News

Rebeca Andrade has won the all-around at the South American Junior Championships. A great pity we won't see Rebeca in a much stronger field like Euros, but hopefully other competitions like Pan-Ams will see her square off against stronger competition. Her score was 54.8 Her highest score was 14.5 on vault, a DTY, and her lowest was 12.633 on bars, her nemesis. She does not do much on bars but she has a Comaneci salto..hopefully they can be improved over the next few years. Beam and floor are good events for her too. Brazil won the team competition also. Rebeca is elegible for the 2014 YOG and is lucky to be turning senior for a home games, as serious money is being poured into the gymnastics programme of which she is recognised as the shining star.

Kristina Goryunova of Russia who was suspended from international competition and therefore missed the Olympics due to a positive doping test- has won bars, beam and floor at a local competition called SDUSHOR. Kristina herself has said her difficulty is not high enough for international competitions, but she is thought to be quite useful at the moment as Russia are not bursting with talent. Hopefully we will see her again, even at Euros.

Lexie Priessman has committed to Georgia. Fear not, she will be competing as a senior elite beginning next year. 2016 would be her startdate really, and longer if she wants to hold out. I have limited knowledge of NCAA but there seems to be a lot of dissapointment that it's not UCLA. Georgia I know have been on a slump since the glory days of Courtney's Kupets and McCool but maybe Lexie and fellow recruits can drag it back into the top 6. It is up to her what university suits her best, location, and which gymnastics programme so I think her choice should be respected.

Rachael (whatshouldgymfanscallme.tumblr.com) has uploaded a history and background to Alexandrov's dismissal. It begins with a brief background of him, goes through his recall after the disaster of 2008 and ends up with post-dismissal. Rachael understands Russian so her insight is very valuable. This is extremely well written and don't be put off by the gifs, they add to it! I will add these articles are not suitable to be read on phones because of the amount of gifs. MUST READ.
Part 1
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Part 4

Anna Li has a double twisting double layout dismount. Invented by Elise Ray, it's one of the hardest dismounts and is extremely rare. Shawn Johnson also did it. Anna would be the biggest contender the USA have to take the bars title at worlds, especially if she actually does have a Kovacs up her sleeve by then as well. Sadly it does not seem like Marta would give her an international assignment like that again. Here it is though:

Also here's a hilarious video of the girls on tour learning shuffling. Mostly hysterical because Nastia seems so bewildered by the whole thing, or else just in awe of Anna, at the front. Rebecca Bross is on the right of Nastia, pretty sure that's Jordyn behind at the back right and Julie Zetlin is behind Anna to the left.

 In other tour news, Gabby has committed to the whole thing and it looks like Kyla has already left as she is tweeting about high school a lot. McKayla did go to Oklahoma with Kyla for the tour stop that was filmed (Oct 14th air date) but seeing as she was in two casts, I doubt she did anything other than wave or something. We'll see. (Or see when it goes up on youtube in its entiriety, as the case may be). Sabrina Vega is expected to join the tour for its east coast stops. It is currently in Texas.

A high-quality version of Yelena Produnova's famous 1999 Universiade double front vault has been uploaded. In this one you can even make out how unimpressed the woman beside the vault is and the amount of chalk on Produnova's legs. No less an amazing feat than it ever was- but I did not realise until the dead-on replay how cowboyed it is. Nothing says 'never let anyone try this vault again' more than how even Prod had to speed up her rotation that much to land it at all.