The good
- USA looking ready to go on basically everything
- Maroney nailing her amanars (still with the step but even so..) and her Mustafina
- Musty looking very sharp and clean on all four- sticking DTY's
- Hannah Whelan has a DTY! That will help her out, especially when the new code kicks in
- Pena not dying on vault. Prod still questionable but she's not crashing them completely
- Millousi and Preziosa rocked their awesome beams
- Victoria Moors great on floor
- Vika landed amanars well
- Beth Tweddle looked awesome on floor
- Great bars from Huang Qiushuang, Gabby, Kyla, Vika and Grishina
- Huang Qiushuang in general having a great day
- Russia had a surprisingly good beam rotation
- Aly pointed her toes on bars! Stronger bars than her usual. This will help her out IF she manages to qualify for AA
- Afan was fantastic on floor..so impatient to see this routine!
- Jenni Pinches looked really good on floor, maybe she has found consistency?
- Campana, the last-minute substitute for Deagostini of Italy had a really good comp and confirmed the justice of her selection
- There's not just Vika and Aly's Patterson's- Elsa Garcia of Mexico nailed loads of them!
- Daiane Dos Santos lands a full twisting double layout and a double layout. Now aged 29, it doesn't look like any gymnast can ever top her tumbling power.
- Romania looking great on floor which they really need with the partial loss of their star. Diana Bulimar could really shine now.
- Lovely bars from Rie Tanaka. Will have to look up her difficulty but it would be so great to see her in bars EF
- Cata has a full twisting double layout! Really making her case for floor EF medal now
- Izbasa throws her Cheng and a beautiful Mustafina! Vault silver??
- Chelaru does what appears to be a timer for an amanar. Intriguing!
- Iordache did a full beam and bars, and did some vault and floor work (very light). Such determination when she is clearly in pain. Maybe this fire can help her compete strongly
The bad
- No floor from Maroney, who is being preserved and only doing vault. A beautiful routine which will be missed at these Olympics
- This means using Kyla in prelims, her score can be dropped but it makes it more annoying that it has such a stupidly low SV when she has such potential
- Rebecca Tunney hurt herself on a tumbling pass and cried BUT she did vault after so it doesn't seem serious
- Canada had a really crappy time on vault
- Lauren Mitchell had a really rough time, messing up badly on both floor and beam
- Aly had issues with her first tumbling pass
- Koko Tsurumi after throwing some low and dodgy tumbling on floor landed on her head on one, and was unable to continue on floor. However, she did compete afterwards..
- Paseka crashed her amanar more than once, the only thing she is on the team for- though stood them up all week
- Grishina's Silivas not looking competition ready
- Yao Jinnan had a pretty rough day and does not look on top form. UPDATE: Rumours of a thigh muscle strain :(
- Deng Linlin still wearing a back brace and looks to be in pain
- France who have a pretty scrappy team after being plagued with injuries looked rough and not ready, as they have done all week
- Brazil having issues with vault, Hypolito in particular
- Gabby sat at least one amanar and had problems on beam...not a suprise but both are her weak points if she's going four for four
- USA had an unbelievably gross leotard. Not only was it a disgusting pepto pink shade, it was also way too shiny with tacky looking silver stars AND mesh cut outs and weird stripes in the chest area. If Maroney cannot make it look good, it's an eyesore.
- Not one but TWO leopard print sleeveless leotards! Rotten Tina Erceg of Croatia and Laura Svilpaite of Lithuania were the offenders.
The injuries
- In heartbreaking news, Bitang has confirmed Larisa Iordache will not do the AA. Terrible news for her and her team and B&B- but also the Olympics as a whole, she has very exciting routines and was a top contender for the AA. Devastating. She will compete on bars and beam but it still means Romania are almost certain not to medal now..Bitang said the same too.UPDATE: Iordache's AA status now said to be 50/50, with the decision up to her. It is possible if she gets through prelims that she will have rest and pain relief enough to do the AA..nerves of steel just as important with a decision like that. Hopefully she can, though not at the expense of her health!
