Monday, July 2, 2012

USA vs the world.

Unless you've been living under a rock, it's pretty unlikely you missed the announcement of the USA's olympic gymnastics teams yesterday.

Men's team: 
Danell Leyva, John Orozco, Jonathan Horton, Sam Makulak, Jake Dalton
Men's Alternates:
Chris Brooks, Stephen Legendre, Alex Naddour
Women's team: 
Gabrielle Douglas, Jordyn Wieber, Alexandra Raisman, Kyla Ross, McKayla Maroney
Women's alternates:
Elizabeth Price, Anna Li, Sarah Finnegan.

There were few surprises on either side, most bloggers and readers picked the ten team members back even before Visa Championships. It was pretty clear who the favourites were as long as they hit respectably.

Marta has played it smart with the ladies alternates too, picking a specialist on each of the events, able to fill a team final spot if one of the favourites goes down (Price: Vault, Li: Bars, Finnegan: Beam and floor).

The USA are the definite favourites (at least on the strength of numbers) for the women's team, all around and vault golds and also have definite medal contenders on the other events too: bring it on world!

Also definitely worth a mention in this olympic focussed post. Germany's matriarch of gymnastics, Oksana Chusovitina has been named to her SIXTH olympic team! She will compete in London 20 years after she won gold with the unified soviet team in 1992 in Barcelona. She should at least be able to make Maroney work for her vault gold!

German Men's olympic team 
Fabian Hambuchan, Philipp Boy, Marcel Nguyen, Sebastian Krimmer, Andreas, Toba. Alternate: Thomas Taranu
German Women's olympic team 
Elisabeth Seitz, Nadine Jarosch, Oksana Chusovitina, Kim Bui, Janine Berger. Alternate: Lisa Katerina Hill.

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