Ugh, gutted for her. She really has a lot to offer British gymnastics.
Showing posts with label Gabby Jupp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gabby Jupp. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 March 2015
Gabby Jupp
Gabby Jupp has torn her other ACL and is out of the English Championships, her coach Steven Price has confirmed on twitter. After a promising senior debut where she had a strong showing at American Cup in 2013 followed by winning the AA at British Championships, she tore her ACL at Euros on beam. It has been a long, slow recovery with setbacks and now to tear the other one is just devastating. Other gymnasts with multiple tears such as Yvette Moshage and Mariya Livchikova have been forced into retirement, although the latter's situation was hindered by abysmal options relating to health care and finances. Here's hoping that Gabby can come back from this and display her gorgeous, clean work as a specialist, on bars and hopefully beam.
Ugh, gutted for her. She really has a lot to offer British gymnastics.
Ugh, gutted for her. She really has a lot to offer British gymnastics.
Monday, 22 September 2014
Worlds thoughts
It's almost here! And there have been some changes even since the predictions post.
In typical Russia fashion, their team has changed. In, out, in out...shake it all about. Maria Paseka is out. Ekaterina Kramarenko remains in despite sustaining some sort of foot/ankle injury recently. Viktoria Komova, who was never in but who could well have been chosen last minute, is officially out of contention. Ksenia Afanasyeva, who was briefly mentioned as a possible team member despite not being fully recovered, is also out of contention. Polina Fedorova and Tatiana Nabieva will be fighting for the last team spot. Edit: I believe it's been confirmed Tatiana won that particular battle, relegating Polina to alternate.
So, what does this do? It means no amanar. Aliya Mustafina will no doubt plant a strong DTY for a good score, but it's really a blow to lose Maria Paseka. Alla Sosnitskaya and I suppose Ekaterina Kramarenko will complete the vault lineup. Ideally to counteract a weaker than expected vault rotation they'd need some stacked bars, which they don't really have. Nobody, not even Aliya, has the difficulty displayed by the team in London. It's a puzzler to know what these changes will do to Russia's TF placing. Because of course, other teams are struggling too.
It's so odd to see USA weak. Especially for me as a new fan, not used to 'mid-quad slumps'. I am not surprised to see that Brenna Dowell won't be making the trip to China. Even if she was hitting AA at camp as rumoured I did think it would be too little too late for Marta who quite rightly highly prizes consistency all season long. Especially since Marta spectacularly showed last year that Brenna does not get breaks. No McKayla Maroney, no Elizabeth Price, no Brenna Dowell, no Peyton Ernst, no Maggie Nichols, no Lexie Priessman, no new Fierce 5 comeback. It's going to be very interesting but I believe they have the edge still.
Last night (this morning?) the Asian Games Quals/TF took place with a predictable massive win for China. Which was no surprise given that they sent their A-team, most others held off on doing that. Fascinating to see this team in action as a 'warm-up'. It is a little concerning given the closeness in timing between this and worlds, hopefully it won't have any impact for when their performances really need to count. First, congratulations to newcomer Chen Siyi for landing a very respectable DTY, a new skill for her that she has been crashing for most of this year. Shang Chunsong is dealing with some pain (strain is the word I think) in her hips for which she has needed Cortisone shots. Sensibly, she watered down on floor as a result. Disappointing to see her fall on bars and score atrociously in execution on beam, but hopefully she can bounce back and compete strong and pain-free in Nanning. Yao Jinnan also competed recovering from an injury which affected her training, but it was a while ago now and with any luck won't be an issue whatsoever to her by worlds.
I expected a bit more from China on beam (Bai Yawen for instance did not compete a routine worthy of the medal I gave her) and they weren't without headcase moments and substantial errors, BUT, overall it was a very strong showing. Vault is no longer a big worry for me (hurray for improvement there also from Tan Jiaxin) and bars will definitely pick them up and plant them well ahead of any other team there. They have no less than 4 routines at almost 7.0 which is phenomenal and is a big reason why they still have the silver edge in my view. Other teams being weak on vault too could easily get them over the hump of non-fantastic beam and floor. Although looking at Shang Chunsong's beam again and I don't know where they got 8.3 from. China seem to get the brunt of artistic deductions on beam when most everyone is guilty of poor rhythm and half-hearted choreography. Also, yes she brought her foot up. Not even high really. Everything else was so precise grrr.
You can find videos on this fantastic channel that needs to be in your subscriptions.
On the topic of Asian Games, Hong un Jong got together with Oksana Chusovitina and relived her glory days on vault. Much better vaults than we have seen in a long time from her AND with her difficulty advantage on Simone Biles, 0.8, she will really give the latter a run for her money if she vaults like that again. It also puts pressure on Mykayla Skinner who is at a big disadvantage since she may or may not score incredibly low for her Cheng what with the most bad-ass-but-worthy-of-harsh-scoring-block of all time. Could well be our podium, but Giulia Steingruber and Phan Thi Ha Thanh stand to gain bigtime if the judges give the one-armed Cheng the stink eye. Back to Asian games, where Chuso also unleashed a much better looking Rudi. All hail the vault elixir of youth she and Hong un Jong have been knocking back!
I'm struggling to place Russia, Romania and GB. The latter have not been doing that well on floor this year. A good bit will depend on the readiness of Gabby Jupp who I am THRILLED has made the team. Raer Theaker is a loss on floor, but Gabby with good bars and beam will more than make up for that. So much the better if she has floor too, but I wouldn't expect it and after so long out it would be wiser to hold off.
Have any of your thoughts about worlds changed recently? Predictions? What will crop up next in this mid-quad 'Who can suck the most' competition? Sorry, sorry, most impolite but um, somewhat truthful...
As an aside from worlds, but a very important one: wishing and hoping that Deanne Soza makes a full recovery from her recent eye infection. The last update was more positive, with optimism from doctors on her treatment and it mentioned that Deanne was able to distinguish a silhouette of her father.
It must be incredibly hard for her to deal with, not least because she is so young, never mind the fact that she is a superbly talented athlete with enormous potential. Speedy and full recovery to her and her sight.
Update: She's continuing to improve and was able to read letters from a screen today. SO THRILLED to hear this. Her vision is very blurry and it's too soon to tell about her right eye vision but this is so much less bleak than the first update or two so it's just fantastic news.
In typical Russia fashion, their team has changed. In, out, in out...shake it all about. Maria Paseka is out. Ekaterina Kramarenko remains in despite sustaining some sort of foot/ankle injury recently. Viktoria Komova, who was never in but who could well have been chosen last minute, is officially out of contention. Ksenia Afanasyeva, who was briefly mentioned as a possible team member despite not being fully recovered, is also out of contention. Polina Fedorova and Tatiana Nabieva will be fighting for the last team spot. Edit: I believe it's been confirmed Tatiana won that particular battle, relegating Polina to alternate.
So, what does this do? It means no amanar. Aliya Mustafina will no doubt plant a strong DTY for a good score, but it's really a blow to lose Maria Paseka. Alla Sosnitskaya and I suppose Ekaterina Kramarenko will complete the vault lineup. Ideally to counteract a weaker than expected vault rotation they'd need some stacked bars, which they don't really have. Nobody, not even Aliya, has the difficulty displayed by the team in London. It's a puzzler to know what these changes will do to Russia's TF placing. Because of course, other teams are struggling too.
It's so odd to see USA weak. Especially for me as a new fan, not used to 'mid-quad slumps'. I am not surprised to see that Brenna Dowell won't be making the trip to China. Even if she was hitting AA at camp as rumoured I did think it would be too little too late for Marta who quite rightly highly prizes consistency all season long. Especially since Marta spectacularly showed last year that Brenna does not get breaks. No McKayla Maroney, no Elizabeth Price, no Brenna Dowell, no Peyton Ernst, no Maggie Nichols, no Lexie Priessman, no new Fierce 5 comeback. It's going to be very interesting but I believe they have the edge still.
Last night (this morning?) the Asian Games Quals/TF took place with a predictable massive win for China. Which was no surprise given that they sent their A-team, most others held off on doing that. Fascinating to see this team in action as a 'warm-up'. It is a little concerning given the closeness in timing between this and worlds, hopefully it won't have any impact for when their performances really need to count. First, congratulations to newcomer Chen Siyi for landing a very respectable DTY, a new skill for her that she has been crashing for most of this year. Shang Chunsong is dealing with some pain (strain is the word I think) in her hips for which she has needed Cortisone shots. Sensibly, she watered down on floor as a result. Disappointing to see her fall on bars and score atrociously in execution on beam, but hopefully she can bounce back and compete strong and pain-free in Nanning. Yao Jinnan also competed recovering from an injury which affected her training, but it was a while ago now and with any luck won't be an issue whatsoever to her by worlds.
I expected a bit more from China on beam (Bai Yawen for instance did not compete a routine worthy of the medal I gave her) and they weren't without headcase moments and substantial errors, BUT, overall it was a very strong showing. Vault is no longer a big worry for me (hurray for improvement there also from Tan Jiaxin) and bars will definitely pick them up and plant them well ahead of any other team there. They have no less than 4 routines at almost 7.0 which is phenomenal and is a big reason why they still have the silver edge in my view. Other teams being weak on vault too could easily get them over the hump of non-fantastic beam and floor. Although looking at Shang Chunsong's beam again and I don't know where they got 8.3 from. China seem to get the brunt of artistic deductions on beam when most everyone is guilty of poor rhythm and half-hearted choreography. Also, yes she brought her foot up. Not even high really. Everything else was so precise grrr.
You can find videos on this fantastic channel that needs to be in your subscriptions.
On the topic of Asian Games, Hong un Jong got together with Oksana Chusovitina and relived her glory days on vault. Much better vaults than we have seen in a long time from her AND with her difficulty advantage on Simone Biles, 0.8, she will really give the latter a run for her money if she vaults like that again. It also puts pressure on Mykayla Skinner who is at a big disadvantage since she may or may not score incredibly low for her Cheng what with the most bad-ass-but-worthy-of-harsh-scoring-block of all time. Could well be our podium, but Giulia Steingruber and Phan Thi Ha Thanh stand to gain bigtime if the judges give the one-armed Cheng the stink eye. Back to Asian games, where Chuso also unleashed a much better looking Rudi. All hail the vault elixir of youth she and Hong un Jong have been knocking back!
I'm struggling to place Russia, Romania and GB. The latter have not been doing that well on floor this year. A good bit will depend on the readiness of Gabby Jupp who I am THRILLED has made the team. Raer Theaker is a loss on floor, but Gabby with good bars and beam will more than make up for that. So much the better if she has floor too, but I wouldn't expect it and after so long out it would be wiser to hold off.
Have any of your thoughts about worlds changed recently? Predictions? What will crop up next in this mid-quad 'Who can suck the most' competition? Sorry, sorry, most impolite but um, somewhat truthful...
As an aside from worlds, but a very important one: wishing and hoping that Deanne Soza makes a full recovery from her recent eye infection. The last update was more positive, with optimism from doctors on her treatment and it mentioned that Deanne was able to distinguish a silhouette of her father.
It must be incredibly hard for her to deal with, not least because she is so young, never mind the fact that she is a superbly talented athlete with enormous potential. Speedy and full recovery to her and her sight.
Update: She's continuing to improve and was able to read letters from a screen today. SO THRILLED to hear this. Her vision is very blurry and it's too soon to tell about her right eye vision but this is so much less bleak than the first update or two so it's just fantastic news.
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| Copyright- Christy Ann Linder |
Monday, 19 August 2013
More Nationals and other (updated) news
Juniors
Very disappointing that Nia Dennis retained her inconsistent streak, falling on both of her rafter-scraping releases. There was no stopping Bailie Key with four more stellar routines, and Laurie Hernandez cleaned up on floor with much better landings. I'm also liking her beam the more I see it, I hope she regains her BHS-LOSO-LOSO, because even if hers is flat..it's a cool series. Unfortunately, while there were plenty of clutch performances, there were a lot of meltdowns other than Nia's splat central on bars, both Ariana Agrapides and Alexis Vasquez completely fell apart on bars, damning their chances of making the National Team, which indeed- neither of them made, despite killer potential. But the reason is simple, the junior national team goes by AA placement, not potential. In the case of Ariana, I don't think they would have expected her to make it as she's not up to scratch on beam or bars yet, though incredibly strong on vault and floor. Still, she has a LOT of time, not turning senior until 2017. Alexis would have easily made it over Polina Shchennikova but that bars routine dragged her right down. Speaking of Polina, her day 2 did her no favours, compounded by a weak performance day 1. She has gorgeous lines and leaps, but not a whole lot else at this point and her bars routine was a but of a mess form-wise.
Norah Flatley and Vanasia Bradley also show a lot of potential, hoping for great development with these two. It would be great to see the WOGA girls, Nadia Cho especially, continue to build difficulty on their pet events because that is their ticket to teams and while WOGA remain unbelievably weak at vault with non-spectacular tumbling, they aren't going anywhere near the all-around.
Bailie is an interesting gymnast. She doesn't have the spark, amplitude or dance of some of the other girls and you would think that would make her boring, because clean gymnastics alone are generally not enough. But somehow it is, and I think it's her mastery of all four events as well as the many upgrades she's planning- Bailie is NOT a 5.4 bars difficulty gymnast and her beam too has more skills in the works. Nia, hmm. She's a star in the making, but obviously needs more consistency as well as polish. I'm very happy that her form and her leaps are surprisingly good. Perhaps straightening her knees before letting go of the bar before a release will help her out- it looks to my non-technical eye as if her knee bend drives her too high and that's the problem, making them very difficult to catch. That said, I am in LOVE with her releases. But it's no good if catching them is 50/50 and I'd be very happy to see her more stable with them, even if a few inches of height has to be sacrificed. Laurie is incredible. She jumped about 20 places or so in the all-around from last year. Feisty, fantastic. She brings to mind another f too..frantic. Not on floor or at least, not in my opinion, but on bars where she's too rushed and doesn't allow enough time to be sure of her next move and hit handstand perfectly. This was more noticeable in her day 2 routine. It worked for her and she hit, it's just something I'd like to see toned down in the future.
Update- I've just seen that Laurie and Bailie will compete at Junior Japan! This meet traditionally attracts top juniors so it could be amazing and make up for the lack of USA at YOG, and the one spot per country for just one specific birth year YOG will have anyway.
Favourite leotards
I really like the MG elite one- they wore it at Parkettes and another meet too, though I don't like how high the collar is. But it's unusual and the design is Celtic, which is a win-win in my view. Nia Dennis' leotard was beautiful, so was Melissa Reinstadtler's and Chow's girls one was a beautiful colour. None of the rest were offensive as such- except CGA. Great colours, could have been lovely but way too much mesh ruined the whole thing and made it inappropriate. If there must be mesh, may it be black or anything not-nude, and only on arms/neck. Not torso, ugh.
Seniors
McKayla Maroney continues to impress, this time leaving no doubt about her tumbling on floor, where she definitely did not go out of bounds on the double layout and saved a slight bit of overrotation on the double pike pretty smoothly. If she can nail the stag leap out of the double arabian, then she has it made- she can challenge Larisa Iordache, equal Simone Biles and put pressure on Ksenia Afanasyeva. Awesome. Her vaults were also much better, it's obvious and she said it herself that she makes sure to really drive the Mustafina because the Olympics one plays in her head. Her knees are a little softer on her amanar than they were last year, I'd love to see her tighten up a bit, but make no mistake- she still utterly dominates that vault. Definitely a lock for the worlds team, though of course Marta has just startled everyone by saying she hopes McKayla will do the all-around there. For sure, there have been a lot of disappointments about girls in line for the 4th place, but I don't think anyone was expecting this. If Madison Kocian is not ready in time, then I fully support this. If she is ready, then I'm torn, because as great as it would be for McKayla to do the all-around, I'd really like for Madison to get the experience. She could be very valuable in a worlds team finals after all.
Simone again hit all her routines which was enouraging. I mean, not falling, I definitely spotted her missing her toe-on. Still, a great weak for our new National Champion and it will really help her gearing up for worlds with that title already under her belt. Her second vault, the Lopez, is incredible. And way too easy for her. Introducing a Cheng at this stage is probably not a risk Marta would want to take (I saw it into the pit on Gymnastike beyond the routine, and it did look amazing) but it would be great if she could verify it in time. I'd also really love if she could bring back the 1.5 to tucked full-in and the double layout-half out to boost her difficulty a little there. Hopefully the 5.7 beam is not permanent, as it's quite a drop on her routine earlier this year- six tenths. She went the safe route, nailed it, now hopefully she can build on it.
