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!