Rebecca Tunney- The next Hannah Whelan?

This may sound like a strange question but I noticed a strange paralell today. The Couch Gymnast has posted a great profile on british gymnast Rebecca Tunney (Right) prior to her debut at the American Cup. Tunney is the 2011 junior british champion and seen by many as the new senior with the most realistic chance of making the olympic team.

GB are giving her plenty of competition and media exposure sending her to the olympic test event in January and and the American Cup in March. In terms of results these aren't important per se, but both are in huge arenas (the O2 and Madison Square Garden) and in the glare of the television cameras, just as the olympics will be.

Now, remember this face from 4 years ago? In the lead up to Beijing 2008 there was another young, talented, pixie like gymnast vying for an olympic spot. The young Hannah Whelan was the darling of the BBC's GYMNAST documentary, becoming the youngest and smallest member of the GB olympic team.

Since 2008 Whelan has gone on to become GB's best all arounder, finish top 10 in the world and looks like a lock (touch wood) for her second olympics in 2012. With Beth Tweddle due to retire after this summer Whelan is poised to become the new public face and leader of british gymnastics. Does that leave room for Tunney to become the 'young rising star'?

The Liverpool Gymnastics club seems to be the UK's version of WOGA, you do get national stars from elsewhere, but Liverpool seem to produce a new one reliably year on year! We wish Rebecca the very best in her quest for olympic selection.

This year's American Cup is turning into a showcase for young gymnastics talent, with Tunney joining Romania's Larisa Iordache and Olympic test event floor champ Victoria Moors taking on the USA's best on home turf. Whilst I wouldn't put money to win, I for one am more excited to see the performance of these 'unknowns' vs America's consistent professionals Wieber and Raisman!

If you had to pick the GB olympic team now, who would you send?

 Photo from the National Portrait Gallery's 'Road to 2012' Collection (Link - Full Twist)

Gearing up again

Apologies for my absense from the blogosphere, pre-exam stress has been getting the better of me of late but I'm back and keeeping an eye on preparations for London 2012. Here's a rundown of some of the bigger news in olympic women's gymnastics.

USA

Undoubtedly the country with the most competition for a spot on the olympic team, the latest Team USA trainin g camp took place at the Karolyi ranch 2 weekends ago, with a view towards team selection for Pacific Rim Championships and Jesolo, big team meets that will give a preview as to what the Olympic squad might look like. Injured Rebecca Bross also made a respectable (if not faultless) return to competition at the WOGA classic last week.

Pro's Jordyn Wieber and Ali Raisman are gearing up for the American Cup in March and young Gabrielle Douglas was yesterday named as the US alternate, giving her an opportunity to perform (at least as an alternate) at Madison Square Garden. A strong all around performance wouldn't harm her olympic prospets one bit! Watch the Behind the Team documentary from the camp here, including a brief word with Nastia Liukin on her comeback.

Canada

Team Canada had a short off season with having to qualify at the London Test Event. Several of the team were back in action at the Elite Canada meet last week and looking strong,  including Kristina Vaculik and Victoria Moors, who also was nominated to compete at the American Cup. Watch Moors winning floor exercise here.

Russia 

Many of Russia's A team competed domestically at the Moscow Cup 2 weeks ago, including Aliya Mustafina, back with all her difficulty on bars (Watch here). Anastasia Grishina is also attempting to up her difficulty on vault to up her chances against the more veteran seniors. The next big event for them will be Russian Championships, March 21 and then Europeans in May.

Romania
Perhaps the team with the most adversity on the way to 2012. Following the retirement of Ana Porgras, Romania almost faced another blow yesterday with reports Sandra Izbasa had suffered knee ligament damage. Thankfully the injury turned out to be a minor one. A recent news clip showed Izbasa, Ponor and young hopeful Larisa Iordache working on new skills (watch here). Is it too little, to late to take on the big guns?

China

Chinese media has shown footage of a recent team verification event at the Chinese camp (watch here). The focus is clearly on building consistency following multiple errors by China at the 2011 worlds. Veteran Cheng Fei is also looking fit and reported to be back at her difficulty level. Fei along with Sui Lu, Yao Jinnan and Tan Sixin are due to compete at the Zibo and Cottbus world cup events. Couch Gymnast has an unnoficial nominative team list for the Pacific Rim Championships - Lou Nina, Wang Wei, Mei Jie, Jiang Tong, Tan Sixin, Luo Peiru. As in past years the chinese have sent a relatively inexperiened team to this event and used it as a learning exercise rather than a high pressure competition. In 2010 China took the silver medal despite 7 falls from 5 gymnasts on beam!

Great Britain

...have been training fairly quietly, with the home nation championships (Scottish, Welsh and English) marking the first stop on the road to olympic selection. New senior Rebecca Tunney will be headed to the American Cup, British Gymnastics clearly have high hopes for her and are trying to clock up her international experience.


Upcoming events
FIG Olympic draw (TODAY!)

American Cup (3 March)
English Championships (March 2-4)
Gymnix International (9-11 March)
Pacific Rim Championships (16-18 March)
Russian Championships (21 March)
Cottbus World Cup (22-25 March)
Doha Challenger Cup (28-30 March)
Zibo World Cup (7-8 April)

Canadian Figure Skating Championships

It's a busy 10 days for figure skating with superpowers Canada and the USA holding their national championships and the first major international of 2012, the European Championships being held in Sheffield, UK.

The first of these to wrap up was the Canadian championships in Moncton, New Brunswick. Full results here. World Champions Patrick Chan and Virtue and Moir re-established their dominance, winning their umpteenth straight national championships respectively. The upset of the event came when Amelie Lacoste beat fellow Quebecois skater and reigning champion Cynthia Phaneuf to the national title.