Kyla had another very good day, though she was again shaky on beam- still uncharacteristic! It was great to see her determination running into the double pike that gave her trouble on day 1, and nailing it. Hopefully she can get all four tumbles as good as the first two landing-wise. I'm happy her difficulty has increased there and on beam too (though her 6.0 day 2 is said to be a wrong calculation by some?) I know her growth has been an issue, and the heel injury earlier this year and we're all blue in the face from saying this..but one or two more upgrades to her beam and on bars would be so helpful!
It wasn't to be Brenna Dowell's day. She didn't seem 'on' like she has been, it's possible she's dealing with injury or just wasn't feeling the best. Regardless, she remains a very strong all-arounder, but not consistent enough or clean enough to really make her mark. In the future I'm wondering if she dropped beam and really focused on the other three if she'd be better off. She's an incredibly hard worker and has already made big strides in improvement..I'd never underestimate her. But it definitely was Mykayla Skinner's day! This girl, who showed up and crashed her way through Classics and who showed immense improvement but still fell off beam twice on day 1...hit. Everything. Out of the park. So, so impressive. No, we will never enjoy her form on backhandsprings or her block on the Cheng but WOW. Her floor was fantastic and I was so annoyed they didn't show it..until they showed my girl Laurie instead. Delighted for her making the national team, hopefully she can be sent to a world cup or Pac Rims and be pitted against external competition and international judging. And hopefully she moves gyms because despite her turnaround, she still needs a lot of work.
I'm gutted Madison Desch and Abigail Milliet didn't make the National team, but it does make sense...it wasnt to be going by their performances. I'm sure both girls will come back strong at camp and make a great case for their inclusion though.
Favourite leotards
GAGE, again. Simone's patriotic leo was nice and simple but still stunning. Not a fan of either Kyla's or McKayla's..the colour was nice on Kyla but too much mesh, and McKayla's was just dull or something, but again loved the colour.
And in other news....
- Well known by now, but Viktoria Komova was only released from hospital today, after suffering for a week from what has been described as both gastroenteritis and stomach flu. She posted a picture of an IV which supports the view that she was badly dehydrated, and presumably very weak. Something like that is not serious as such, just a setback...but when you don't have much weight to spare it can really suck and I know from experience. She's due to start training again next week. Let us hope she's sent to Osijek world cup for some competitive experience..it's very close to Antwerp but she could really do with competitive experience if they're going to send her to worlds regardless..either as an all-arounder or a bars/beam specialist.
- Russian Cup was the emptiest competition ever. No Viktoria Komova, Anastasia Grishina, Anna Dementyeva, Aliya Mustafina, Ksenia Afanasyeva, Ekaterina Baturina or Evgeniya Shelgunova. In some circumstances, fan favourite Tatiana Navieva won the all-around, followed by Alla Sosnitskaya and Anna Pavlova. Tatiana also qualified first to every event final, except bars which Maria Paseka managed. Event finals are due to be broadcast, but it's basically a webcam..don't expect USAG awesomeness.
- Tatiana Nabieva won bars and vault finals. Second and third place respectively in both were Maria Paseka and Alla Sosnitskaya. Anna Pavlova only did one vault and pulled out of bars finals. Maria Paseka put her hand down on her amanar. I think she's firmly closed the door on an Antwerp spot now. Rumour is Anastasia Grishina hurt her back so that's why she didn't compete and we know for sure that Anna Dementyeva is not training at the moment, whether it's a break or a move towards retirement is not yet known, though Anna Rodionova has basically said the latter.
- It looks like Jordyn Wieber's plan is to train at UCLA. She can train with the team, just not compete. She'd be in close proximity to Gabby Douglas who will be training at Chris Waller's gym in LA, though it doesn't sound like it will be either intensive or committed.
- Canada's Gabriella Douglas is out of worlds contention with an injury :( Her pet events are beam and floor, and her strength is turns- really impressive work. She had a great shot at the team. Ellie Black was pulled from Pan-Ams at the last minute so let's hope she's not injured too. Their team is now likely to be Ellie Black, Victoria Moors, Maegan Chant and Kaitlyn Hofland.
- GB's Gabby Jupp has been cleared to start training on bars! Like fellow ACL-tear gymnast Aliya Mustafina, Gabby already has a very strong base on bars so it would be great if she could use her time off training on hard surfaces by really excelling on this event.
- Romania's Larisa Iordache, Diana Bulimar and Sandra Izbasa are going to compete (never rely on them not being pulled though) at Interland, a friendly competition in the Netherlands, starting on the 31st, which also has a large contingent from GB as well as the host country. An ideal opportunity for all involved to get some more competitive experience in. There will be quick hits from this and hopefully videos.
Very disappointing that Nia Dennis retained her inconsistent streak, falling on both of her rafter-scraping releases. There was no stopping Bailie Key with four more stellar routines, and Laurie Hernandez cleaned up on floor with much better landings. I'm also liking her beam the more I see it, I hope she regains her BHS-LOSO-LOSO, because even if hers is flat..it's a cool series. Unfortunately, while there were plenty of clutch performances, there were a lot of meltdowns other than Nia's splat central on bars, both Ariana Agrapides and Alexis Vasquez completely fell apart on bars, damning their chances of making the National Team, which indeed- neither of them made, despite killer potential. But the reason is simple, the junior national team goes by AA placement, not potential. In the case of Ariana, I don't think they would have expected her to make it as she's not up to scratch on beam or bars yet, though incredibly strong on vault and floor. Still, she has a LOT of time, not turning senior until 2017. Alexis would have easily made it over Polina Shchennikova but that bars routine dragged her right down. Speaking of Polina, her day 2 did her no favours, compounded by a weak performance day 1. She has gorgeous lines and leaps, but not a whole lot else at this point and her bars routine was a but of a mess form-wise.
Norah Flatley and Vanasia Bradley also show a lot of potential, hoping for great development with these two. It would be great to see the WOGA girls, Nadia Cho especially, continue to build difficulty on their pet events because that is their ticket to teams and while WOGA remain unbelievably weak at vault with non-spectacular tumbling, they aren't going anywhere near the all-around.
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| Nia. Copyright- USAG- John Cheng |
Bailie is an interesting gymnast. She doesn't have the spark, amplitude or dance of some of the other girls and you would think that would make her boring, because clean gymnastics alone are generally not enough. But somehow it is, and I think it's her mastery of all four events as well as the many upgrades she's planning- Bailie is NOT a 5.4 bars difficulty gymnast and her beam too has more skills in the works. Nia, hmm. She's a star in the making, but obviously needs more consistency as well as polish. I'm very happy that her form and her leaps are surprisingly good. Perhaps straightening her knees before letting go of the bar before a release will help her out- it looks to my non-technical eye as if her knee bend drives her too high and that's the problem, making them very difficult to catch. That said, I am in LOVE with her releases. But it's no good if catching them is 50/50 and I'd be very happy to see her more stable with them, even if a few inches of height has to be sacrificed. Laurie is incredible. She jumped about 20 places or so in the all-around from last year. Feisty, fantastic. She brings to mind another f too..frantic. Not on floor or at least, not in my opinion, but on bars where she's too rushed and doesn't allow enough time to be sure of her next move and hit handstand perfectly. This was more noticeable in her day 2 routine. It worked for her and she hit, it's just something I'd like to see toned down in the future.
Update- I've just seen that Laurie and Bailie will compete at Junior Japan! This meet traditionally attracts top juniors so it could be amazing and make up for the lack of USA at YOG, and the one spot per country for just one specific birth year YOG will have anyway.
Favourite leotards
I really like the MG elite one- they wore it at Parkettes and another meet too, though I don't like how high the collar is. But it's unusual and the design is Celtic, which is a win-win in my view. Nia Dennis' leotard was beautiful, so was Melissa Reinstadtler's and Chow's girls one was a beautiful colour. None of the rest were offensive as such- except CGA. Great colours, could have been lovely but way too much mesh ruined the whole thing and made it inappropriate. If there must be mesh, may it be black or anything not-nude, and only on arms/neck. Not torso, ugh.
Seniors
McKayla Maroney continues to impress, this time leaving no doubt about her tumbling on floor, where she definitely did not go out of bounds on the double layout and saved a slight bit of overrotation on the double pike pretty smoothly. If she can nail the stag leap out of the double arabian, then she has it made- she can challenge Larisa Iordache, equal Simone Biles and put pressure on Ksenia Afanasyeva. Awesome. Her vaults were also much better, it's obvious and she said it herself that she makes sure to really drive the Mustafina because the Olympics one plays in her head. Her knees are a little softer on her amanar than they were last year, I'd love to see her tighten up a bit, but make no mistake- she still utterly dominates that vault. Definitely a lock for the worlds team, though of course Marta has just startled everyone by saying she hopes McKayla will do the all-around there. For sure, there have been a lot of disappointments about girls in line for the 4th place, but I don't think anyone was expecting this. If Madison Kocian is not ready in time, then I fully support this. If she is ready, then I'm torn, because as great as it would be for McKayla to do the all-around, I'd really like for Madison to get the experience. She could be very valuable in a worlds team finals after all.
Simone again hit all her routines which was enouraging. I mean, not falling, I definitely spotted her missing her toe-on. Still, a great weak for our new National Champion and it will really help her gearing up for worlds with that title already under her belt. Her second vault, the Lopez, is incredible. And way too easy for her. Introducing a Cheng at this stage is probably not a risk Marta would want to take (I saw it into the pit on Gymnastike beyond the routine, and it did look amazing) but it would be great if she could verify it in time. I'd also really love if she could bring back the 1.5 to tucked full-in and the double layout-half out to boost her difficulty a little there. Hopefully the 5.7 beam is not permanent, as it's quite a drop on her routine earlier this year- six tenths. She went the safe route, nailed it, now hopefully she can build on it.
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| Kyla the vamp. Copyright- USAG- John Cheng |
Kyla had another very good day, though she was again shaky on beam- still uncharacteristic! It was great to see her determination running into the double pike that gave her trouble on day 1, and nailing it. Hopefully she can get all four tumbles as good as the first two landing-wise. I'm happy her difficulty has increased there and on beam too (though her 6.0 day 2 is said to be a wrong calculation by some?) I know her growth has been an issue, and the heel injury earlier this year and we're all blue in the face from saying this..but one or two more upgrades to her beam and on bars would be so helpful!
It wasn't to be Brenna Dowell's day. She didn't seem 'on' like she has been, it's possible she's dealing with injury or just wasn't feeling the best. Regardless, she remains a very strong all-arounder, but not consistent enough or clean enough to really make her mark. In the future I'm wondering if she dropped beam and really focused on the other three if she'd be better off. She's an incredibly hard worker and has already made big strides in improvement..I'd never underestimate her. But it definitely was Mykayla Skinner's day! This girl, who showed up and crashed her way through Classics and who showed immense improvement but still fell off beam twice on day 1...hit. Everything. Out of the park. So, so impressive. No, we will never enjoy her form on backhandsprings or her block on the Cheng but WOW. Her floor was fantastic and I was so annoyed they didn't show it..until they showed my girl Laurie instead. Delighted for her making the national team, hopefully she can be sent to a world cup or Pac Rims and be pitted against external competition and international judging. And hopefully she moves gyms because despite her turnaround, she still needs a lot of work.
I'm gutted Madison Desch and Abigail Milliet didn't make the National team, but it does make sense...it wasnt to be going by their performances. I'm sure both girls will come back strong at camp and make a great case for their inclusion though.
Favourite leotards
GAGE, again. Simone's patriotic leo was nice and simple but still stunning. Not a fan of either Kyla's or McKayla's..the colour was nice on Kyla but too much mesh, and McKayla's was just dull or something, but again loved the colour.
And in other news....
- Well known by now, but Viktoria Komova was only released from hospital today, after suffering for a week from what has been described as both gastroenteritis and stomach flu. She posted a picture of an IV which supports the view that she was badly dehydrated, and presumably very weak. Something like that is not serious as such, just a setback...but when you don't have much weight to spare it can really suck and I know from experience. She's due to start training again next week. Let us hope she's sent to Osijek world cup for some competitive experience..it's very close to Antwerp but she could really do with competitive experience if they're going to send her to worlds regardless..either as an all-arounder or a bars/beam specialist.
- Russian Cup was the emptiest competition ever. No Viktoria Komova, Anastasia Grishina, Anna Dementyeva, Aliya Mustafina, Ksenia Afanasyeva, Ekaterina Baturina or Evgeniya Shelgunova. In some circumstances, fan favourite Tatiana Navieva won the all-around, followed by Alla Sosnitskaya and Anna Pavlova. Tatiana also qualified first to every event final, except bars which Maria Paseka managed. Event finals are due to be broadcast, but it's basically a webcam..don't expect USAG awesomeness.
- Tatiana Nabieva won bars and vault finals. Second and third place respectively in both were Maria Paseka and Alla Sosnitskaya. Anna Pavlova only did one vault and pulled out of bars finals. Maria Paseka put her hand down on her amanar. I think she's firmly closed the door on an Antwerp spot now. Rumour is Anastasia Grishina hurt her back so that's why she didn't compete and we know for sure that Anna Dementyeva is not training at the moment, whether it's a break or a move towards retirement is not yet known, though Anna Rodionova has basically said the latter.
- It looks like Jordyn Wieber's plan is to train at UCLA. She can train with the team, just not compete. She'd be in close proximity to Gabby Douglas who will be training at Chris Waller's gym in LA, though it doesn't sound like it will be either intensive or committed.
- Canada's Gabriella Douglas is out of worlds contention with an injury :( Her pet events are beam and floor, and her strength is turns- really impressive work. She had a great shot at the team. Ellie Black was pulled from Pan-Ams at the last minute so let's hope she's not injured too. Their team is now likely to be Ellie Black, Victoria Moors, Maegan Chant and Kaitlyn Hofland.
- GB's Gabby Jupp has been cleared to start training on bars! Like fellow ACL-tear gymnast Aliya Mustafina, Gabby already has a very strong base on bars so it would be great if she could use her time off training on hard surfaces by really excelling on this event.
- Romania's Larisa Iordache, Diana Bulimar and Sandra Izbasa are going to compete (never rely on them not being pulled though) at Interland, a friendly competition in the Netherlands, starting on the 31st, which also has a large contingent from GB as well as the host country. An ideal opportunity for all involved to get some more competitive experience in. There will be quick hits from this and hopefully videos.
Thursday, 9 May 2013
Yao Jinnan fights back
Presenting the top qualifier to the Chinese National Games Quals AA! Considering she had one or two little errors on bars, a watered down floor and missed connections on beam as well as the traditional extremely harsh execution scoring present in internal Chinese competitions- scoring a 57+ is amazing. Her injury last year kept her from performing anywhere near her best in London and it was said this year that she was having trouble with her hip. So it's great to see (or read, as the case may be so far) a strong performance from her. Tied for second were Shang Chunsong and Huang Qiushuang. Zeng Siqi biffed her bars dismount, again, but happily was the first qualifier for beam, just ahead of Sui Lu. He Kexin hit bars and vault, but it was a sad day all around- so.many.falls. Saddest of all was Tan Jiaxin the UB superstar, who fell on a Jaeger and then had some sort of disaster on floor, with an even 5.0 for her d and e scores. Wu Liufang crashed her layout on beam. Good news from my favourite bright young things, Lv Jiaqi and Liu Tingting have both upgraded and scored very well with execution. Liu Tingting, a 2016 senior, placed fifth in the AA qualifiers, and Lv Jiaqi placed tenth. The fight for the second AA-er at worlds will be interesting. Yao Jinnan is the obvious choice for first, if healthy. Shang Chunsong hopefully for the second, but she's still a flake. And THAT floor choreography is a disgrace. Huang Qiushuang may yet make another major team! Especially since one of her mistakes was so ridiculous- she incurred an enormous 0.5 deduction on vault for running more than 25 metres. You can never predict what silly mistake she'll do next but I doubt she'll repeat that one. Shanghai (including Sui Lu and Tan Sixin) beat Guangdong (including Wu Liufang and Huang Qiushuang) into second and Hunan (including Zeng Siqi, Tan Jiaxin and Shang Chunsong) into third, helped along by an utter disaster of a bars rotation by Hunan.
