Visa Championships 2011

 

Can the fragile Rebecca Bross defend her title against the seemingly unstoppable Jordyn Wieber?
Can Chellsie Memmel or Shawn Johnson make a return to the national podium after 3 years away?
Can Aly Raisman land a successful amanar without breaking something?
All things we shall know a week from now...

Official Site

Senior Ladies Start List

Name	Club	Current Residence
Rebecca Bross	WOGA Gymnastics	Plano, TX
Bridgette Caquatto	Legacy Elite Gymnastics LLC	Naperville, IL
Mackenzie Caquatto	Legacy Elite Gymnastics LLC	Naperville, IL
Jessie DeZiel	Twin City Twisters	Rogers, MN
Gabrielle Douglas	Chow's Gymnastics and Dance Institute	Virginia Beach, VA
Jessica Howe	WOGA Gymnastics	Plano, TX
Brandie Jay	GK Gymnastics	Ft Collins, CO
Amanda Jetter	Cincinnati Gymnastics	Milford, OH
Shawn Johnson	Chow's Gymnastics and Dance Institute	West Des Moines, IA
Sophia Lee	WOGA Gymnastics	Plano, TX
Anna Li	Legacy Elite Gymnastics LLC	Aurora, IL
Casey Magee	Capital Gymnastics / Texas	Austin, TX
McKayla Maroney	All Olympia AOGC	Laguna Niguel, CA
Grace McLaughlin	WOGA Gymnastics	Allen, TX
Chellsie Memmel	M and M Gymnastics	West Allis, WI
Hallie Mossett	West Coast Elite Gymnastics	Los Angeles, CA
Alexandra Raisman	Brestyan's American Gymnastics	Needham, MA
Alicia Sacramone	Brestyan's American Gymnastics	Winchester, MA
Sabrina Vega	Dynamic Gymnastics	Carmel, NY
Jordyn Wieber	Gedderts Twistars USA	DeWitt, MI
McKenzie Wofford	Zenith Elite Gymnastics Academy	McKinney, TX

Event Schedule

Controversy as Mao Asada misses national training camp.

The Japan Times reported today that olympic silver medallist Mao Asada was conspicuously absent from the latest Japan Skating Federation Camp, stating that Mao was 'exhausted' after the later-than-usual world championships and a number of benefit shows following the Japanese earthquake.

This may mean nothing but instantly suspicion has been raised that Mao may choose to sit out the grand prix season. This would be a shame for two reasons-
1) World medallists Miki Ando and Yu-Na Kim have already stated their intentions to sit out the series, leaving a watered-down and fairly unexciting field.
2) We're still waiting to see a successful return from Mao after her olympic disappointment, last year she was 're-working' her technique and finished a dismal (by her standards) 5th and 8th in her Grand Prix events. It would be a shame to see this hugely talented and elegant skater fade away quietly. She should be out there looking for redemption and new gold for the trophy cabinet.

Mao is due to start her season in November at the NHK trophy in Sapporo, Japan and Cup of Russia in Moscow (the site of the recent world championships where Mao dropped to 6th).  Plenty could happen between now and then.

Stay healthy and keep competing Mao!

"Yu-na Kids" aim for Junior Grand Prix & Pyeongchang 2018.

Arirang News reported this week from Korea where a domestic competition has taken place for junior skaters to earn spots for the JGP series. The competition was won by 14 year old Kim Hae-Jin (pictured) who is the 2010 and 2011 SENIOR national champion and has triple-triples in her back pocket.

Other promising names to look out for are Park So-yeon and Lee Ho-jung. All of these young skaters are age eligible for Sochi 2014 and will be 21 years old for Pyeongchang 2018.

The report has a nice video (with english commentary). These young skaters do look like they have potential. Like most 14 year old skaters worldwide they have most of the big tricks in the bag but need to develop a bit more speed, power and maturity.

With growing investment and interest in korean skating post Yu-Na Kim, these skaters have plenty of support to aid their development. There is definitely a chance they could contend for medals on the JGP and grow into future Yu-Nas over the coming years.

Full Twist Profiles British Gymnasts

This week british gymnastics published the names of it's 'World Class Squads' - similar to other countries National Teams it is a basis from which the teams will be picked for international competition.

The squads are devided into 3 levels
Performance Squad - 16 top senior gymnasts - this is where the 2011 world team is likely to come from.
Potential Squad - GBs top juniors and potential contenders for London 2012
Start Squad - 10 top Espoirs - names we will be likely to hear more about in the 2012-2016 cycle.

Fellow blogger Full Twist will be profiling one of these squad gymnasts in a profile Meet the Gymnast, starting with british AA champion Hannah Whelan.

Here are the lists of GB's World Class Squads

Performance Squad

Potential Squad

Start Squad

Britain after Beth

I've been watching a lot of sport this week- The UK athletics world trials, The swimming world Champs, The Covegirl Classic. If one thing is clear - athletes in all disciplines are focusing their sights firmly on London, with 1 year to the opening ceremonies the starting gun has been fired.

GB's top gymnast Beth Tweddle has re-iterated in recent interviews that she wants to peak and wrap up her successful career at the games. The question is where will her departure leave British gymnastics after the games. 'Queen Elizabeth' at Rewriting Russian Gymnastics made a great comment in her latest post on the Russian team.


A gymnastics team is only as good as its reserves; if a team cannot win without its leading performer, then the chance of leading the sport more than momentarily is pretty poor.

The same stands for the GB team. Their stocks have been rising in the last olympic cycle, largely due to Beth's medal success and leadership. The difficulty will be maintaining this overall success and delivering new stars on the way to Rio 2016.

Hopefully some of the current crop of gymnasts (such as Hannah Whelan) will stick around and lead the younger gymnasts on for a few years. GB has the coaching expertise to develop new talent (albeit focussed in a few main gyms) and plenty of youngsters who could add more difficulty over the next few years.

GB is a long way off contending with the big guns (China, USA, Russia) at the moment but below that are a lot of nations whose positions can shift based on who has an 'off-day'. With enough strong all-around gymnasts and some special talents on individual apparatus, a Beth-less team could still continue to contend.

Where the US keep talking about bars as their 'weak' event. GB's scores could rocket if we could get a crop of strong vaulters capable of something bigger than a full-twisting yurchenko!

We're not there yet, but I think we will be soon...

Team 2012-2016

back row L-R - Lizzie Beddoe, Ruby Harrold, Jess Hogg, Billie Mackenzie, Ruby Straw, Loriah James... 

front row L-R - Amy Sharp, Venus Romaeo, Laura Mitchell and Rebecca Tunney

London 2012 - The Medals

We didn't like the logo, there was a mixed reception to the torch. 

I quite like the medals- mixing traditional with dynamic. Nothing too weird and wonderful!

Larisa Iordache (Romania) EYOF

Videos are arriving almost instantly from the European Youth Olympic Festival. This young Romanian talent is too young to help out her team at Worlds this year but look out for her in London in a years time. She currently leads the all around competition with a score of 57.800. That would have put her 7th at Worlds 2010 and 1st at Europeans 2011.


(Vault), (Beam), (Bars)