- Adrien Gomes of Brazil is out and will not compete. Brazil has been plagued by bad luck and injuries this year, and are pretty much out of replacements at this point. They are extremely unlikely to qualify for TF
- McKayla Maroney is competing on a broken toe and is in pain. Although it is brilliant and very lucky for her team that she can vault and did so today, her floor is a big loss and she also has a decent beam routine.
- As I mentioned before, Anna Li is unable to train as she will be in a neck brace for the next few weeks. It appears that she landed on her neck on her bars fall..very very scary! USAG seem to have a different meaning for 'fine'- what an absolute disgrace.
Showing posts with label headache leos on hotpink podium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label headache leos on hotpink podium. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 July 2012
Monday, 23 July 2012
London rumours and a surprise UPDATE
6 days to go! All top teams except China WAG are now in London. Fear not, China's team have been acclimatising in Northern Ireland, about an hour's flight away, so they will be fine. Shockingly, after weeks of rain here near Dublin and all over Britain- the sun is shining! It's supposed to hold until about Friday. What's funny about that is that the opening ceremony actually requires rain, but they have artificial clouds in case the sun happened. Hilarious.
As expected, the training gym (tent really) is MUCH more overwhelming in its hot-pink-ness than the actual arena. Hopefully this will help them adjust better. The arena is going to have lots of cream mats and red down on the podium, and sponsorship messages on the side (coca cola and mcdonalds number one choice of all athletes!) so all in all, will be quite the combo. Yesterday the USA girls did eh nobody proud by wearing hot pink leos. Russia wore lighter pink ones. Headache inducing. Thankfully today USA at least are wearing purple ones. The Romanian girls, who just arrived yesterday, wore some nice black ones which WORKED with the hot pink surroundings. Cata is going to look great when she wears her trademark black in beam EF next to everyone clashing.
Lots of photos are emerging of the Russian girls having a laugh, great to see.
You can see the leo in this one, not a nice pink.
Currently only one blogger is on the ground, Alexa Ainsworth on NBC. Yesterday she reported on USA's and Russia's training. Vika fell off beam at least four times, but that isn't really a big deal as she ALWAYS tanks on beam during PT and jumps off. Mustafina hit a clean bars set. No vaulting was seen. She only saw half of USA's training but what is concerning is that McKayla was on the sidelines, while everyone else trained floor. As she herself states, McKayla may have trained floor before she arrived. My guess would be when bars were going on, as McKayla hasn't a hope of being used there. It's also possible that to save her back after the gruelling round of Nationals- Trials- camp, she isn't participating in every floor training. Regardless, I still think she will do floor ahead of Kyla. Barring injury, it makes no sense to use Kyla when McKayla's floor may well score higher than Gabby's NCAA-style routine. She deserves the chance to find out. It's also worth remembering that last year at Worlds, even though McKayla messed up floor in prelims, Marta still used her in the TF ahead of Gabby and Sabrina, which worked out for the team. As well as Marta's insistence that she will not take a girl for one event, John Geddert has stated that they are training 3 AA-ers (Jordyn, Aly, Gabby) and 2 2-eventers (Kyla, McKayla). So why is Kyla training floor? She's still a back-up for AA, I don't see any reason why she shouldn't.
There's also hysteria over Jordyn's health. In the photo above she is shown putting all her weight on one foot. OMGZ! In another team photo, ALL of the girls are posing like this. It's quite common. It's not even wrapped, unlike Gabby's heavily taped ankle all year, so if it IS sore it seems more preventative than actually injured. If she was injured enough to hinder her training or AA chances, we would have heard by now. Let's all stay calm until Sunday, or try! Luckily we'll have even more bloggers on the scene for official podium training, can't wait!
Now for the surprise!
Victoria Moors of Canada. She of the awesome floor routine also has the most original bars dismount we have seen in a long long time. Has anyone seen one of these since the 80's? Brilliant, I was only wondering before this would anyone try one again, so sick of double layouts etc. Of course, the routine isn't difficult enough to see her do spectacularly well with this (and she has made costly mistakes as the first two routines show) but I just love seeing something so surprising and great.