Never underestimate what Huang Qiushuang has up her sleeve! Today in the AA final she repeated the exact same mistake, starting her vault run from too far back, again carrying a massive 0.5 deduction. Smooth coaching there. She also brought her bars dismount to her knees, which is apparently a new mistake for her, and placed outside of the medals. Yao Jinnan fell on her standing full on beam, but still won gold with a 56.701, which wasn't exactly surprising given the enormous amount of falls and major errors, again. Shang Chunsong placed second and Zeng Siqi was third. Shang nailed her very difficult 6.7 bars routine, but had some very expensive wobbles on beam and an OOB on floor. Zeng Siqi generally had less difficulty, she is rumoured to have a DTY but did not do it. I really don't think she has it in her anymore, but at any rate I don't want to see one from her until she looks stronger with better endurance. I'm really sad that Huang Huidan looks to be falling off the radar, just like Wu Liufang. Huang had a nightmare on bars, her pet piece, so too did Deng Linlin. Liu Tingting placed sixth, an amazing result for a girl so young. She is the most promising junior all-arounder that China have. She consistently gets execution scores in the 8.3 range, which in China is like a 9.3.
Gabby Jupp has had her ACL surgery. Wishing for a very speedy recovery. In more ACL news, Yvette Moshage of the Netherlands has torn her ACL for the third time, after a heroic battle to comeback the first two times. Really devastating. This is the third ACL tear so far this year, the other besides these two being Mariya Livchikova.
Kohei Uchimura's wife has given birth to a baby girl. Her name is not released. His parents were gymnasts and his sister is too, so hopefully his daughter will at least try it out with genes like that!
Never underestimate what Huang Qiushuang has up her sleeve! Today in the AA final she repeated the exact same mistake, starting her vault run from too far back, again carrying a massive 0.5 deduction. Smooth coaching there. She also brought her bars dismount to her knees, which is apparently a new mistake for her, and placed outside of the medals. Yao Jinnan fell on her standing full on beam, but still won gold with a 56.701, which wasn't exactly surprising given the enormous amount of falls and major errors, again. Shang Chunsong placed second and Zeng Siqi was third. Shang nailed her very difficult 6.7 bars routine, but had some very expensive wobbles on beam and an OOB on floor. Zeng Siqi generally had less difficulty, she is rumoured to have a DTY but did not do it. I really don't think she has it in her anymore, but at any rate I don't want to see one from her until she looks stronger with better endurance. I'm really sad that Huang Huidan looks to be falling off the radar, just like Wu Liufang. Huang had a nightmare on bars, her pet piece, so too did Deng Linlin. Liu Tingting placed sixth, an amazing result for a girl so young. She is the most promising junior all-arounder that China have. She consistently gets execution scores in the 8.3 range, which in China is like a 9.3.
Gabby Jupp has had her ACL surgery. Wishing for a very speedy recovery. In more ACL news, Yvette Moshage of the Netherlands has torn her ACL for the third time, after a heroic battle to comeback the first two times. Really devastating. This is the third ACL tear so far this year, the other besides these two being Mariya Livchikova.
Kohei Uchimura's wife has given birth to a baby girl. Her name is not released. His parents were gymnasts and his sister is too, so hopefully his daughter will at least try it out with genes like that!
Monday, 29 April 2013
The best bar routines..
..are floaty, super-clean and dynamic. Noemi Makra never dissapoints. I'd love if she could upgrade this, she looks well capable of connecting a release to a transition or even two releases together. It's more difficult to push the boat out when she's not from a big gymnastics power with super-duper coaches but this routine deserves to medal in more than just a B-level World Cup. I am in love with her taps, the old school pike looks nicer than the straddle which breaks the line and much better than the ugly Russian bent-kneed mess. That will be harder when she grows of course, but so are they all.
Here's a favourite from last year, Wakana Inoue at Stuttgart. Glorious. She looked more laboured at Jesolo this year sadly, hopefully she can get back to this standard. And the third is the beautiful Gabby Jupp. It always sucks when someone is taken out with an ACL injury of course, but it seems extra sad when it's a first year senior just beginning to blaze a trail. Hopefully after her surgery she can, like I said before, work on her bars just like Aliya Mustafina so successfully did.
Why no Viktoria Komova? Mainly her tap swings really, they are absolutely hideous and it ruins the overall gorgeousness of the routine. She also isn't as effortless as the other three. I love agressive routines and high difficulty amazing routines, but nothing beats a floaty routine like the ones below.
STUNNING. It's worth noting that she's wearing a leotard Larisa Iordache has worn. Than Thi Phan Thanh also showed up in it and the cut was fine!
My favourite of the three is probably Makra's since her releases are just amazing into the bargain, which puts her just ahead of Inoue. Jupp's needs some attention to detail but it's so lovely and light.
Here's a favourite from last year, Wakana Inoue at Stuttgart. Glorious. She looked more laboured at Jesolo this year sadly, hopefully she can get back to this standard. And the third is the beautiful Gabby Jupp. It always sucks when someone is taken out with an ACL injury of course, but it seems extra sad when it's a first year senior just beginning to blaze a trail. Hopefully after her surgery she can, like I said before, work on her bars just like Aliya Mustafina so successfully did.
Why no Viktoria Komova? Mainly her tap swings really, they are absolutely hideous and it ruins the overall gorgeousness of the routine. She also isn't as effortless as the other three. I love agressive routines and high difficulty amazing routines, but nothing beats a floaty routine like the ones below.
STUNNING. It's worth noting that she's wearing a leotard Larisa Iordache has worn. Than Thi Phan Thanh also showed up in it and the cut was fine!
My favourite of the three is probably Makra's since her releases are just amazing into the bargain, which puts her just ahead of Inoue. Jupp's needs some attention to detail but it's so lovely and light.
Saturday, 27 April 2013
Quick round-up- update Gabby Jupp :(
Maria Bondareva has won the Russian Junior Championships AA. Interestingly, Viktoria Kuzmina qualified in first and Maria in third- there must have been mistakes by one or both over the course of the few days. I am seriously excited to see Viktoria Kuzmina's bars- she is doing a piked double front dismount! Not to mention the interior of her routine must be great too- she scored a 15 during qualifications.
Australian gymnast Maddie Leydin is reported to have a Counter Kim- Gienger combination on bars, verified at a recent camp. I can't find this information but she must be either a new senior or became one last year- she did compete at Pac Rims and Gymnix last year but both incorporate juniors so that's no help. Anyway, WOW! I'm definitely not up with the mechanics of gymnastics but a Counter-Kim strikes me as being incredibly difficult to release out of as it's one of those built-in dead hang releases, so this girl must be amazing. I can't wait to see a video. Other reports from the camp are intriguing- several girls have DTY's, another has a Tkachev-Gienger combination and there's lots of interesting floor work- Alexandra Eade has a double layout, tuck full-in AND a 1.5 tuck full-in and Maddie Leydin has a whip-double arabian. Thinking about the Counter-Kim-Gienger again and I don't think it can be a direct connection as they go from different directions. What's far more likely (if the word Marinich is not a mistake- please let it not be a mistake...) is that she does an uprise like Becky Downie or something similar in between, that would also make more sense given the enormous difficulty in connecting a Counter-Kim to anything dynamic.
TripleTwist have compiled a list of girls at and not at the latest camp. You can find it here. I'm really pleased to see Kennedy Baker, Elizabeth Price and Sarah Finnegan back in the mix as well as of course...McKayla Maroney! There's no way she's at camp if she doesn't have something of substance to show. She said in an interview a good few weeks back that she has successfully vaulted a Yurchenko (full?) so maybe by now she the amanar back. What's arguably more interesting is what she has to show on the other apparatus. Strange that she is more ready than Jordyn Wieber who did not have near as many injuries to come back from. Jordyn does look well on her way though, with a new skill in the works- sadly for those who want her to ditch her Weilers on bars it is a variation- a Weiler full. Fascinating to think she could get a named skill on her weakest piece, but she would be far from the first to do so. It's unfortunately not a surprise that Katelyn Ohashi isn't there as she had shoulder surgery just a few weeks ago. I'm interested to see beam and bars work from new elite Madison Kocian who has been held back in the past with injury- especially bars, if they have upgrades she could be very valuable as a complement to a powerhouse gymnast. And of course, also intrigued to know whether or not Mykayla Skinner has gained in consistency now that she has an ambitious floor routine and vaults (laid out double double, amanar and Cheng respectively).Update: It appears that McKayla Maroney pulled out of camp at the last minute. If so, I still think it's positive that she was supposed to go, she must have solid routines to show.
This is my favourite of Aly's dances. I think she's doing a great job of the ballroom dances but I'm more into this as it's quite obviously much more personal to her, as well as my not having a clue about ballroom dancing..except names really. LOOK at that leap at 4:00, I've never seen her do a leap that good. And the series right after it looked like it has better form than what she has usually shown in the past. The major part of the video is the choreography obviously, and not the gymnastics bits...it makes me very hopeful that she will do a floor routine at least at Classics next year choreographed by Mark Ballas, her partner (and Shawn Johnson's first time around). I wouldn't care if it just had back layout passes, it would be just so amazing to see her instil what she has learned into her dance. And it looks like she has learned a lot overall..starting with counting music which she stated herself..and more than likely, emoting and relating to music in sync.
Gabby Jupp's injury has been confirmed as a torn ACL. Devastating that she will out for about a year. Hopefully she can use this time like Aliya Mustafina did to build a spectacular bars routine on what is already a very promising foundation.
Catalina Ponor, Tommy Ramos, Marissa King and Ashanee Dickerson have been added to the Pro Gym Challenge roster. I mentioned this a while ago and I'm still excited about it..they're adding people by the day and the roster is very impressive now! As well as the above, Anna Pavlova, Oksana Chusovitina, Jade Barbosa, Jessica Lopez, Vanessa Zamarripa, Chellsie Memmel, Alyssa Pritchett, Noel Couch, Kat Ding and Jana Bieger will be there. The MAG side has bigger names too. This competition will have no routines, it is moreso a skill challenge which wouldn't be to everyone's taste but I find the format interesting. The competition takes place May 10-11th.
This is video of the week for me, (a bit old..) where Mykayla Skinner's coach states that Mykayla would have had the laidout double double named after her had she performed it at Jesolo/Chemnitz. Snort. I also found the high drama of the whole piece hilarious, it didn't seem like they were gearing up for a gymnast performing a skill (albeit a new, very impressive one) in her own gym, but rather a space launch of some sort. There is a lot of fuss on the gymternet over Mykayla's own arrogance but I don't like commenting on gymnasts on anything other than their own gymnastics, so I won't. I hope she doesn't end up in the 'bad personality' box in my head as that makes me unable to enjoy their routines no matter how great they are.
Australian gymnast Maddie Leydin is reported to have a Counter Kim- Gienger combination on bars, verified at a recent camp. I can't find this information but she must be either a new senior or became one last year- she did compete at Pac Rims and Gymnix last year but both incorporate juniors so that's no help. Anyway, WOW! I'm definitely not up with the mechanics of gymnastics but a Counter-Kim strikes me as being incredibly difficult to release out of as it's one of those built-in dead hang releases, so this girl must be amazing. I can't wait to see a video. Other reports from the camp are intriguing- several girls have DTY's, another has a Tkachev-Gienger combination and there's lots of interesting floor work- Alexandra Eade has a double layout, tuck full-in AND a 1.5 tuck full-in and Maddie Leydin has a whip-double arabian. Thinking about the Counter-Kim-Gienger again and I don't think it can be a direct connection as they go from different directions. What's far more likely (if the word Marinich is not a mistake- please let it not be a mistake...) is that she does an uprise like Becky Downie or something similar in between, that would also make more sense given the enormous difficulty in connecting a Counter-Kim to anything dynamic.
TripleTwist have compiled a list of girls at and not at the latest camp. You can find it here. I'm really pleased to see Kennedy Baker, Elizabeth Price and Sarah Finnegan back in the mix as well as of course...McKayla Maroney! There's no way she's at camp if she doesn't have something of substance to show. She said in an interview a good few weeks back that she has successfully vaulted a Yurchenko (full?) so maybe by now she the amanar back. What's arguably more interesting is what she has to show on the other apparatus. Strange that she is more ready than Jordyn Wieber who did not have near as many injuries to come back from. Jordyn does look well on her way though, with a new skill in the works- sadly for those who want her to ditch her Weilers on bars it is a variation- a Weiler full. Fascinating to think she could get a named skill on her weakest piece, but she would be far from the first to do so. It's unfortunately not a surprise that Katelyn Ohashi isn't there as she had shoulder surgery just a few weeks ago. I'm interested to see beam and bars work from new elite Madison Kocian who has been held back in the past with injury- especially bars, if they have upgrades she could be very valuable as a complement to a powerhouse gymnast. And of course, also intrigued to know whether or not Mykayla Skinner has gained in consistency now that she has an ambitious floor routine and vaults (laid out double double, amanar and Cheng respectively).Update: It appears that McKayla Maroney pulled out of camp at the last minute. If so, I still think it's positive that she was supposed to go, she must have solid routines to show.
Gabby Jupp's injury has been confirmed as a torn ACL. Devastating that she will out for about a year. Hopefully she can use this time like Aliya Mustafina did to build a spectacular bars routine on what is already a very promising foundation.
Catalina Ponor, Tommy Ramos, Marissa King and Ashanee Dickerson have been added to the Pro Gym Challenge roster. I mentioned this a while ago and I'm still excited about it..they're adding people by the day and the roster is very impressive now! As well as the above, Anna Pavlova, Oksana Chusovitina, Jade Barbosa, Jessica Lopez, Vanessa Zamarripa, Chellsie Memmel, Alyssa Pritchett, Noel Couch, Kat Ding and Jana Bieger will be there. The MAG side has bigger names too. This competition will have no routines, it is moreso a skill challenge which wouldn't be to everyone's taste but I find the format interesting. The competition takes place May 10-11th.
This is video of the week for me, (a bit old..) where Mykayla Skinner's coach states that Mykayla would have had the laidout double double named after her had she performed it at Jesolo/Chemnitz. Snort. I also found the high drama of the whole piece hilarious, it didn't seem like they were gearing up for a gymnast performing a skill (albeit a new, very impressive one) in her own gym, but rather a space launch of some sort. There is a lot of fuss on the gymternet over Mykayla's own arrogance but I don't like commenting on gymnasts on anything other than their own gymnastics, so I won't. I hope she doesn't end up in the 'bad personality' box in my head as that makes me unable to enjoy their routines no matter how great they are.
Thursday, 18 April 2013
Euro Qualifications and NCAA Nationals begin
Really nail-biting qualifications! First and foremost, I am devastated that Gabby Jupp is injured. She hurt her knee on her double pike beam dismount and was carried from the arena. She has been pulled from competition and is being flown home shortly for medical examination. Really really hoping that it's a very minor thing she has done, it would be awful for this bright young star to be sidelined in her first senior year by an ACL tear. Awful for anyone of course..I'm really missing the presence of the glorious Mariya Livchikova.
I expected the Russian battle for the AA to be a good one and it ended up being much more tense and shocking than any scenario I could have thought up. Who would have thought that Anastasia Grishina with her two falls would be the highest Russian qualifier? Beam was the ultimate decider for these three as they all came to grief there (Mustafina spectacularly so) with the other two counting bars falls into the bargain. A sad day for Afan who started so well with an explosive DTY and what sounds like an amazing floor routine..with upgrades, no less. Really looking forward to seeing her whip-whip triple and turn combinations. Good to see she did not risk the amanar after crashing them wholesale in podium training, I for one am still amazed she actually tried.
Quite a nervous day for others too, though the Romanians got away lightly with 3 strong routines from both girls. Larisa Iordache had some massive errors on bars and came away with a 12.933. She will quite clearly be aiming to better that by a point or so in order to defeat Mustafina..a Mustafina who stays on the beam, that is. Speaking of beam, one Icelandic girl had the misfortune of failing to mount the beam twice, and the fell off it three times..incurring a 5 point deduction. Sadly, extremely talented new seniors Noemi Makra and Chantysha Netteb will be dissapointed with their performances, Makra was very mixed and Netteb had errors on vault and falls on beam. We also won't see Vasilliki Millousi gracing beam finals as she fell also. Noel Van Klaveren stormed her way into vault finals and will be looking to retain her lead on Larisa Iordache there, who qualified fourth.
Unsurprisingly, there were quite a few savvy downgrades. Larisa performed a layout instead of a layout full, still easily claiming the highest qualifying spot on beam, and Diana Bulimar who was training a full-twisting DLO in PT performed it without the twist today. We won't see Ksenia Afanasyeva's amanar now of course, if she was planning to throw it in the AA. It sounds like Sophie Scheder and Giulia Steingruber have stepped up their games, Sophie has a very dynamic bars routine, earning her the third spot, and Giulia's first two passes on floor are now a full-twisting double layout and a double layout.
