY back to really contend elsewhere). Wonderful to watch, and cute as a button. I think I'm not alone in waiting with delight (not) for all the 4 year-fans to claim she's 5 years old once she gets on the scene internationally.

Here is most of today's competition, with the sad exception of Huang Huidan's bars, but we'll see them in EF anyway.

Event finals are a bit shocking! Phan Thi Ha Thanh won. Ri Un Ha, Hong Un Jong and Li Yiting all had falls. So did Risa Konishi. Also, Wu Liufang won bars! Huang Huidan had some form issues and problems with her dismount it seems. Hong Un Jong's vaults were both underrotated, but it looks like she can fix it. Ri Un Ha's first vault is a DTY and not an amanar as previously reported. She's a little sloppy but quite powerful. Zeng Siqi appears to have fallen (must look up videos soon) off beam, as she only managed a 7.9 e-score in EF. Enough for bronze though! Shang Chunsong won gold in both beam and floor.

In other news, Anastasia Sidorova who has no luck at all has partially torn her ACL. It seems she will be out for only a few weeks, but she is missing the Massilia Cup anyway. Hope to see her fighting fit soon! She is being replaced at that event by junior Viktoria Kuzmina. It also appears unlikely that Yulia Inshina will compete as she is scheduled to do, but no word on why there is suddenly such doubt about it.

Danusia Francis is learning one of the most awesome and incredibly rare beam acro moves..a free sideways cartwheel. The second one looks ready to go.

You can see Mai Murakami's floor from Japanese Nationals here. I know I know, I mention her a lot. Too bad, she's amazing and how could anyone NOT like her after watching that? If you got a fright over how much older she looks, I think anyone would. I do have favourites but they're not influenced by my nationality at least.

Hong Un Jong and Grandi return! More news

The roster for the Asian Artistic Gymnastics Championships has been announced for Japan..and North Korea! (China already covered). North Korea's team consists of Hong Un Jong, Kang Yong Mi, Kim Un Hyang and three much younger total unknowns- Kim So Yong, Pak Sin Hyang and Ri Un Ha who all have birthdates of 1995/6. How exciting! First of all to see what Hong Un Jong and the other two are still capable of, and what the other 3 have up their sleeves. I am dissapointed not to see Cha Yong Hwa of the superb bars, but even so. Fantastic stuff.

Japan's team consists of Risa Konishi, Wakana Inoue, Sakura Noda, Erica Danko, Shizuka Tozawa and Mirai Sekiguchi. Like China they are not using Olympians, but they also seem to have gone one further and are using a bit of a b-team lineup. Very dissapointing not to see Mai Murakami and Natsumi Sasada, but perhaps they are being saved for bigger competitions. Hopefully. The competition takes place from 7-15th November and has an AA, TF and EF's. YAY!

In other news, John Orozco is the 3rd victim of the tour, injuring his knee on a dismount. Ridiculous! High level gymnastics is obviously more appealing as a draw, but so not worth it. It is confirmed to be a torn ACL and meniscus, which puts him out for at least a year. This tour is terrible.

The Russian teams for the upcoming Massilia Cup and next July's Universiade Games have been announced. Massilia's line-up will be Anastasia Sidorova, Yulia Inshina, Maria Kharenkova and Yevgeniya Shelgunova. Universiade's will be Aliya Mustafina, Tatiana Nabieva, Ksenia Afanasyeva and Kristina Goryunova. Great to see Kristina get a bigger assignment of more note, and of course, to see Nabs again. Maria Kharenkova is arguably Russia's best junior, so hopefully she can make even more of a name for herself.

The Chinese team for the upcoming Massilia Cup will be Lou Nina, Mei Jie, Chen Siyi and Liu Zhilin who all had strong performances this year at Nationals. Bars and beam should be a highlight and hopefully they can dominate there. The competition takes place from the 17th-18th November.

Romanian Junior Nationals have just taken place. They were split up into 4 categories from girls born in 2001-2002 down to girls who are already on the junior national team. Sadly, plenty of the most promising did not compete- Madalina Blendea, Adela Florea and Andreea Munteanu were all injured and Laura Jurca only did bars due to an injury also. Other girls were also injured, but quite a few only doing 1 or 2 events. Andreea Iridon who is great on bars (not a qualifying statement- she is!) dominated her age category and won bars, beam and floor. Silvia Zarzu did well but is hindered by her terrible bars. Laura Jurca took silver on bars. Sad to see so many absences, especially as the purpose of this competition was to add more to the national team. The big excitement was Andreea Iridon's bars and Asiana Peng's triple full on floor.Their team for Massilia has not been announced yet, but since they have a plethora of injuries it will be tougher than expected. Individuals and other teams have been announced. Of note are the two super exciting and very different Dutch girls- Eythora Thorsdottir and Chantysha Netteb. The former is glorious on beam and has a floor fresh from the 1985 Soviet team. The latter is powerful with her speciality being vault on which she is the reigning Junior European Champion. From Canada, Victoria Moors who is already down for both world cups and Victoria Woo and Gabriella Douglas (LOL if she competes against Gabby at some stage) are among the contingent.

