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.