This post is quite disjointed but it's hard when you're going off quick hits! Don't forget that Moscow is GMT+3 and that WAG is due to start at 17:30 local time. And it's still too close to call with both top contenders have one rough event each, equal enough vaults, bars of one equalling the beam of the other and floor with not much between them...
It will also be an exciting weekend with NCAA Nationals on also. I've watched a few meets this year, free ones, free replays etc. though not as many as I would have wanted to as there were loads of them on at ridiculous times for me. I think the Super Six will be Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia, Michigan and LSU. Sadly, UCLA are not looking great. I'd like to see the title go to either Florida or Oklahoma. AA wise, Rheagan Courville, Taylor Spears or Bridget Sloan would be nice. Vanessa Zamarripa for bars, one of the Oklahoma girls or Mackenzie Caquatto for beam, Marissa King (LOVE that Tsuk 1.5) for vault and Llomincia Hall or Jessica Savona for floor. Anyway those are my picks, who are you rooting for?
I expected the Russian battle for the AA to be a good one and it ended up being much more tense and shocking than any scenario I could have thought up. Who would have thought that Anastasia Grishina with her two falls would be the highest Russian qualifier? Beam was the ultimate decider for these three as they all came to grief there (Mustafina spectacularly so) with the other two counting bars falls into the bargain. A sad day for Afan who started so well with an explosive DTY and what sounds like an amazing floor routine..with upgrades, no less. Really looking forward to seeing her whip-whip triple and turn combinations. Good to see she did not risk the amanar after crashing them wholesale in podium training, I for one am still amazed she actually tried.
Quite a nervous day for others too, though the Romanians got away lightly with 3 strong routines from both girls. Larisa Iordache had some massive errors on bars and came away with a 12.933. She will quite clearly be aiming to better that by a point or so in order to defeat Mustafina..a Mustafina who stays on the beam, that is. Speaking of beam, one Icelandic girl had the misfortune of failing to mount the beam twice, and the fell off it three times..incurring a 5 point deduction. Sadly, extremely talented new seniors Noemi Makra and Chantysha Netteb will be dissapointed with their performances, Makra was very mixed and Netteb had errors on vault and falls on beam. We also won't see Vasilliki Millousi gracing beam finals as she fell also. Noel Van Klaveren stormed her way into vault finals and will be looking to retain her lead on Larisa Iordache there, who qualified fourth.
Unsurprisingly, there were quite a few savvy downgrades. Larisa performed a layout instead of a layout full, still easily claiming the highest qualifying spot on beam, and Diana Bulimar who was training a full-twisting DLO in PT performed it without the twist today. We won't see Ksenia Afanasyeva's amanar now of course, if she was planning to throw it in the AA. It sounds like Sophie Scheder and Giulia Steingruber have stepped up their games, Sophie has a very dynamic bars routine, earning her the third spot, and Giulia's first two passes on floor are now a full-twisting double layout and a double layout.
This post is quite disjointed but it's hard when you're going off quick hits! Don't forget that Moscow is GMT+3 and that WAG is due to start at 17:30 local time. And it's still too close to call with both top contenders have one rough event each, equal enough vaults, bars of one equalling the beam of the other and floor with not much between them...
It will also be an exciting weekend with NCAA Nationals on also. I've watched a few meets this year, free ones, free replays etc. though not as many as I would have wanted to as there were loads of them on at ridiculous times for me. I think the Super Six will be Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, Georgia, Michigan and LSU. Sadly, UCLA are not looking great. I'd like to see the title go to either Florida or Oklahoma. AA wise, Rheagan Courville, Taylor Spears or Bridget Sloan would be nice. Vanessa Zamarripa for bars, one of the Oklahoma girls or Mackenzie Caquatto for beam, Marissa King (LOVE that Tsuk 1.5) for vault and Llomincia Hall or Jessica Savona for floor. Anyway those are my picks, who are you rooting for?
Friday, 29 March 2013
Bulimar V Iordache- Updated with entire Doha footage
I was anticipating a great showdown on floor, but I'm a little surprised at the result. Delighted for her of course, who would begrudge the adorable Didi a spot at the top of the podium? But even so, Larisa Iordache had a 0.2 difficuly lead on Diana Bulimar. Larisa threw 0.1 of that away for going out of bounds on her double double, but it would not have given her the victory had she stayed in. Both girls bounced out of their landings, and both had strong leaps. I would have given it to Larisa though, as her tumbling was cleaner. Diana is absolutely strong on floor, but her double layout has quite the leg seperation going on and her piked full-in was scrappy to say the least. I would have thought the cleaner tumbler with the difficulty lead would have won. That's not to say Diana's floor wasn't great, it was, just in my opinion slightly overscored compared to the silver winner. Larisa's scores have sure been interesting- she was slammed on bars and execution was a little harsh on floor, but she was overscored on vault and beam..
Both routines are here, I'll try to embed them if it will work later on. Who do you think should have won? Scores were 14.625 for Bulimar and 14.425 for Iordache.
In other news, Larisa threw a tucked full and layout full for a monster 6.7 d-score and 15.5 total, easily winning gold. The layout full does pike, but later then Katelyn Ohashi's I think, it's also higher in my estimation. Strong routine, very steady and she still has the triple full dismount. Katelyn does have the difficulty lead, and execution I think too- Larisa does not point her feet near enough. But it should still be close and interesting later on at worlds, as Katelyn's routine varies from 6.8-7.3 and she's not as sure on her feet as Larisa. Diana and Gabby nailed strong routines, Diana penalised a little harshly on execution I thought. When Gabby's routine is on youtube, wait for the slow motion part of her BHS-LOSO-LOSO. It's just perfection! The star of the show was Zeng Siqi (or Ziggy as the commentators call her) who nailed a glorious set with beautiful lines AND high difficulty- 6.6. Unfortunately, her double pike saw her bent in half and she took a three-tenths step, handing Larisa the victory. She also managed to get through floor without incident, though I fear for her legs on every tumble, especially the piked full-in. Hopefully she can build up her strength, but all in all a great week for China, gold on bars, silver on beam and bronze on floor. Gabby Jupp was edged to fourth for another very nice routine, though she too fell victim to the bouncy floor and stepped out. She and her coaches will be happy though with her placing here, and her bronze on beam and bars. The floor is a new bouncier type and will be used in Antwerp so they had better get used to it..hopefully some more competitions will use it in the meantime. Last year the Karolyi Ranch outfitted itself in Gymnova especially for London, but that's very expensive to do and worlds is not as important.
Ilaria Kaeslin, who is not a relation of Ariella Kaeslin, had beautiful work on floor and beam. Difficulty nowhere near enough to challenge, but so enjoyable to watch. Such a pity she fell out of bounds on floor, her Memmel and switch ring were just stunning. I also really liked Kirsten Beckett of South Africa, who had really nice dramatic choreography, and a great double arabian. Speaking of which, the slow motion of Gabby's one showed up how neat it is, it's Anna Myzdrikova neat.
It's been a fabulous two days of gymnastics- with the above and Tan Jiaxin's bars, Giulia Steingruber and Phan Thi Ha Thanh on vault and Gabby Jupp and Ruby Harrold on bars.
Who else watched? What was your favourite beam- Iordache, Zeng or Jupp? Bars- Jiaxin or Harrold? Vault? Floor? How awesome was Iordache's leotard today?
If you haven't seen any Doha finals- and certainly the timezone did not favour America, all finals have been uploaded. You can see beam here, floor here, vault here and bars here.
There's a cute video here of Larisa and Diana being interviewed. Check out Diana's great English! And her translation for Larisa was so cute. I also loved how as soon as she was finished beam, Zeng Siqi was straight over with congratulations and a hug. It's going to be so much fun when Zeng appears at an international competition like worlds, she looks so young which will definitely be picked up on.
Both routines are here, I'll try to embed them if it will work later on. Who do you think should have won? Scores were 14.625 for Bulimar and 14.425 for Iordache.
In other news, Larisa threw a tucked full and layout full for a monster 6.7 d-score and 15.5 total, easily winning gold. The layout full does pike, but later then Katelyn Ohashi's I think, it's also higher in my estimation. Strong routine, very steady and she still has the triple full dismount. Katelyn does have the difficulty lead, and execution I think too- Larisa does not point her feet near enough. But it should still be close and interesting later on at worlds, as Katelyn's routine varies from 6.8-7.3 and she's not as sure on her feet as Larisa. Diana and Gabby nailed strong routines, Diana penalised a little harshly on execution I thought. When Gabby's routine is on youtube, wait for the slow motion part of her BHS-LOSO-LOSO. It's just perfection! The star of the show was Zeng Siqi (or Ziggy as the commentators call her) who nailed a glorious set with beautiful lines AND high difficulty- 6.6. Unfortunately, her double pike saw her bent in half and she took a three-tenths step, handing Larisa the victory. She also managed to get through floor without incident, though I fear for her legs on every tumble, especially the piked full-in. Hopefully she can build up her strength, but all in all a great week for China, gold on bars, silver on beam and bronze on floor. Gabby Jupp was edged to fourth for another very nice routine, though she too fell victim to the bouncy floor and stepped out. She and her coaches will be happy though with her placing here, and her bronze on beam and bars. The floor is a new bouncier type and will be used in Antwerp so they had better get used to it..hopefully some more competitions will use it in the meantime. Last year the Karolyi Ranch outfitted itself in Gymnova especially for London, but that's very expensive to do and worlds is not as important.
Ilaria Kaeslin, who is not a relation of Ariella Kaeslin, had beautiful work on floor and beam. Difficulty nowhere near enough to challenge, but so enjoyable to watch. Such a pity she fell out of bounds on floor, her Memmel and switch ring were just stunning. I also really liked Kirsten Beckett of South Africa, who had really nice dramatic choreography, and a great double arabian. Speaking of which, the slow motion of Gabby's one showed up how neat it is, it's Anna Myzdrikova neat.
It's been a fabulous two days of gymnastics- with the above and Tan Jiaxin's bars, Giulia Steingruber and Phan Thi Ha Thanh on vault and Gabby Jupp and Ruby Harrold on bars.
Who else watched? What was your favourite beam- Iordache, Zeng or Jupp? Bars- Jiaxin or Harrold? Vault? Floor? How awesome was Iordache's leotard today?
If you haven't seen any Doha finals- and certainly the timezone did not favour America, all finals have been uploaded. You can see beam here, floor here, vault here and bars here.
There's a cute video here of Larisa and Diana being interviewed. Check out Diana's great English! And her translation for Larisa was so cute. I also loved how as soon as she was finished beam, Zeng Siqi was straight over with congratulations and a hug. It's going to be so much fun when Zeng appears at an international competition like worlds, she looks so young which will definitely be picked up on.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Weekend Highlights
I love when there's so much gymnastics going on that it's tough to keep up with everything. Jesolo EF videos are not up yet (Edit- They are now) and I'm missing some routines like Mariya Livchikova's beam which would surely be a highlight but I think I have enough to go on. Here's my thoughts on the highlights of this weekend's gymnastics feast.
Simone definitely made her mark as a junior last year when she won the Secret Classic and placed third as US Nationals and her explosive amanar and sky-high double layout attracted widespread attention. But I don't think anyone could have predicted the vast improvement she has made, not just on her pet events- but as an all-arounder, and America's most valuable one right now at that. Her new double-double on floor is done with such ease that a triple twisting version looks like a matter of when, not if. As it is she always has power left over landing that pass and it's SO high. Not content with the very dynamic 1.5 twist into double pike she debuted at American Cup, Simone busted out a full-in tuck in place of the double pike this weekend. Her last pass also looks like it could be upgraded to a triple and her routine is not making the most of the code, she needs more CV from leaps and/or punchfronts as she only amasses 6.2 from her incredible floorwork. The amanar is even better than last year, and she has stuck two so far that we know- one in warm-up at American Cup and the other yesterday. Again, the TTY is only a matter of time as we know for a fact she is training it.
After a dissapointing beam at American Cup where she fell on the new layout pass she had nailed in training, Simone was much more confident at Jesolo with it. Thankfully she has ditched the terrible tour-jete leap too. Extremely powerful in her full in tuck dismount, yet another upgrade...and that could quite easily become a pike. Of anyone who has done a wolf turn with more than one rotation- hers is the best. She still flails her arms a bit like all the rest but she gets it around so fast that it manages to look great instead of a giant wobblefest. Bars really is the most surprising of all, with new releases including a great piked Tkachev straight into Pak. Her dismount is so high above the bar that it needs to become a Fabrichnova. All in all Simone is the most valuable all-arounder USA has, most valuable vaulter and probably most valuable floor worker- Lexie's potential routine has 0.5 more difficulty but it will lose some of the difference in execution and it's not likely that Simone's d-score is final for this year. It's really hard not to say we have found the 2013 World AA, FX and VT champion. And it IS ridiculous to say that, because it's still more than six months away and you never know what will happen in this unpredictable and injury-prone sport. Enthralled as I am with Simone's enormous improvement and potential, I am not blind to her faults. Her backhandsprings on beam could do with being a lot tighter in form, she flexes her feet on bars transitions and some releases, her foot form on vault could do with being tighter too and she's not going to win any rewards for her dance on floor..particularly the parts where she practically stops dead. But it doesn't change the fact that she is exceptional. The new Jesolo AA, FX, VT and BB champion is on a roll.
Anastasia hit a beam routine with absolutely NO wobbles. Not on the layout, not on her beautiful but incredibly troublesome Onodi-illusion. She gives us all hope that with her coaching change, more relaxed and confident demeanour and shiny new beam and bars titles at Cottbus that she will finally fulfil her massive potential. Check out the close-up of her feet on the perfect Onodi-illusion. Glorious. Her floor still needs attention and I'm not sure she will ever hit a perfect floor routine as long as the double double remains to exhaust her..but, baby steps. She has not fallen off beam yet so far this year, and that alone is incredible.
Bailie, a 2015 senior, not only won the junior AA at Jesolo by three points, she also the VT, FX and BB titles already having qualified first into each. Something happened on bars where she 'only' got third, but the winner- Enus Mariani- is incredibly similar to Bailie on this event. This from a girl who is capable of far more than what she showed and who wasn't even the top ranked Junior in USA when she landed in Italy. Coach Kim Zmeskal has practically wrapped her in cotton wool in her preservation attempts. Long may it continue, with almost two full years until she (hopefully) explodes onto the senior stage. A great boost for this tiny young one.
Gabby was not sorely tested as big rival Rebecca Tunney is out with an unspecified injury. However, she still had to beat veteran Hannah Whelan who has years of experience compared to her and has high difficulty. But it was a breeze for Gabby, as Hannah counted numerous falls throughout the weekend while trying out new bars skills. Say hello to the new British AA, beam and floor champion and bars silver medallist. If she can possibly get a DTY in time for Euros she would be a legitimate threat, but that's optimistic to the point of foolishness. As it is, hopefully she can break out into podiums this quad. This is a great start to her senior debut, she impressed everyone with her steadiness and confidence at American Cup and has continued the trend on home soil.
Routines-
Floor. 1. Simone Biles, Jesolo TF/AA 2. Enus Mariani, Jesolo TF/AA 3. Mariya Livchikova, French Nationals (??)
Beam. 1. Anastasia Grishina, Cottbus EF 2. Gabby Jupp, British Championships EF 3. Elisabetta Preziosa, Cottbus quals
Vault. 1. Simone Biles, VT 1 Jesolo AA/TF 2. Oksana Chusovitina, VT 2 Cottbus quals 3. Maegan Chant, VT 2 Cottbus quals
Bars. 1. Becky Downie, British Championships quals 2. Enus Mariani, Jesolo TF/AA 3. Brenna Dowell, Jesolo TF/AA (most improved!)
Skill/composition highlights-
Kyla Ross' backhandsprings on beam look even better now she's grown. Enus Mariani's floor choreography is beyond wonderful. Peyton Ernst's sheep jump was stunning, and surprising given the weakness of the rest of her leaps. Mariya Livchikova's Memmel was out of this world (and her double front and tuck), as was Anastasia Grishina's Onodi. The height of Brenna Dowell's front double pike was crazy, and the ease of it. I am still in love with Simone Biles toe-rises and Gabby Jupp's BHS-LOSO-LOSO. Spectacular to see such clean vaulting from Oksana Chusovitina and I'm really impressed with Maegan Chant's form on hers too, and she can obviously upgrade.