Skate Canada has been cautious in naming the single ladies skater who will represent Canada at the world championships in Nice. Canada desperately needs a strong and consistent ladies skater to match up to their stronger men's pairs and dance teams.

As it stands the Worlds teams are listed below (with additional athletes for the 4 Continents Championships in brackets)

Men

Patrick Chan , Kevin Reynolds, (Jeremy Ten)

Ice Dance
Tessa Virtue/Scott Moir , Kaitlyn Weaver/Andrew Poje, Kharis Ralph/Asher Hill (Alexandra Paul/Mitchell Islam replace Ralph & Hill for 4CC)

Pairs
Meagan Duhamel/Eric Radford , Jessica Dubé/Sebastian Wolfe, Paige Lawrence/Rudi Swiegers

Ladies
The top two finishers from the national championship will compete at the ISU Four Continents Figure Skating Championships, and Canada's one entry for the world team will be named following their performances at that competition. (Amélie Lacoste, Cynthia Phaneuf, Alexandra Najarro)

 The Novice and Junior rounds of the US championships and the qualifying rounds of Europeans are also underway, I'll endeavour to update on these results throughout the week.

Posts are a bit scarce at the moment as I revise for my clinical exams coming up, keep checking back!

Winter Youth Olympics

With qualification to London 2012 on most people's minds, the upcoming inaugural Winter Youth Olympic Games in Innsbruck are flying somewhat under the radar.

As with the Singapore youth olympic games 2 years ago, several of the most promising young athletes are using this to build experience for bigger and better things at the next olympic games proper. Amongst those competing in the figure skating competition in Innsbruck are Russian phenoms Adelina Sotnikova and Elizaveta Tuktamisheva. Other names to look out for are Zijun Li of China (pictured, above) So Youn Park of South Korea and Risa Shoji of Japan.

The games kick off on Friday. Click here for the event website.

GB dominant as test event.

They did much more than finish 4th, the British men put in a fantastic team performance to easily win the team competition at the olympic test event and qualify a full team to London 2012- yippee!!

The british men also qualified 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the all around rankings with plenty of high ranking individual apparatus scores too.

GB will be joined by the teams from France, Spain and Italy. The Canadian men will be kicking themselves for lost tenths, finishing narrowly outside in 5th place.

UPDATE: The FIG has today confirmed the men's qualifiers for the olympic games: view the full list here. They include Ireland's Kieran Behan and nominative spots for the top-scoring all-arounders from the test event aswell as a single entry for those countries who missed out on team qualification.

Test Event - Intermediate Results

With all important olympic qualification on the line, Great Britain's male gymnasts will compete in the last of 3 subdivisions today at the O2 arena, starting their competition at 19.15 GMT

The second rotation has just wrapped up with the scores around the middle of the table (and that 4th place cut-off for an olympic spot) very very close.

For a bit of perspective, the qualifying scores of the test event nations at the 2011 worlds were:
9. France 349.818
10. GB 348.742
11. Spain 348.725
12. Canada 347.076
13. Brazil 346.626
14. Puerto Rico 344.460
15. Italy 343.642
16. Belarus 342.575

Corral Barron of Mexico leads the all around qualification with 88.465 ahead of Cyril Tommasone of France. Full results will be updated after the conclusion of men's qualification this evening.

London 2012 Test Event

The Olympic year is finally here and this week all gymnastics disciplines will have a final chance to qualify teams or athletes to the olympic games.


Katie from Full Twist and other bloggers will beat the O2 to report on the event. Here is her great preview on the event.

The main event will be the team qualifications for artistic gymnastics, with the teams ranked 9th-16th at the Tokyo worlds competing for the final 4 team spots to London. The teams are:

MAG

1. Belarus
2. Brazil
3. Great Britain
4. Canada
5. Spain
6. France
7. Italy
8. Puerto Rico

WAG

1. Belgium
2. Canada
3. Brazil
4. France
5. Spain
6. Italy
7. Korea
8. Netherlands

As well as the team competition, for many of the lower ranked gymnastics nations this is their one chance to qualify individual gymnasts to the games, and an opportunity for the nations who have had a disappointing year and failed to qualify teams to the event to regain some pride, particularly Switzerland and Ukraine, countries with a strong medal record on the world stage who due to injuries and retirements had a disappointing 2011.

Being the first major international event of 2012, the test event will also be a chance for us to finally see some of the 'rookie' seniors who were too young to compete in 2011 but will definitely be in contention for a spot on their nation's teams in 2012.

The full list of participants is here, Some of the new or rising names to look out for will be:

Victoria Moors (Canada)
Erika Fasana (Italy)
Rebecca Tunney & Jocelyn Hunt (GB)
Ana Sofia Gomez Porraz (Guatemala)
Anastasia Grishina & Julia Inshina (Russia)
Nadia Muelhauser (Suitzerland)

Along with established names:
Sui Lu & Yao Jinnan (China)
Jessica Lopez (Venezuela)
Giulia Steingruber (Suitzerland)
Jade Barbossa (Brazil)
Kristina Vaculik & Peng Peng Lee (Canada)
Vanessa Ferrari & Carlotta Ferlito (Italy)
Youna Dufournet (France)

The event is sadly not being broadcast on TV but there will be plenty of online coverage from the following bloggers

• Full Twist – Twitter – Facebook
• The All Around - Twitter – Facebook
• Gym Power – Twitter – Facebook
• Gymnastics Examiner – Twitter - Facebook
• Gymnastics Coaching - Twitter – Facebook
• Gym Blog Brazil – Twitter – Facebook
• Grace Chiu will be taking photographs at the event

as well as from British Gymnastics, the FIG event website and youtube channel.