All Flipped Out
Dominique Moceanu beam team final 96 Olympics (by londongymgurl)
With the age limit put into place after the 1996 Olympics, nothing like Moceanu’s routine can ever happen again. To imagine this little girl is only 14 is amazing considering the routine she does in the video in the Team Finals in the Olympic Games. It was probably the biggest competition, biggest routine, of her life.
(via This Is How Winners Are Made | Video | Gymnastike)
Great inspirational video that really shows how tough the sport of gymnastics actually is.
gymnastike (gymnastike) on Twitter
The US women’s National Team (plus a few others) are at the Ranch this week for World Team Trials. They will go through a series of tests, verifications, and competitions so that the selection committee can decide the World Championship and Pan American Games team that will represent the US. The teams will be announced in a little less than a week!
National Gymnastics Day was this past Saturday and to boost PR about the sport, gymnastics clubs around the nation tried to break the World Handstand Record.
This is an interesting article talking about the Juniors and Seniors in Women’s elite gymnastics (Juniors are girls from the age 11-15 and Seniors are girls 16+). The article discusses the talent the US has in its Junior gymnasts. It discusses the fact that a lot of the Junior gymnasts are better than the crop of Seniors and girls eligibly for the 2012 Olympics. Unfortunately all but one of the Juniors mentioned in the article won’t be old enough for the Olympics next year (you must turn 16 in the year of the Olympics to be eligible to compete). Great read, some interesting points are brought up!
Breaking news in the gymnastics world isn’t something you hear very often. Especially if it isn’t something about a team being named or right after a big competition. 2003 World and 2004 Olympic Champion Paul Hamm recently was arrested for assault. He was the assistant head coach for the Ohio State men’s gymnastics team and trying to make a comeback to the sport for the 2012 Olympics. Hamm’s behavior isn’t surprising to me considering the way he acted after the controversy surrounding his AA win in 2004. I never really liked Hamm and this only gives me more reason to dislike him. Hamm has not only ruined his own reputation as a gymnast, but he has given USA gymnastics a bad name as well.
This is one of the most iconic moments in gymnastics history: the first perfect 10 ever preformed by Nadia Comaneci on the uneven bars. Fun fact: it’s not actually perfect. Watch the landing of the dismount again, and notice that she hops out of it before she salutes to the judge.
I think this article gives a pretty good explanation of the new scoring system put into place in 2006 after the controversy that arose in the 2004 Olympics. It was written in 2008, so a few things have changes. They now only count 8 elements towards the difficulty score, and the two sub-sections are now called the “D-score” (difficulty) and the “E-score” (execution). Gymnasts who fall re also deducted a whole point from their execution score instead of only .8. The scoring system may seem confusing compared to the “perfect 10” system like they use in collegiate gymnastics and levels 2-10, but it gets easier to understand the more gymnastics you watch.