Great week for- Simone Biles- AA, TF, FX, BB and VT champion. Bailie Key- AA, FX, VT and BB champion, and bronze medallist on bars. Anastasia Grishina, flake extraordinaire- UB and BB champion. Gabby Jupp, AA, FX and BB champion, and silver medallist on UB.
Good week for- Maggie Nichols and Peyton Ernst. International competitive debut and although they both fell off beam they both showed some really nice work and coped well. Onwards and upwards. Brenna Dowell who snatched a medal on bars with a surprisingly strong and much improved routine. She's known as an extremely hard worker and it's good to see someone achieve a medal on a weak event through hard graft. Enus Mariani would not have won the AA even if she hadn't fallen, but she did well to take AA silver, bars gold and floor silver.
Bad week for- Vanessa Ferrari who was doing very well until her new upgrade on beam, the tuck full. Vanessa's injury is not thought to be much more than a sprain but it's not known yet if it will impact her inclusion in Euros and other competitions. Such bad luck for this tough veteran. Mai Murakami who had a disaster on 3/4 events. So gutted. She did show some lovely beam work and her quad spin on floor was great. But she lost it everywhere else and although Japan are not deep, they don't have to put her on major teams.. Lexie Priessman and Amelia Hundley who both performed similarly. Not just messy but sluggish too. Lexie came to grief on beam, with errors elsewhere and Amelia had some seriously dodgy landings on floor today. Hopefully they are not going to be resigned to the broken pile just yet. Lexie at least is recovering from an injury, but I don't know what the story is with Amelia- more growth maybe. Also Kyla Ross who has just had her irrelevancy if she doesn't upgrade thrown in her face. I get that she has lost training time and given her growth spurt, significant upgrades in that timeframe would have been tough but they'll have to do something with her routines if she wants to make a major team, especially if she expects to do AA. Huang Huidan's disaster at Cottbus took her out of contention so early that I forgot all about it in the wake of so much gymnastics. Thanks Annie for reminding me, though it's sad to remember. It is the first competition of the season but she doesn't have any kind of track record for consistency. This won't convince anyone that she's any more reliable than Wu Liufang and she could well be left high and dry when major international teams are being chosen. Such a shame she lost it completely as her routines are so beautiful.
Best leotard- Can't choose between Japan's two podium training leos and Italy A's team leo. I also liked Becky Downie EF.
Worst leotard- USA TF. I'm sick of this nauseating colour and not even the pattern redeems it, one of the worst hot pink ones which is very low to sink.
I can't seem to embed anything Jesolo, Cottbus or British Championships..yet anyway, it's either a delay on recent videos or an embed block. So I will link uploaders instead. The excellent Gympower has a ton of yesterday's Jesolo videos and will be uploading event finals there too. Gifwatermark has some of the missed ones, and a different angle on repeated routines. Ninalfee has routines from French Nationals, including Mariya Livchikova's floor. Javier Collados has everything Cottbus, Xoxociara has some Jesolo EF routines and BGTV have all of the British Championships routines. I'm sure people have seen videos around the place, but it's handy to collect uploaders in one place here for convenience.
Who and what did you enjoy most?
Simone Biles' performance
Copyright- Gymnastike
After a dissapointing beam at American Cup where she fell on the new layout pass she had nailed in training, Simone was much more confident at Jesolo with it. Thankfully she has ditched the terrible tour-jete leap too. Extremely powerful in her full in tuck dismount, yet another upgrade...and that could quite easily become a pike. Of anyone who has done a wolf turn with more than one rotation- hers is the best. She still flails her arms a bit like all the rest but she gets it around so fast that it manages to look great instead of a giant wobblefest. Bars really is the most surprising of all, with new releases including a great piked Tkachev straight into Pak. Her dismount is so high above the bar that it needs to become a Fabrichnova. All in all Simone is the most valuable all-arounder USA has, most valuable vaulter and probably most valuable floor worker- Lexie's potential routine has 0.5 more difficulty but it will lose some of the difference in execution and it's not likely that Simone's d-score is final for this year. It's really hard not to say we have found the 2013 World AA, FX and VT champion. And it IS ridiculous to say that, because it's still more than six months away and you never know what will happen in this unpredictable and injury-prone sport. Enthralled as I am with Simone's enormous improvement and potential, I am not blind to her faults. Her backhandsprings on beam could do with being a lot tighter in form, she flexes her feet on bars transitions and some releases, her foot form on vault could do with being tighter too and she's not going to win any rewards for her dance on floor..particularly the parts where she practically stops dead. But it doesn't change the fact that she is exceptional. The new Jesolo AA, FX, VT and BB champion is on a roll.
Anastasia Grishina's redemption
Copyright- RGF, Russian Gymnastics Federation
Bailie Key's domination
Copyright- USAG USA Gymnastics
Gabby Jupp's continued steadiness
Copyright- Alan Edwards
Routines-
Floor. 1. Simone Biles, Jesolo TF/AA 2. Enus Mariani, Jesolo TF/AA 3. Mariya Livchikova, French Nationals (??)
Beam. 1. Anastasia Grishina, Cottbus EF 2. Gabby Jupp, British Championships EF 3. Elisabetta Preziosa, Cottbus quals
Vault. 1. Simone Biles, VT 1 Jesolo AA/TF 2. Oksana Chusovitina, VT 2 Cottbus quals 3. Maegan Chant, VT 2 Cottbus quals
Bars. 1. Becky Downie, British Championships quals 2. Enus Mariani, Jesolo TF/AA 3. Brenna Dowell, Jesolo TF/AA (most improved!)
Skill/composition highlights-
Kyla Ross' backhandsprings on beam look even better now she's grown. Enus Mariani's floor choreography is beyond wonderful. Peyton Ernst's sheep jump was stunning, and surprising given the weakness of the rest of her leaps. Mariya Livchikova's Memmel was out of this world (and her double front and tuck), as was Anastasia Grishina's Onodi. The height of Brenna Dowell's front double pike was crazy, and the ease of it. I am still in love with Simone Biles toe-rises and Gabby Jupp's BHS-LOSO-LOSO. Spectacular to see such clean vaulting from Oksana Chusovitina and I'm really impressed with Maegan Chant's form on hers too, and she can obviously upgrade.
Great week for- Simone Biles- AA, TF, FX, BB and VT champion. Bailie Key- AA, FX, VT and BB champion, and bronze medallist on bars. Anastasia Grishina, flake extraordinaire- UB and BB champion. Gabby Jupp, AA, FX and BB champion, and silver medallist on UB.
Good week for- Maggie Nichols and Peyton Ernst. International competitive debut and although they both fell off beam they both showed some really nice work and coped well. Onwards and upwards. Brenna Dowell who snatched a medal on bars with a surprisingly strong and much improved routine. She's known as an extremely hard worker and it's good to see someone achieve a medal on a weak event through hard graft. Enus Mariani would not have won the AA even if she hadn't fallen, but she did well to take AA silver, bars gold and floor silver.
Bad week for- Vanessa Ferrari who was doing very well until her new upgrade on beam, the tuck full. Vanessa's injury is not thought to be much more than a sprain but it's not known yet if it will impact her inclusion in Euros and other competitions. Such bad luck for this tough veteran. Mai Murakami who had a disaster on 3/4 events. So gutted. She did show some lovely beam work and her quad spin on floor was great. But she lost it everywhere else and although Japan are not deep, they don't have to put her on major teams.. Lexie Priessman and Amelia Hundley who both performed similarly. Not just messy but sluggish too. Lexie came to grief on beam, with errors elsewhere and Amelia had some seriously dodgy landings on floor today. Hopefully they are not going to be resigned to the broken pile just yet. Lexie at least is recovering from an injury, but I don't know what the story is with Amelia- more growth maybe. Also Kyla Ross who has just had her irrelevancy if she doesn't upgrade thrown in her face. I get that she has lost training time and given her growth spurt, significant upgrades in that timeframe would have been tough but they'll have to do something with her routines if she wants to make a major team, especially if she expects to do AA. Huang Huidan's disaster at Cottbus took her out of contention so early that I forgot all about it in the wake of so much gymnastics. Thanks Annie for reminding me, though it's sad to remember. It is the first competition of the season but she doesn't have any kind of track record for consistency. This won't convince anyone that she's any more reliable than Wu Liufang and she could well be left high and dry when major international teams are being chosen. Such a shame she lost it completely as her routines are so beautiful.
Best leotard- Can't choose between Japan's two podium training leos and Italy A's team leo. I also liked Becky Downie EF.
Worst leotard- USA TF. I'm sick of this nauseating colour and not even the pattern redeems it, one of the worst hot pink ones which is very low to sink.
I can't seem to embed anything Jesolo, Cottbus or British Championships..yet anyway, it's either a delay on recent videos or an embed block. So I will link uploaders instead. The excellent Gympower has a ton of yesterday's Jesolo videos and will be uploading event finals there too. Gifwatermark has some of the missed ones, and a different angle on repeated routines. Ninalfee has routines from French Nationals, including Mariya Livchikova's floor. Javier Collados has everything Cottbus, Xoxociara has some Jesolo EF routines and BGTV have all of the British Championships routines. I'm sure people have seen videos around the place, but it's handy to collect uploaders in one place here for convenience.
Who and what did you enjoy most?
Sunday, 3 March 2013
American Cup- updated with more from my brain
What a weekend! I missed Russian Championships quals and AA from forgetting to set my alarm but will be catching up during the week. I blocked out English Championships due to their conflict with American Cup but there are some very interesting videos up- especially bars! Exciting stuff. But first, on to the elite debut and first post-London return of 8 fabulous gymnasts.
Highlights:
Gabby Jupp WOW! I knew she was going to be a treat on beam and floor as I've had my eye on her for quite a while now, but her bars and her confidence were unexpected. You would think she was the seasoned Vanessa Ferrari and not a brand new unknown senior at her first big assignment. She absolutely attacked her beam and bars though never sacrificing finesse or polish. Beautiful lines, fabulous toepoint, astonishing elegance. And SO underscored. The best part of the whole competition was that there were no overscores except one- Ohashi's vault- but there were underscores. Gabby's vault got nearly three tenths below the decent but quite flawed effort of Ohashi's, which was mind boggling. Certainly the dynamics of it were not brilliant; too low and too short a distance travelled. But it was truly beautiful, floaty and light with a great landing. So while it did have deductions built into it, it didn't deserve THAT much compared to vaults with other obvious problems. Her vault knocked her out of medal contention straight away but hopefully she can crank out a DTY in the future when she grows a bit. I can't get enough of her beautiful bars and her gorgeous BHS-LOSO-LOSO on beam which was fresh from the 90's and rightfully earned appreciation from the crowd. Floor was another treat, nice dance with such a lightness to her work and she already has substantial difficulty with her first two passes. She will need to work on her leaps and increase her difficulty, but it's great to see a gymnast excelling at her own pace instead of fighting to beat the code too early. Lovely elegant gymnast who is on her way to excelling outside of the Euros field, and I'm glad to see her gaining a lot of new fans.
Simone Biles I don't think we've ever seen anyone this powerful? Except Daiane Dos Santos whom she absolutely channelled on floor. It's not that we haven't seen these skills before, it's that it's very rare to see someone do them with such ease and extra power. First up, the amanar with a large extra hop. It's improved on last year's explosive effort, it's now getting more height and distance. It gets about the same height as McKayla Maroney's, but she gets more distance. I haven't seen it from enough angles yet to really examine Simone's leg form on entry etc. but I do think her legs are straighter and her hip angle is better than McKayla's, but her foot form is pretty loose with maybe a bit of crossing going on. What is obvious is that a TTY is just around the corner for this girl. Onto bars, where she surprised everyone by catching both of her difficult new releases and her Maloney with ease- skills she fell on over and over in training and warm-ups. Her form looks much better though could still be tightened up and I'm not sold on her Wieler kip. Her dismount is so high above the bar, incredible to watch. She had much less trouble with her beam in training, but it's where she came to grief in the end, on her new layout pass. In a post-meet interview she stated that she was nervous and her legs were buckling a bit. Her face was heartbreaking to see but she came back strong, nailed her incredibly hard dismount and managed to smile widely. Great recovery. And fascinating to see her land her dismount with her chest higher than everyone else with their double pikes.
Floor was where I most excited to see her- and she didn't dissapoint tumbling wise, with an enormous double double, great easy double layout, a very unusual 1 and a half into double pike and lovely twisting. Her floor music has really grown on me, and she sells it very well- nice choreography. Sadly she gave away numerous tenths with every pass on her landings, short on the second and way over on the others- just like Dos Santos who lost plenty of floor titles for the same problem. Hopefully Simone can rein in her power, or else upgrade her passes. All in all a wonderful debut for her, with what looks like a fluke fall. She has definitely made her mark as one to watch in the US.
Upgrades I'd like to see for Simone- Bars: Double double- either tucked (Fabrichnova) or laidout (Ray). Would love to see a video of her doing a triple back into a pit, the only person I would confidently say could nail that. Floor: Triple twisting double back, DLO- punchfront-stag (Atler style!), 1 and a half into full in pike and a triple full. Overkill? If she could do that it would greatly help her landing errors though..Vault: TTY Beam: Chuck the Strug, not working. I'd have her doing straddle leaps and wolf jumps since they're so achievable for her- with a much more convincing straddle split than side split- and for a more difficult one, a switch ring leap- they look much easier to achieve now. More connections, something out of her layout.
Katelyn Ohashi Great to see her hit 4/4, especially after all the doubt surrounding her last year. Her beam was another high point, her layout full was improved on what she showed in training (I'm going to harp on and still advocate it being scrapped though) and the routine flowed really well- although there's incredible difficulty present it never felt like skill-skill. She missed the connection on her lovely Onodi-aerial-aerial-sheep, but still great to watch. Always nice to see her land the more difficult vault totally safely, I'm just hoping her technique will improve on it as it's still quite messy- and undeserving of a 9.1 e-score... Nice to see her back in the hunt for AA though, she really proved herself capable. Bars were a let-down, she leaves herself open for massive deductions on every pirouette but especially the Healy, and it looked like quite a struggle for her to get through the routine. I'd advise cutting it down a bit until she has more of a hold on her skills and better form and precision. As for floor- I love it! Fabulous music, nice choreography. Her tumbling is a little untidy I think but it's solid, her Memmel turn is beautiful and she had the quick twitch reaction to water down her punchfront on the last pass. It will never be amazing or her main strength, but she has definitely improved here. A convincing win, though I would have liked to have seen more fight for it!
Victoria Moors Victoria really paced herself brilliantly for this event, she wasn't looking great at Canadian Nationals and she was having quite a few issues in training but no worries, she had a stellar meet. Decent DTY from her, and looks like something she could easily improve. I don't see her making it into an amanar but she's one who will benefit from its downgrading. Her beam was an utter delight, floaty but so confident. Lovely smooth movements, so fun to watch. There's enormous potential in the routine as she doesn't really connect anything yet, looking forward to seeing it develop this quad. Her bars too have improved, nice and precise and even though she released too early on the dismount it was still great, lovely in the air. Onto the important bit- that floor. Everybody had big expectations for it and Victoria went above and beyond. Kept it to three passes and showed off her dance. Absolutely love the dramatic bit in the middle when the music quietens, and her turn near the corner is just fabulous. I'm running out of adjectives here! She will need another pass to contend for floor medals, and some upgrades but for the moment we should just rejoice at the perfection of this routine. A really confident start for Victoria who is still only 16.
Best routines:
1. Victoria Moors- floor
2. Gabby Jupp- beam
3. Simone Biles- floor (flawed of course- but the potential!)
Boo:
- Underscores. There was, as previously mentioned, only one overscore- a welcome change for American Cup, known for insanely high American scores. Gabby Jupp and Victoria Moors were in comparison to others, screwed a bit. I understand Gabby's vault score to an extent as she had less height than most and little distance, but it was still slightly too low- following the usual trend of scoring more difficult vaults higher in execution (not cool.) Her beam had a three tenth step, but had no business being only at 8.1- when Katelyn's had 8.533 with more errors. Similarly, Victoria's beam execution was too low. And again stories for both gymnasts on bars and floor- especially Victoria's floor, only one tenth higher than Katelyn's execution.
- Simone falling off beam. That was a real 'nooooo!' moment.
- Maegan Chant's debut, hopefully she comes away from this competition with a lot of determination and more confidence.
- The fact that Simone would not have been the leader after three rotations without the fall. Sorry, what?