UPDATE: McKayla did not train today either, and iced her right foot throughout training. She did do conditioning on bars and dance moves on floor. Hopefully it's nothing serious. She needs to vault five times in competition- luckily although her floor SHOULD be the first one up in TF, Gabby's floor is worthy too so it's not a huge loss if she can't do floor. Only a loss for artistry! But her vault IS neccessary, very much hoping that by Friday (official podium training) that she's able to land her vaults and do floor safely. USAG have said she's fine though, so I am sure she will be.
As expected, the training gym (tent really) is MUCH more overwhelming in its hot-pink-ness than the actual arena. Hopefully this will help them adjust better. The arena is going to have lots of cream mats and red down on the podium, and sponsorship messages on the side (coca cola and mcdonalds number one choice of all athletes!) so all in all, will be quite the combo. Yesterday the USA girls did eh nobody proud by wearing hot pink leos. Russia wore lighter pink ones. Headache inducing. Thankfully today USA at least are wearing purple ones. The Romanian girls, who just arrived yesterday, wore some nice black ones which WORKED with the hot pink surroundings. Cata is going to look great when she wears her trademark black in beam EF next to everyone clashing.
Lots of photos are emerging of the Russian girls having a laugh, great to see.
You can see the leo in this one, not a nice pink.
Currently only one blogger is on the ground, Alexa Ainsworth on NBC. Yesterday she reported on USA's and Russia's training. Vika fell off beam at least four times, but that isn't really a big deal as she ALWAYS tanks on beam during PT and jumps off. Mustafina hit a clean bars set. No vaulting was seen. She only saw half of USA's training but what is concerning is that McKayla was on the sidelines, while everyone else trained floor. As she herself states, McKayla may have trained floor before she arrived. My guess would be when bars were going on, as McKayla hasn't a hope of being used there. It's also possible that to save her back after the gruelling round of Nationals- Trials- camp, she isn't participating in every floor training. Regardless, I still think she will do floor ahead of Kyla. Barring injury, it makes no sense to use Kyla when McKayla's floor may well score higher than Gabby's NCAA-style routine. She deserves the chance to find out. It's also worth remembering that last year at Worlds, even though McKayla messed up floor in prelims, Marta still used her in the TF ahead of Gabby and Sabrina, which worked out for the team. As well as Marta's insistence that she will not take a girl for one event, John Geddert has stated that they are training 3 AA-ers (Jordyn, Aly, Gabby) and 2 2-eventers (Kyla, McKayla). So why is Kyla training floor? She's still a back-up for AA, I don't see any reason why she shouldn't.
There's also hysteria over Jordyn's health. In the photo above she is shown putting all her weight on one foot. OMGZ! In another team photo, ALL of the girls are posing like this. It's quite common. It's not even wrapped, unlike Gabby's heavily taped ankle all year, so if it IS sore it seems more preventative than actually injured. If she was injured enough to hinder her training or AA chances, we would have heard by now. Let's all stay calm until Sunday, or try! Luckily we'll have even more bloggers on the scene for official podium training, can't wait!
Now for the surprise!
Victoria Moors of Canada. She of the awesome floor routine also has the most original bars dismount we have seen in a long long time. Has anyone seen one of these since the 80's? Brilliant, I was only wondering before this would anyone try one again, so sick of double layouts etc. Of course, the routine isn't difficult enough to see her do spectacularly well with this (and she has made costly mistakes as the first two routines show) but I just love seeing something so surprising and great.
UPDATE: McKayla did not train today either, and iced her right foot throughout training. She did do conditioning on bars and dance moves on floor. Hopefully it's nothing serious. She needs to vault five times in competition- luckily although her floor SHOULD be the first one up in TF, Gabby's floor is worthy too so it's not a huge loss if she can't do floor. Only a loss for artistry! But her vault IS neccessary, very much hoping that by Friday (official podium training) that she's able to land her vaults and do floor safely. USAG have said she's fine though, so I am sure she will be.
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