Bruno Grandi has been re-elected. Yawn. New blood please. He will be 82 when his term ends. So has Nellie Kim which is less of a surprise given she ran unopposed. Nellie continues to be biased in her decisions, no longer a direct judge but having the power to sway their decision.

Anna Pavlova will compete at the Tournoi meet. In USA news, there is a big furore over comments Anna Li has made and some sort of (maybe not at all) reply Nastia made. ie accusations of bullying by Anna followed by 'Let it be' tweet from Nastia. Suspicion has been planted firmly in Alicia Sacramone's corner, with 'victims' being Gabby, Anna and Nastia. Personally, it would not take much for me to believe that of Alicia who does appear from several instances to have a mean side. Bullying is quite a step further though, despite the fact they have been cooped up together for quite a while, and dumping girls in their teens and early 20's together and expecting no drama is ludicrous. However Anna should never have posted any comments. It smacks of immaturity, and she is definitely old enough to know better. It's one thing doing something like that on facebook between school friends, but it's definitely worse when these girls have a substantial fanbase and attract a lot of attention from the gym community at large. Not impressed.

News and stuff

Romania's senior team are moving from their base in Izvorani to Dinamo club in the capital, Bucharest. This is for a few reasons, according to Mariana Bitang. One, education. They need access to better education for their gymnasts (this comes after a bunch of them failed part of their BAC this summer). Health, they will now have better access to a doctor with less concerns about travel etc. They also feel they will have better equipment. Unfortunately the club is a little rundown so they need to do some work first. This is the second move, back in the day they trained in Deva which now hosts the Junior national team. It appears that it has not been officially written off on as a decision but it is something they are determined to do and they are already there 'and hoping to stay there'.

North Korea are officially back this month after their long ban. I really hope something emerges! Aside from using underage gymnasts, they are also known innovators- Pak salto, counter Kim, double front vault and for using hard skills like the Def and vaults like the Amanar and Cheng. I laughed my head off when someone enquired on the USAG Facebook page as to whether Hong Un Jong is still in training as if anyone has any insight into the country at all, nevermind its gymnastics programme. Hopefully we will see them at worlds next year and before then.

Sandra Izbasa and Catalina Ponor are set to perform at the Univ Gym Gala in the Netherlands in December. Looking forward to videos appearing, especially as I doubt it will contain any LMFAO shuffling.

Kennedy Baker's withdrawal from the Mexican Open is down to a mild calf injury- a tweak I think. So it is more precaution than anything else. On the subject of meets this year- not sure about Voronin Cup. The Russians are withdrawing from the Stuttgart World Cup but the word in interviews is that they are not going to compete this year, which would also rule Voronin out. Remains to be seen.

There is a South American Championships taking place this week. Competing will be one of my favourite juniors, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. Rebeca won the Brazil Trophy meet recently ahead of tipped favourites Jade Barbosa and Daniele Hypolito. Considering she is 13 and is still has quite a way to go building her difficulty, that is amazing. I will stick up a few videos when they're up.

McKayla Maroney is flying to Oklahoma City with Kyla Ross. The tour is currently there, looks like she's rejoining soon..

Kim Gwang Suk

Kim Gwang Suk is best known for being blatantly underage at every competition she competed at. She appeared at the 1987 Druzhba, the 1989 Worlds, 1991 Worlds and the 1992 Olympics. Born sometime between 1978-80, she could have been as young as 9 at the 89 worlds. Too many people focus on the age falsification scandal and don't see her fabulous talent- especially at such a young age. In fact, many blame her as if a young girl in North Korea would have any say in the cover-up- the idea that she had is just laughable.

Kim's skill, the counter-Kim or Marinich as it is known in men's gymnastiocs has only ever been performed by 5 other people. Kim unveiled it to the world at the 1989 worlds, when the oldest she could have been at the time was 11. The rest of her routine is equally admirable- she has an incredibly easy swing, textbook form aside from slightly bent legs when she is recatching and hits perfect handstands like nobody's business- at a time when they were not near as important as they are now. Kim showed choreography on beam and floor that belied her age, moving easily and gracefully. Beam in particular was a great apparatus for her- lovely fluidity of movement. She was not made for vault or floor as she did not have the power to shine at either. Her youth may have been working against her there, though her vault did actually deteriorate badly in the 3 years from 1989 to 1992. Her greatest achievement, aside from being so spectacular that young, was winning the bars title at the 1991 Worlds, against favourites like Tatiana Gutsu, Shannon Miller and Kim Zmeskal. Her routine scored a perfect 10- the last 10 to be awarded at a worlds. Unfortunately, even though she upped her already crazy difficulty level, a tiny step on landing at the 1992 Olympics event finals cost her a medal, despite having the highest score in the compulsories. Sadly, the fact that she had the highest difficulty by far was not enough to oust her rivals. After Barcelona, the age falsification emerged and North korea were banned from the 1993 worlds as punishment. Kim, who quite probaby had a lot left to give, completely faded and her whereabouts since are unknown.

The fact that she looks exactly the same in 1989 and 1992 leads me to believe her birth year was closer to 1980 than 1978, as she still looks far from puberty in Barcelona. Regardless, a great gymnast.