More thoughts:
- Really surprised to see Vanessa Ferrari push for high difficulty on floor- great double double and full-in to back tuck- one of the fastest connections she's had on that. Amazing, and a great routine. I'd also like to add that her leotard choices are entertaining, not disgusting. She has her own style and she couldn't care less about what the fans think. Good for her.
- I am still not a fan of the new switch ring rule. In my woeful physical gymnastics ignorance it looks easier now, since it's now easier to get your back leg as high or higher than your head. I'm predicting a little surge in these.
- Katelyn Ohashi is struggling to keep up with her difficulty. Either she's at an endurance low point as far as the year goes or it needs to calm down a little- all of her routines look very hard for her, she does not portray anything as easy. This is something that struck me afresh in podium training and the actual meet confirmed it.
- Simone Biles has made a strong claim as USA's number 1 powerhouse. She doesn't have the difficulty of the others (Ebee and Lexie) yet- but more ease, height and better choreography and form.
- I'm really liking the workarounds for not pausing in the corner before passes on floor. They are still cheating the pause but it looks way better and lots of the little dance bits near the corner are pretty dainty. Asuka Teramoto had a very zippy one I thought.
- That thing Chellsie Memmel did- straddled toe-rise from floor (name..?) appeared in two routines. Loving it. Simone Biles also had interesting toe-rises- especially the beam one. It's the little things.
- I liked Jon Horton and Shannon Miller commentating on the first half. Kept it interesting, good chemistry and knowledge was imparted without snark. The summer baby twinsies thing was cute. My second half was commentated by Phillip Boy and Marie-Sophie Hindermann who may have spent the whole time viciously slandering all non-German gymnasts and I would not have noticed.
- The MAG splatfest was a bit heartbreaking. Lots of new upgrades being ambitiously added which will hopefully be smoother later on- and obviously, Danell Leyva won't be sick forever. Poor guy.
- Even with the moaning about the underscoring above, I was really impressed with its general sensibility. No crazy 9.5's handed out for Americans etc. So I will continue not calling it SCAM.
Best leotard: Gabby Jupp. It's not new (none of them were except USA) but it's a classic with great incorporation of the flag.
Video highlights:
And a bonus:
What/who was your highlight? I also really enjoyed Maegan Chant on vault, Asuka Teramoto on floor, bars and beam, Elizabeth Seitz on bars and Vanessa Ferrari on floor, bars and beam but you can't fit everything in!
Edit- Ugh, apologies for my sentence structure. It's really gone downhill, I think I'm too tired when writing posts. I was much better at formal writing such as essays but I'm still relatively new to blogging...err yeah, less than a year so that still counts.
Highlights:
Gabby Jupp WOW! I knew she was going to be a treat on beam and floor as I've had my eye on her for quite a while now, but her bars and her confidence were unexpected. You would think she was the seasoned Vanessa Ferrari and not a brand new unknown senior at her first big assignment. She absolutely attacked her beam and bars though never sacrificing finesse or polish. Beautiful lines, fabulous toepoint, astonishing elegance. And SO underscored. The best part of the whole competition was that there were no overscores except one- Ohashi's vault- but there were underscores. Gabby's vault got nearly three tenths below the decent but quite flawed effort of Ohashi's, which was mind boggling. Certainly the dynamics of it were not brilliant; too low and too short a distance travelled. But it was truly beautiful, floaty and light with a great landing. So while it did have deductions built into it, it didn't deserve THAT much compared to vaults with other obvious problems. Her vault knocked her out of medal contention straight away but hopefully she can crank out a DTY in the future when she grows a bit. I can't get enough of her beautiful bars and her gorgeous BHS-LOSO-LOSO on beam which was fresh from the 90's and rightfully earned appreciation from the crowd. Floor was another treat, nice dance with such a lightness to her work and she already has substantial difficulty with her first two passes. She will need to work on her leaps and increase her difficulty, but it's great to see a gymnast excelling at her own pace instead of fighting to beat the code too early. Lovely elegant gymnast who is on her way to excelling outside of the Euros field, and I'm glad to see her gaining a lot of new fans.
Simone Biles I don't think we've ever seen anyone this powerful? Except Daiane Dos Santos whom she absolutely channelled on floor. It's not that we haven't seen these skills before, it's that it's very rare to see someone do them with such ease and extra power. First up, the amanar with a large extra hop. It's improved on last year's explosive effort, it's now getting more height and distance. It gets about the same height as McKayla Maroney's, but she gets more distance. I haven't seen it from enough angles yet to really examine Simone's leg form on entry etc. but I do think her legs are straighter and her hip angle is better than McKayla's, but her foot form is pretty loose with maybe a bit of crossing going on. What is obvious is that a TTY is just around the corner for this girl. Onto bars, where she surprised everyone by catching both of her difficult new releases and her Maloney with ease- skills she fell on over and over in training and warm-ups. Her form looks much better though could still be tightened up and I'm not sold on her Wieler kip. Her dismount is so high above the bar, incredible to watch. She had much less trouble with her beam in training, but it's where she came to grief in the end, on her new layout pass. In a post-meet interview she stated that she was nervous and her legs were buckling a bit. Her face was heartbreaking to see but she came back strong, nailed her incredibly hard dismount and managed to smile widely. Great recovery. And fascinating to see her land her dismount with her chest higher than everyone else with their double pikes.
Floor was where I most excited to see her- and she didn't dissapoint tumbling wise, with an enormous double double, great easy double layout, a very unusual 1 and a half into double pike and lovely twisting. Her floor music has really grown on me, and she sells it very well- nice choreography. Sadly she gave away numerous tenths with every pass on her landings, short on the second and way over on the others- just like Dos Santos who lost plenty of floor titles for the same problem. Hopefully Simone can rein in her power, or else upgrade her passes. All in all a wonderful debut for her, with what looks like a fluke fall. She has definitely made her mark as one to watch in the US.
Upgrades I'd like to see for Simone- Bars: Double double- either tucked (Fabrichnova) or laidout (Ray). Would love to see a video of her doing a triple back into a pit, the only person I would confidently say could nail that. Floor: Triple twisting double back, DLO- punchfront-stag (Atler style!), 1 and a half into full in pike and a triple full. Overkill? If she could do that it would greatly help her landing errors though..Vault: TTY Beam: Chuck the Strug, not working. I'd have her doing straddle leaps and wolf jumps since they're so achievable for her- with a much more convincing straddle split than side split- and for a more difficult one, a switch ring leap- they look much easier to achieve now. More connections, something out of her layout.
Katelyn Ohashi Great to see her hit 4/4, especially after all the doubt surrounding her last year. Her beam was another high point, her layout full was improved on what she showed in training (I'm going to harp on and still advocate it being scrapped though) and the routine flowed really well- although there's incredible difficulty present it never felt like skill-skill. She missed the connection on her lovely Onodi-aerial-aerial-sheep, but still great to watch. Always nice to see her land the more difficult vault totally safely, I'm just hoping her technique will improve on it as it's still quite messy- and undeserving of a 9.1 e-score... Nice to see her back in the hunt for AA though, she really proved herself capable. Bars were a let-down, she leaves herself open for massive deductions on every pirouette but especially the Healy, and it looked like quite a struggle for her to get through the routine. I'd advise cutting it down a bit until she has more of a hold on her skills and better form and precision. As for floor- I love it! Fabulous music, nice choreography. Her tumbling is a little untidy I think but it's solid, her Memmel turn is beautiful and she had the quick twitch reaction to water down her punchfront on the last pass. It will never be amazing or her main strength, but she has definitely improved here. A convincing win, though I would have liked to have seen more fight for it!
Victoria Moors Victoria really paced herself brilliantly for this event, she wasn't looking great at Canadian Nationals and she was having quite a few issues in training but no worries, she had a stellar meet. Decent DTY from her, and looks like something she could easily improve. I don't see her making it into an amanar but she's one who will benefit from its downgrading. Her beam was an utter delight, floaty but so confident. Lovely smooth movements, so fun to watch. There's enormous potential in the routine as she doesn't really connect anything yet, looking forward to seeing it develop this quad. Her bars too have improved, nice and precise and even though she released too early on the dismount it was still great, lovely in the air. Onto the important bit- that floor. Everybody had big expectations for it and Victoria went above and beyond. Kept it to three passes and showed off her dance. Absolutely love the dramatic bit in the middle when the music quietens, and her turn near the corner is just fabulous. I'm running out of adjectives here! She will need another pass to contend for floor medals, and some upgrades but for the moment we should just rejoice at the perfection of this routine. A really confident start for Victoria who is still only 16.
Best routines:
1. Victoria Moors- floor
2. Gabby Jupp- beam
3. Simone Biles- floor (flawed of course- but the potential!)
Boo:
- Underscores. There was, as previously mentioned, only one overscore- a welcome change for American Cup, known for insanely high American scores. Gabby Jupp and Victoria Moors were in comparison to others, screwed a bit. I understand Gabby's vault score to an extent as she had less height than most and little distance, but it was still slightly too low- following the usual trend of scoring more difficult vaults higher in execution (not cool.) Her beam had a three tenth step, but had no business being only at 8.1- when Katelyn's had 8.533 with more errors. Similarly, Victoria's beam execution was too low. And again stories for both gymnasts on bars and floor- especially Victoria's floor, only one tenth higher than Katelyn's execution.
- Simone falling off beam. That was a real 'nooooo!' moment.
- Maegan Chant's debut, hopefully she comes away from this competition with a lot of determination and more confidence.
- The fact that Simone would not have been the leader after three rotations without the fall. Sorry, what?
More thoughts:
- Really surprised to see Vanessa Ferrari push for high difficulty on floor- great double double and full-in to back tuck- one of the fastest connections she's had on that. Amazing, and a great routine. I'd also like to add that her leotard choices are entertaining, not disgusting. She has her own style and she couldn't care less about what the fans think. Good for her.
- I am still not a fan of the new switch ring rule. In my woeful physical gymnastics ignorance it looks easier now, since it's now easier to get your back leg as high or higher than your head. I'm predicting a little surge in these.
- Katelyn Ohashi is struggling to keep up with her difficulty. Either she's at an endurance low point as far as the year goes or it needs to calm down a little- all of her routines look very hard for her, she does not portray anything as easy. This is something that struck me afresh in podium training and the actual meet confirmed it.
- Simone Biles has made a strong claim as USA's number 1 powerhouse. She doesn't have the difficulty of the others (Ebee and Lexie) yet- but more ease, height and better choreography and form.
- I'm really liking the workarounds for not pausing in the corner before passes on floor. They are still cheating the pause but it looks way better and lots of the little dance bits near the corner are pretty dainty. Asuka Teramoto had a very zippy one I thought.
- That thing Chellsie Memmel did- straddled toe-rise from floor (name..?) appeared in two routines. Loving it. Simone Biles also had interesting toe-rises- especially the beam one. It's the little things.
- I liked Jon Horton and Shannon Miller commentating on the first half. Kept it interesting, good chemistry and knowledge was imparted without snark. The summer baby twinsies thing was cute. My second half was commentated by Phillip Boy and Marie-Sophie Hindermann who may have spent the whole time viciously slandering all non-German gymnasts and I would not have noticed.
- The MAG splatfest was a bit heartbreaking. Lots of new upgrades being ambitiously added which will hopefully be smoother later on- and obviously, Danell Leyva won't be sick forever. Poor guy.
- Even with the moaning about the underscoring above, I was really impressed with its general sensibility. No crazy 9.5's handed out for Americans etc. So I will continue not calling it SCAM.
Best leotard: Gabby Jupp. It's not new (none of them were except USA) but it's a classic with great incorporation of the flag.
Video highlights:
And a bonus:
What/who was your highlight? I also really enjoyed Maegan Chant on vault, Asuka Teramoto on floor, bars and beam, Elizabeth Seitz on bars and Vanessa Ferrari on floor, bars and beam but you can't fit everything in!
Edit- Ugh, apologies for my sentence structure. It's really gone downhill, I think I'm too tired when writing posts. I was much better at formal writing such as essays but I'm still relatively new to blogging...err yeah, less than a year so that still counts.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
SCAM podium training live! Update- 2nd session videos
I hope everyone who can is already watching this! EDIT- Video has been changed to archive footage of the whole thing. MOAR EDIT- Couch Gymnast just tweeted a very interesting fact from Simone's interview- she is training triple yurchenkos! I knew she was well capable but WOW!!!
Thoughts so far:
(It's only showing Americans, currently on first event- beam)
Kyla is soooo solid on beam. It looks like a carbon copy of her London routine. That sheep jump would not get credit now outside of US, same for the switch ring leap. But so great to see her like this! She is definitely taller, looks like she'll be pushing 5'4 before long. I'm wondering the possibility of her exhibitioning bars too? Don't forget she can exhibition all 4 events, like Gabby last year.
Simone is steady, though not as much as Kyla suprisingly. Great attack on her punchfront and pike back. She is pretty much doing her 2012 routine too, with...dun dun dun..a full in beam dismount! I have no idea what that does to her SV, I'm guessing good things obviously. She looks more confident and her cossack turn which I think now has more rotations than the single one she was doing last year looks amazing.
Katelyn looks much better than she did at the WOGA classic. Her connections look more fluid, and crediting them won't be a joke, though still a little generous. That series looks like she will be absolutely nailing it without a doubt soon enough- the Onodi, aerial, aerial, Sheep one. The layout full is still very piked though she's now landing it very well. Worth making it tucked all the same, I don't see her ever getting it to a creditable laidout position (except in the US.) She looks very confident. Will be interesting to see what she pulls out for vault, that is the dealbreaker now.
According to live hits Elizabeth Seitz is doing a Geinger, not a Def. She has not done it since London I believe as the Geinger was surfacing in its place in other competitions post London. If she doesn't fling it on Saturday then the bronze I had already pretty much awarded her looks under threat. All eyes on what Asuka Teramoto will bring. Vanessa Ferrari is also a good bet for bronze, but I don't think she will be throwing full difficulty here at all. She's in it for the money, and nothing wrong with that. I relish any chance to see her perform.
Gabby Jupp has a full twisting double layout bars dismount! Excellent stuff.
Update: I think they are at least seeing if Kyla can do more than beam in podium training..she is training floor. Some nice double backs with too much power. She's a giant now, you can tell even by the amount of space her backhandsprings on floor take up. Taller than me at least. (Note: I am 5'3) Loooads of repetitions of her leap series. The switch ring leap looks to have the required 90 degree angle. The second leap is giving her trouble, she's short of 180 degrees on it. Simone had some crazy fast tumbles, a sky-high double layout and a lovely full in. I missed others people were talking about..a 1 and a half into double pike and a possible 3.5 twist (???). She definitely threw a double double apparently, yay! I missed it. On rewatching, all of these things happened- couldn't swear to the 3.5 twist but it was facing the right way and did not look like a 2.5. WOW. The floor rotation was really short. I saw Katelyn do a Memmel turn and that was it. Hmmmm. Gabby has a double turn on beam. Elizabeth Seitz falling all over the place on beam, damn.
Moving onto vault. Kyla is doing vault timers. So that's 3/3 events being trained so far. Her heel is wrapped. Okay, nobody doing anything other than timers, they're saving the hard pounding. Simone's timers are enormous, so looking forward to seeing her on Saturday. Katelyn's seemed fine. Gabby looks nice and sharp on floor. A contender for bronze??? The camera has cut away from showing bars, I really wanted to see Asuka doing something other than chalk! Victoria having issues on beam, and crashed a DTY earlier.
Oooo, bars! Katelyn and Simone absolutely nailing handstands, especially Simone, but both deteriorated as the repetitions went on. Kyla looking well, messy shap 1/2 but it did improve. She didn't push herself and only did half routines. Her Pak looks a little jarring, it doesn't flow as well as it did. Gorgeous lines, and fabulous double layout dismount. Simone had issues, fell on a Shap and then came back and stormed every Shap since with no chance of falling short. She fell on a release twice, fairly sure it's new so maybe she won't include it in her routine yet. Nice and sharp, her form looks better too. Her dismount was way above the bar and looks like she could do a double double tucked or laidout in her sleep, lands completely upright as if she was doing a flyaway. Nice crisp turns. Katelyn looks zippier on bars, though she was a little sluggish towards the end. Her legs are still coming apart on (late) turns but she seemed more confident. She does that thing I hate that WOGA always do before stalders, where their back completely bends first- I don't know what you call that, but Bross was a big offender. It's still a routine with lots of little flaws, I would agree with the concensus that it looks too much for her. I didn't see a totally wonky Healy, but that could just be the angle I'm watching at. Hard to tell who was strongest on bars really...
SUMMARY
So, in a very interesting and awesome turn, Kyla is training all 4 events! This to me does not mean the injury story is a con, but that it was impacting her training so they've lessened the pressure on her by making her the exhibition. So she can do as much as she wants. I think she is recovered, just that the story is correct- it affected her training for a few weeks and ability to definitely have all 4 events down. Looks like she will anyway, but I hope she does at least 2 events.
Simone has upgrades! A full in off beam, a double double on floor, a 1.5 to double pike and what I'd swear is a 3.5 twist, two new bars releases and a transition and an acro line on beam with a layout- very Chinese. Her bars were not brilliant for her though, with some falls. Hopefully she will just get that out of her system now and be perfect on Saturday. Her bars thankfully look cleaner, her beam is crisper, her floor has fantastic looking upgrades and her vault will no doubt raise the roof. No idea what vault Katelyn will bring since they all just did timers. Kyla looks capable of bringing her London routines, I don't think we will see any upgrades from her though. But seeing her at all will be a treat. Katelyn looks improved from WOGA classic, much sharper. Her bars still have numerous issues but I'n not sure if the glaring one, the Healy, is still present and they look a little tiring for her. Beam is very snappy, she looks much more on but the layout full still needs to be binned. Utterly fabulous beam routine but all in all, I'm not convinced she can win. She will need more an FTY and some unfair scoring or mistakes to do that.
Sadly I didn't see near enough of the other competitors. Great reports about Gabby Jupp and Maegan Chant, as well as Vanessa Ferrari. Elizabeth and Victoria both displayed numerous issues, and Elizabeth will more than likely not throw the Def. Not much said about Asuka so I can't really judge where she's at. The fight for bronze will be equally as interesting as the fight for gold.
VIDEO now is the archive footage. The girls are wearing Under Armour leos, who have secured a contract with USAG until 2020. Personally I'd prefer Adidas (actual Adidas, not GK swirls..), with a mixture of old school and newer type leos. They are perfection. So these leos are nothing to write home about but Alicia has worn some brilliant ones so there is plenty of hope yet.
UPDATE- Some videos from the second podium training session. Much nicer leos, love the colour of them and the style. This one has proper floor and vaults, a wise move to save it and spread the four events.
SPOILER- Katelyn has her DTY back and Kyla is still using her old music. I did not notice the head fling plaguing it so maybe she either did not do all of the choreography or has mixed it up a bit. Katelyn's DTY has winner written all over it. Her bars will be leniently dealt with, her beam is ginormous, she has an acceptable vault now and her floor is half decent. Simone will need to be more on than she showed today to beat her, but since I don't know her start values or indeed Katelyn's except her vault and beam it's really hard to know who has what d-score advantage.
Kyla had a great upright DTY, noticeably better than Katelyn's, as would be expected. She seems to have lost form a bit on it though, and I noticed the same about her bars...maybe she is just not pushing herself to the limit, understandable. It could be her height either messing things up a bit. I wonder what all of those back layout passes will transform into! If not now then later on in the year. Simone's vault is as huge as ever, though I'd love if she tightened up her feet a bit.
Simone and Katelyn both have new floor routines. There's a comment under Katelyn's saying it's a Eurovision song. Hmm, can't have been a great one or I'd know it. Edit- It's Azerbaijan 2009. Fun fact- two other Americans currently (well, 2012..) have Eurovision floor music- Jordyn Wieber with Ukraine's 2004 entry and Alexis Buecler with Ukraine's 2007 entry. The former was a winner and the second did very well. The second one has to be heard to be believed- there are lots of Eurovision songs that push the weird boat out but nobody has ever topped this, it's insane! And awesome.
Moving on...I like the routines of both girls. I think Simone's old music may have suited her style better, but a bit early to really confirm that. GREAT tumbling, double double, double layout..so easy for her. It would be fantastic if she can plant those landings in competition. I wonder if she'll sneak a jump or two in? They can still be done, and she has crazy power. She didn't show all of her passes from earlier, but that is just one routine, so who knows. Katelyn's tumbling is a bit sloppy looking, hopefully she can get it more polished. Still a very good routine though, loving the last combination pass though it spells RISK all over it.
Thoughts so far:
(It's only showing Americans, currently on first event- beam)
Kyla is soooo solid on beam. It looks like a carbon copy of her London routine. That sheep jump would not get credit now outside of US, same for the switch ring leap. But so great to see her like this! She is definitely taller, looks like she'll be pushing 5'4 before long. I'm wondering the possibility of her exhibitioning bars too? Don't forget she can exhibition all 4 events, like Gabby last year.
Simone is steady, though not as much as Kyla suprisingly. Great attack on her punchfront and pike back. She is pretty much doing her 2012 routine too, with...dun dun dun..a full in beam dismount! I have no idea what that does to her SV, I'm guessing good things obviously. She looks more confident and her cossack turn which I think now has more rotations than the single one she was doing last year looks amazing.
Katelyn looks much better than she did at the WOGA classic. Her connections look more fluid, and crediting them won't be a joke, though still a little generous. That series looks like she will be absolutely nailing it without a doubt soon enough- the Onodi, aerial, aerial, Sheep one. The layout full is still very piked though she's now landing it very well. Worth making it tucked all the same, I don't see her ever getting it to a creditable laidout position (except in the US.) She looks very confident. Will be interesting to see what she pulls out for vault, that is the dealbreaker now.
According to live hits Elizabeth Seitz is doing a Geinger, not a Def. She has not done it since London I believe as the Geinger was surfacing in its place in other competitions post London. If she doesn't fling it on Saturday then the bronze I had already pretty much awarded her looks under threat. All eyes on what Asuka Teramoto will bring. Vanessa Ferrari is also a good bet for bronze, but I don't think she will be throwing full difficulty here at all. She's in it for the money, and nothing wrong with that. I relish any chance to see her perform.
Gabby Jupp has a full twisting double layout bars dismount! Excellent stuff.
Update: I think they are at least seeing if Kyla can do more than beam in podium training..she is training floor. Some nice double backs with too much power. She's a giant now, you can tell even by the amount of space her backhandsprings on floor take up. Taller than me at least. (Note: I am 5'3) Loooads of repetitions of her leap series. The switch ring leap looks to have the required 90 degree angle. The second leap is giving her trouble, she's short of 180 degrees on it. Simone had some crazy fast tumbles, a sky-high double layout and a lovely full in. I missed others people were talking about..a 1 and a half into double pike and a possible 3.5 twist (???). She definitely threw a double double apparently, yay! I missed it. On rewatching, all of these things happened- couldn't swear to the 3.5 twist but it was facing the right way and did not look like a 2.5. WOW. The floor rotation was really short. I saw Katelyn do a Memmel turn and that was it. Hmmmm. Gabby has a double turn on beam. Elizabeth Seitz falling all over the place on beam, damn.
Moving onto vault. Kyla is doing vault timers. So that's 3/3 events being trained so far. Her heel is wrapped. Okay, nobody doing anything other than timers, they're saving the hard pounding. Simone's timers are enormous, so looking forward to seeing her on Saturday. Katelyn's seemed fine. Gabby looks nice and sharp on floor. A contender for bronze??? The camera has cut away from showing bars, I really wanted to see Asuka doing something other than chalk! Victoria having issues on beam, and crashed a DTY earlier.
Oooo, bars! Katelyn and Simone absolutely nailing handstands, especially Simone, but both deteriorated as the repetitions went on. Kyla looking well, messy shap 1/2 but it did improve. She didn't push herself and only did half routines. Her Pak looks a little jarring, it doesn't flow as well as it did. Gorgeous lines, and fabulous double layout dismount. Simone had issues, fell on a Shap and then came back and stormed every Shap since with no chance of falling short. She fell on a release twice, fairly sure it's new so maybe she won't include it in her routine yet. Nice and sharp, her form looks better too. Her dismount was way above the bar and looks like she could do a double double tucked or laidout in her sleep, lands completely upright as if she was doing a flyaway. Nice crisp turns. Katelyn looks zippier on bars, though she was a little sluggish towards the end. Her legs are still coming apart on (late) turns but she seemed more confident. She does that thing I hate that WOGA always do before stalders, where their back completely bends first- I don't know what you call that, but Bross was a big offender. It's still a routine with lots of little flaws, I would agree with the concensus that it looks too much for her. I didn't see a totally wonky Healy, but that could just be the angle I'm watching at. Hard to tell who was strongest on bars really...
SUMMARY
So, in a very interesting and awesome turn, Kyla is training all 4 events! This to me does not mean the injury story is a con, but that it was impacting her training so they've lessened the pressure on her by making her the exhibition. So she can do as much as she wants. I think she is recovered, just that the story is correct- it affected her training for a few weeks and ability to definitely have all 4 events down. Looks like she will anyway, but I hope she does at least 2 events.
Simone has upgrades! A full in off beam, a double double on floor, a 1.5 to double pike and what I'd swear is a 3.5 twist, two new bars releases and a transition and an acro line on beam with a layout- very Chinese. Her bars were not brilliant for her though, with some falls. Hopefully she will just get that out of her system now and be perfect on Saturday. Her bars thankfully look cleaner, her beam is crisper, her floor has fantastic looking upgrades and her vault will no doubt raise the roof. No idea what vault Katelyn will bring since they all just did timers. Kyla looks capable of bringing her London routines, I don't think we will see any upgrades from her though. But seeing her at all will be a treat. Katelyn looks improved from WOGA classic, much sharper. Her bars still have numerous issues but I'n not sure if the glaring one, the Healy, is still present and they look a little tiring for her. Beam is very snappy, she looks much more on but the layout full still needs to be binned. Utterly fabulous beam routine but all in all, I'm not convinced she can win. She will need more an FTY and some unfair scoring or mistakes to do that.
Sadly I didn't see near enough of the other competitors. Great reports about Gabby Jupp and Maegan Chant, as well as Vanessa Ferrari. Elizabeth and Victoria both displayed numerous issues, and Elizabeth will more than likely not throw the Def. Not much said about Asuka so I can't really judge where she's at. The fight for bronze will be equally as interesting as the fight for gold.
VIDEO now is the archive footage. The girls are wearing Under Armour leos, who have secured a contract with USAG until 2020. Personally I'd prefer Adidas (actual Adidas, not GK swirls..), with a mixture of old school and newer type leos. They are perfection. So these leos are nothing to write home about but Alicia has worn some brilliant ones so there is plenty of hope yet.
UPDATE- Some videos from the second podium training session. Much nicer leos, love the colour of them and the style. This one has proper floor and vaults, a wise move to save it and spread the four events.
SPOILER- Katelyn has her DTY back and Kyla is still using her old music. I did not notice the head fling plaguing it so maybe she either did not do all of the choreography or has mixed it up a bit. Katelyn's DTY has winner written all over it. Her bars will be leniently dealt with, her beam is ginormous, she has an acceptable vault now and her floor is half decent. Simone will need to be more on than she showed today to beat her, but since I don't know her start values or indeed Katelyn's except her vault and beam it's really hard to know who has what d-score advantage.
Kyla had a great upright DTY, noticeably better than Katelyn's, as would be expected. She seems to have lost form a bit on it though, and I noticed the same about her bars...maybe she is just not pushing herself to the limit, understandable. It could be her height either messing things up a bit. I wonder what all of those back layout passes will transform into! If not now then later on in the year. Simone's vault is as huge as ever, though I'd love if she tightened up her feet a bit.
Simone and Katelyn both have new floor routines. There's a comment under Katelyn's saying it's a Eurovision song. Hmm, can't have been a great one or I'd know it. Edit- It's Azerbaijan 2009. Fun fact- two other Americans currently (well, 2012..) have Eurovision floor music- Jordyn Wieber with Ukraine's 2004 entry and Alexis Buecler with Ukraine's 2007 entry. The former was a winner and the second did very well. The second one has to be heard to be believed- there are lots of Eurovision songs that push the weird boat out but nobody has ever topped this, it's insane! And awesome.
Moving on...I like the routines of both girls. I think Simone's old music may have suited her style better, but a bit early to really confirm that. GREAT tumbling, double double, double layout..so easy for her. It would be fantastic if she can plant those landings in competition. I wonder if she'll sneak a jump or two in? They can still be done, and she has crazy power. She didn't show all of her passes from earlier, but that is just one routine, so who knows. Katelyn's tumbling is a bit sloppy looking, hopefully she can get it more polished. Still a very good routine though, loving the last combination pass though it spells RISK all over it.
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
The One to Watch
I have done a mini-series showcasing the best upcoming seniors of this quad. You can find the links to each New Kids on the Block post here. It's worth noting that the China one is a bit redundant, as further competitions and insight has shown that there are brighter stars in their future. I'll redo it. You can also find a not-totally-comprehensive-but-including-everyone-of-consequence list of upcoming seniors here. As you can see, we have just had 21 girls (at least) turn senior! Exciting stuff, and Euros will be very interesting to see their upgrades and potential for worlds. And of course, the competitions USA, China etc. will be at. But now to pinpoint the one girl from each country who I think will be the star. It's tough! At least I discovered page breaks. If the routines have falls, it's either a) the only routine on youtube or b) a fluke but by far the most recent routine or c) doesn't really affect how much amazing potential there is in the rest of the routine.
USA
Bailie Key
This was very difficult, not to push Simone Biles, Amelia Hundley and Lexie Priessman out of the way, but to disregard Nia Dennis. The reason why the first three did not get a look in is because they are currently very weak and exhibiting poor form on bars and beam. Having two dodgy events will not get you my crown. As for Nia, I think Bailie has the greater potential. Now, moving onto Bailie herself. She trains at Texas Dreams and will turn senior in 2015.
LOOK AT IT! And she can get her front leg higher. Disregarding the fact that this will be a victim of the new switch ring leap rule, this is awesome, and especially from an American gymnast. Bailie's greatest assets are her form and flexibility. Her bars exhibit fabulous form (minus her tendency to flex her feet on transitions), beautiful releases, precise and beautiful bodyline and a great dismount. She tends to clear the bar like Nastia unfortunately, but as she grows taller hopefully technique can be bettered on that. Upgrades include a Shaposh 1/2, Downie AND Church! Wow! All in all, her bars are like golddust, and world class long before she's senior. Beam is another delight, showcasing her lines and extension in her acro skills, a beautiful twisting 2.5 dismount, the aforementioned switch ring leap and a tour jete 1/2 actually worthy of credit. Her upgrades here include an Arabian. She looks well capable of an Onodi or Kotchetkova, her whole routine looks easy for her. Side somi has to go, she's too good for that ugly thing!
USA
Bailie Key
| Copyright- Jessica Frankl |
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| Copyright- USAG- USA Gymnastics |
Monday, 22 October 2012
2013 Ones To Watch: Part 1
Following on from my posts on upcoming seniors in the new quad and the list of most notable juniors in their senior year (Links to posts on all countries/regions here and non-exhaustive list of senior year here), I want to focus on those that will turn senior next year, and also current seniors who haven't yet had their chance to really shine. This part will be on 2013 seniors, second part will be on the latter category. NOTE: Competitions are not exhaustive in the case of juniors from non-English speaking countries, because it's much harder to find results not in my language! Videos of all of the below are in my first link. Also easily found on youtube. (Read: I am way too lazy to embed them all again).
2013 Seniors- Ones to Watch
Have to start with the two with the most hype and the greatest sense of 'if only x was born a bit earlier'.
Katelyn Ohashi, USA
Katelyn Ohashi created a storm around her when she unleashed her monster beam set in 2010. She also has fantastic bars, an area USA still need improvement on.
Trains at: WOGA, Texas
Competitions: US Classic 2009-2012, Visa Nationals 2009-2012, Pacific Rim Championships 2012, Jesolo 2011-2012
Notable Achievements: 2011 Junior National Champion, 2012 Pacific Rim All-around Champion, 2012 Pacific Rim Beam, Floor and Bars Champion, 2012 Junior National Champion on bars, silver beam and floor, 2011 Champion on bars, beam, floor. Katelyn has won the national bars title 3 years in a row.
Best event(s): Bars and beam
Worst event(s): Vault
Needs to: Fix her vault. Has had a scary time with DTY's this year, needs to either get it back safely or a similar difficulty vault to stay as a strong all-arounder. Katelyn showed signs of overtraining at Nationals, so should possibly hold back on upgrades for the moment.
Weak point: Power a bit lacking
All-around potential? Pretty high. Huge with a fixed vault.
Event final potential: Gold on beam and bars
Why the fuss? As well as being a potentially very strong all-arounder, Katelyn has gold medal world/Olympic titles written all over her bars and beam.
Lexie Priessman, USA
Lexie barely falls short of being a 2012 senior. She has created a stir for being a powerhouse in the style of Raisman and Wieber- she has an amanar and a double double on floor.
Trains at: CGA, Cincinnatti
Competitions: US Classic 2009-2012, Visa Nationals 2009-2012, Nastia Liukin Supergirl Cup 2010, Japan Junior International 2011, Pacific Rim Championships 2012, Jesolo 2011-2012
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior National Champion, 2012 Junior National Champion on floor, second on vault and bars, 2012 Pacific Rim vault champion, second all-around, 2012 US Classic floor champion, 2011 Japan Junior International Champion, 2010 Supergirl Cup Champion
Best event(s): Vault and floor
Worst event(s): Beam
Needs to: Work big-time on her form, it shows up most noticeably on beam. Presentation and choreography a bit all over the place on floor too. Get a second vault.
Weak point: Form, and flexibility to a lesser extent.
All-around potential? Massive.
Event final potential? Vault medallist with a second vault. High on floor.
Why the fuss? This girl is a powerhouse and with a consistent decent beam could blindside the rest of the competition.
Simone Biles, USA
With a phenomenal amanar under her belt, as well as a difficult floor, Simone looks like a very valuable gymnast for USA's collection.
Trains at: Bannon's Gymnastix
Competitions: US Classic 2011-2012, Visa Nationals 2011-2012
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior National Champion on vault, 3rd place in the all-around, 2012 US Classic Champion, 2012 US Classic Champion on vault
Best event(s): Vault
Worst event(s): Bars
Needs to: Upgrade her floor, a very strong event for her already. She could be a great all-arounder with a decent bars and beam- they need a lot of work. Needs to get and upgrade a second vault, she has plenty of power.
Weak point: In general, not great on non-power events. Lack of finesse.
All-around potential: Yes, not the top one or two but definitely she could be a good one.
Event final potential? Gold on vault, could qualify to floor
Why the fuss? Her amanar is so powerful that she is one of two girls in the world capable of doing a TTY. (Prize for guessing the other). She could quite easily medal in vault, has a strong energetic floor that's valuable and might be able to be a valuable all-arounder too.
Noemi Makra, HUN
Noemi is the great hope of Hungary, and certainly has what it takes to become a great all-arounder, she is the full package gymnast.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 Eva Sanyo Memorial, 2011 EYOF, 2010 Top Gym
Notable Achievements: 2011 EYOF champion on bars, highest all-around total at Eva Sanyo, qualified 10th to all-around finals at Euros 2012, and qualified to vault event finals.
Best event(s): Floor, bars
Worst event(s): Only because it lacks difficulty so much- vault
Needs to: UPGRADE. Noemi is the full package, everything she does is such a high standard. She just needs more difficulty.
Weak point: Lack of difficulty.
All-around potential: Certainly, especially at Euros. She could make quite a mark at Worlds and maybe even Olympics if she brings her difficulty up to scratch.
Event final potential: Hard to tell, her difficulty is too low at this stage.
Why the fuss? Such great execution, and she does not have a weak event. As I say so many times here, with more difficulty she is a major contender. Remarkable considering she is from outside the top 4.
Gabby Jupp, GBR
Gabby heralds the exciting new age of British gymnastics. She is strong and consistent, showing a nice mix of power and execution.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 British Championships, 2012 English Championships, 2011 Gymnix, 2011 British Championships, 2011 Junior France/Great Britain, 2010 Espoir (Hopes)
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior European third on floor, fifth in all-around, 2012 Junior British Champion, 2012 Junior British Champion on bars, 3rd on vault, 2012 English Champion, 2012 English Champion on vault, beam and floor, 2011 Junior British Champion on beam, 2nd all-around, floor and vault, 2010 Espoir Champion on beam, third on floor
Best event(s): Beam and floor
Worst event(s): Bars
Needs to: Clean up her bars and upgrade across the board.
Weak point: I don't really see one besides some issues on bars.
All-around potential: Yes, she could quite easily go one better than Rebecca Tunney and really challenge the top 4 countries. May have to move gyms to really get her difficulty up to scratch, but she screams potential.
Event final potential: Beam medallist, could qualify to floor
Why the fuss? Major player on beam and floor where she has already beat off strong competition before. A mistake cost her a medal in Euros this year on beam however. With upgrades, she is a force to be reckoned with.
Evgeniya Shelgunova, RUS
Russia arguably have 3 stronger juniors in the works, but Evgeniya is a strong, steady worker who could contribute quite a lot, and not just in team situations.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2011 Jesolo, 2011 Spartakaide, 2011 Top Gym
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2nd all-around, 3rd bars. Qualified to 3 event finals. Spartakaide 2011- 5 golds, 2011 Top Gym Champion, 2nd on vault, 2011 EYOF, 3rd on floor
Best event(s): Hmm. Floor and beam
Worst event(s): Bars
Needs to: Clean up her form and execution. She has the consistency and is building on difficulty, but she's a bit sloppy form-wise.
Weak point: Form
All-around potential: Yes, though I do see her being eclipsed not only by current Russian seniors continuing but also by 2014 and 2015 seniors.
Event final potential: Possibly on vault with a second one, and maybe floor finalist.
Why the fuss? Evegeniya is consistent and has decent difficulty. She could well become the workhorse team figure and possibly shine in her own right too.
Stefania Stanila, ROM
Stefania is a welcome addition next year to the much depleted Romanian senior rankings.Not the strongest junior, but a valuable team member.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 Cholet, 2012 Jesolo, 2011 Top Gym,
Notable Achievements: Junior European Championships, 2nd on vault, 2012 Cholet Champion, 2011 Top Gym, 3rd on floor
Best events: Floor, vault
Worst event: Bars
Needs to: Work on her consistency and form and get all of her events up to a higher standard.
Weak point: Consistency
All-around potential: Low. She will be outranked by other juniors and continuing seniors.
Event Final potential: Also low. Stefania's greatest asset is being strong in a team situation.
Why the fuss? Arguably Romania's strongest 2013 senior, but will have quite a lot of work to do to keep up with the rest into 2016. Stefania has a lot of potential and should be able to help her team quite a bit.
Elisa Meneghini, ITA
Elisa impressed at Euros this year and shows huge potential. Definitely one of the brightest stars of Italy's future.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 Serie A, 2012 Italian Nationals, 2011 Jesolo, 2011 EYOF, 2011 TAM
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior European Championships, 4th all-around (with a fall), 3rd on beam. Elisa was the only one to qualify to all 4 event finals. 2012 Italian Nationals, 2nd on beam, 3rd all-around
Best events: Beam, floor
Worst event: Vault, purely for lack of difficulty
Needs to: Upgrade across the board, and improve her consistency. She would have medalled in the AA at Euros had she not fallen off beam, and would have done much better in bars finals without the fall there. Needs to work on her toepoint.
Weak point: Slight consistency issue, and toepoint.
All-around potential: Could be a big threat at worlds. No real weak event, and usually very steady.
Event final potential: Has shown herself to be exceptional on pretty much all events. Could continue qualifying to all. Medals possible on beam and maybe bars.
Why the fuss? Such a high place in a strong AA with a fall, and no weak event! Needs more difficulty and better extension, but she really has what it takes and could definitely shake up a few podiums.
Others to watch: Anna Maria Ocalisan (ROU), Roxana Popa (ESP), Angael Romaeo (GBR), Sophie Scheder (GER), Olesya Sazonova (UKR) and Chantysha Netteb (NED), Maddie Desch (USA) and Peyton Ernst (USA).
2013 Seniors- Ones to Watch
Have to start with the two with the most hype and the greatest sense of 'if only x was born a bit earlier'.
Katelyn Ohashi, USA
Katelyn Ohashi created a storm around her when she unleashed her monster beam set in 2010. She also has fantastic bars, an area USA still need improvement on.
Trains at: WOGA, Texas
Competitions: US Classic 2009-2012, Visa Nationals 2009-2012, Pacific Rim Championships 2012, Jesolo 2011-2012
Notable Achievements: 2011 Junior National Champion, 2012 Pacific Rim All-around Champion, 2012 Pacific Rim Beam, Floor and Bars Champion, 2012 Junior National Champion on bars, silver beam and floor, 2011 Champion on bars, beam, floor. Katelyn has won the national bars title 3 years in a row.
Best event(s): Bars and beam
Worst event(s): Vault
Needs to: Fix her vault. Has had a scary time with DTY's this year, needs to either get it back safely or a similar difficulty vault to stay as a strong all-arounder. Katelyn showed signs of overtraining at Nationals, so should possibly hold back on upgrades for the moment.
Weak point: Power a bit lacking
All-around potential? Pretty high. Huge with a fixed vault.
Event final potential: Gold on beam and bars
Why the fuss? As well as being a potentially very strong all-arounder, Katelyn has gold medal world/Olympic titles written all over her bars and beam.
Lexie Priessman, USA
Lexie barely falls short of being a 2012 senior. She has created a stir for being a powerhouse in the style of Raisman and Wieber- she has an amanar and a double double on floor.
Trains at: CGA, Cincinnatti
Competitions: US Classic 2009-2012, Visa Nationals 2009-2012, Nastia Liukin Supergirl Cup 2010, Japan Junior International 2011, Pacific Rim Championships 2012, Jesolo 2011-2012
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior National Champion, 2012 Junior National Champion on floor, second on vault and bars, 2012 Pacific Rim vault champion, second all-around, 2012 US Classic floor champion, 2011 Japan Junior International Champion, 2010 Supergirl Cup Champion
Best event(s): Vault and floor
Worst event(s): Beam
Needs to: Work big-time on her form, it shows up most noticeably on beam. Presentation and choreography a bit all over the place on floor too. Get a second vault.
Weak point: Form, and flexibility to a lesser extent.
All-around potential? Massive.
Event final potential? Vault medallist with a second vault. High on floor.
Why the fuss? This girl is a powerhouse and with a consistent decent beam could blindside the rest of the competition.
Simone Biles, USA
With a phenomenal amanar under her belt, as well as a difficult floor, Simone looks like a very valuable gymnast for USA's collection.
Trains at: Bannon's Gymnastix
Competitions: US Classic 2011-2012, Visa Nationals 2011-2012
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior National Champion on vault, 3rd place in the all-around, 2012 US Classic Champion, 2012 US Classic Champion on vault
Best event(s): Vault
Worst event(s): Bars
Needs to: Upgrade her floor, a very strong event for her already. She could be a great all-arounder with a decent bars and beam- they need a lot of work. Needs to get and upgrade a second vault, she has plenty of power.
Weak point: In general, not great on non-power events. Lack of finesse.
All-around potential: Yes, not the top one or two but definitely she could be a good one.
Event final potential? Gold on vault, could qualify to floor
Why the fuss? Her amanar is so powerful that she is one of two girls in the world capable of doing a TTY. (Prize for guessing the other). She could quite easily medal in vault, has a strong energetic floor that's valuable and might be able to be a valuable all-arounder too.
Noemi Makra, HUN
Noemi is the great hope of Hungary, and certainly has what it takes to become a great all-arounder, she is the full package gymnast.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 Eva Sanyo Memorial, 2011 EYOF, 2010 Top Gym
Notable Achievements: 2011 EYOF champion on bars, highest all-around total at Eva Sanyo, qualified 10th to all-around finals at Euros 2012, and qualified to vault event finals.
Best event(s): Floor, bars
Worst event(s): Only because it lacks difficulty so much- vault
Needs to: UPGRADE. Noemi is the full package, everything she does is such a high standard. She just needs more difficulty.
Weak point: Lack of difficulty.
All-around potential: Certainly, especially at Euros. She could make quite a mark at Worlds and maybe even Olympics if she brings her difficulty up to scratch.
Event final potential: Hard to tell, her difficulty is too low at this stage.
Why the fuss? Such great execution, and she does not have a weak event. As I say so many times here, with more difficulty she is a major contender. Remarkable considering she is from outside the top 4.
Gabby Jupp, GBR
Gabby heralds the exciting new age of British gymnastics. She is strong and consistent, showing a nice mix of power and execution.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 British Championships, 2012 English Championships, 2011 Gymnix, 2011 British Championships, 2011 Junior France/Great Britain, 2010 Espoir (Hopes)
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior European third on floor, fifth in all-around, 2012 Junior British Champion, 2012 Junior British Champion on bars, 3rd on vault, 2012 English Champion, 2012 English Champion on vault, beam and floor, 2011 Junior British Champion on beam, 2nd all-around, floor and vault, 2010 Espoir Champion on beam, third on floor
Best event(s): Beam and floor
Worst event(s): Bars
Needs to: Clean up her bars and upgrade across the board.
Weak point: I don't really see one besides some issues on bars.
All-around potential: Yes, she could quite easily go one better than Rebecca Tunney and really challenge the top 4 countries. May have to move gyms to really get her difficulty up to scratch, but she screams potential.
Event final potential: Beam medallist, could qualify to floor
Why the fuss? Major player on beam and floor where she has already beat off strong competition before. A mistake cost her a medal in Euros this year on beam however. With upgrades, she is a force to be reckoned with.
Evgeniya Shelgunova, RUS
Russia arguably have 3 stronger juniors in the works, but Evgeniya is a strong, steady worker who could contribute quite a lot, and not just in team situations.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2011 Jesolo, 2011 Spartakaide, 2011 Top Gym
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2nd all-around, 3rd bars. Qualified to 3 event finals. Spartakaide 2011- 5 golds, 2011 Top Gym Champion, 2nd on vault, 2011 EYOF, 3rd on floor
Best event(s): Hmm. Floor and beam
Worst event(s): Bars
Needs to: Clean up her form and execution. She has the consistency and is building on difficulty, but she's a bit sloppy form-wise.
Weak point: Form
All-around potential: Yes, though I do see her being eclipsed not only by current Russian seniors continuing but also by 2014 and 2015 seniors.
Event final potential: Possibly on vault with a second one, and maybe floor finalist.
Why the fuss? Evegeniya is consistent and has decent difficulty. She could well become the workhorse team figure and possibly shine in her own right too.
Stefania Stanila, ROM
Stefania is a welcome addition next year to the much depleted Romanian senior rankings.Not the strongest junior, but a valuable team member.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 Cholet, 2012 Jesolo, 2011 Top Gym,
Notable Achievements: Junior European Championships, 2nd on vault, 2012 Cholet Champion, 2011 Top Gym, 3rd on floor
Best events: Floor, vault
Worst event: Bars
Needs to: Work on her consistency and form and get all of her events up to a higher standard.
Weak point: Consistency
All-around potential: Low. She will be outranked by other juniors and continuing seniors.
Event Final potential: Also low. Stefania's greatest asset is being strong in a team situation.
Why the fuss? Arguably Romania's strongest 2013 senior, but will have quite a lot of work to do to keep up with the rest into 2016. Stefania has a lot of potential and should be able to help her team quite a bit.
Elisa Meneghini, ITA
Elisa impressed at Euros this year and shows huge potential. Definitely one of the brightest stars of Italy's future.
Competitions: 2012 Junior European Championships, 2012 Serie A, 2012 Italian Nationals, 2011 Jesolo, 2011 EYOF, 2011 TAM
Notable Achievements: 2012 Junior European Championships, 4th all-around (with a fall), 3rd on beam. Elisa was the only one to qualify to all 4 event finals. 2012 Italian Nationals, 2nd on beam, 3rd all-around
Best events: Beam, floor
Worst event: Vault, purely for lack of difficulty
Needs to: Upgrade across the board, and improve her consistency. She would have medalled in the AA at Euros had she not fallen off beam, and would have done much better in bars finals without the fall there. Needs to work on her toepoint.
Weak point: Slight consistency issue, and toepoint.
All-around potential: Could be a big threat at worlds. No real weak event, and usually very steady.
Event final potential: Has shown herself to be exceptional on pretty much all events. Could continue qualifying to all. Medals possible on beam and maybe bars.
Why the fuss? Such a high place in a strong AA with a fall, and no weak event! Needs more difficulty and better extension, but she really has what it takes and could definitely shake up a few podiums.
Others to watch: Anna Maria Ocalisan (ROU), Roxana Popa (ESP), Angael Romaeo (GBR), Sophie Scheder (GER), Olesya Sazonova (UKR) and Chantysha Netteb (NED), Maddie Desch (USA) and Peyton Ernst (USA).
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