Terrible Tuesday - The Horrific Plague in Elite Gymnastics

Initially, I didn't want to have a reoccurring negative feature, but come on, I had a find a reason to use this Marta picture over and over again.

Anyway, I wanted to address a terrible disease that is affecting some of the world's best gymnasts. It makes their difficult tumbling irrelevant in my eyes and automatically portrays them in a negative light. It's a disease that just a little bit of childhood prevention could change, yet, the disease continues to attack gymnasts young and old.

That disease is the "I Can't Land Turns Syndrome". 

Coming from a dance background, I just don't get it! I haven't been in a studio for several years now, and I can still turn a decent double pirouette. In the code, your pirouettes don't even have to be in passé (with the non-working foot at the knee). Chelsea Davis's turns are lower, and she executes them beautifully! Why is it then, that these fantastic gymnasts can throw Amanars, Double Arabians and other skills that defy what the human body should do, but continue to fall out of their turns?

Some culprits include:

Elsa Garcia (at :33)

Amelia Hundley (at 1:08) 

Sam Peszek (at 1:23)

And there are many others as well! 

What makes me sad is that ALL of these gymnasts are insanely talented! They're all just so good and they're losing tenths on something that, in my opinion, is 100 times easier than their tumbling passes.

I'm not saying every gymnast needs to be a prima ballerina, but it seems that if you can train a gymnast to do a gymnast to do 2 flips and 2 twists at the end of a tumbling pass, or to leap, lose sight of the beam and still land perfectly, you should be able to teach your gymnast how to execute a double turn well and land it cleanly.

Pan American Games - Uneven Bars Finals

(Grace Chiu)

Remember when people used to win Bars with scores of 16.9? Yeah, I know it was a totally different scoring system then, but I miss it. 

(Grace Chiu)

Today's bar podium consisted of the 4 girls who competed in today's final without major mistakes. The girls from Mexico, Garcia and Cantu tied for the Bronze medal. Garcia, who has problems pirouetting in handstand, has great releases and a strong dismount which helped her earn a 13.625. Cantu, whom she tied with, competed a slightly easier routine with better form. 

Shawn, bless her heart, really wants that Weiler kip to work. She'll get there, but she's struggling right now on getting it together. She stalled and muscled through a few skills in TF and EF. In any case, she did a good enough job to earn the silver medal and only missed the gold by .025 WITH an error. Not too shabby, if you ask me. 

Caquatto is now on a gold streak which is pretty cool, if you ask me! Her 14.525 was well deserved, and to be honest, I think her 8.525 E score was a little low. It earned her the gold anyway, and Caquatto is undefeated! (Did you know that Yesterday was her first AA title as an elite, EVER?) 

Who was the biggest upset today? 

Peng Peng Lee made a major mistake for the third consecutive competition since coming to Guadalajara. What's sad is that she's totally capable of medalling and possibly even winning these competitions but she keeps making fairly major mistakes. Unfortunately, her Pan Am Experience is over and we'll hopefully see her in 2012. 

Pan American Games - Women's Vault Finals

(Grace Chiu) 

Today's Vault final had no big surprises. Brandie Jay of the USA won the title followed by Mexico's Elsa Garcia and Escobar from Columbia.  As Spanny Tampson noted earlier this afternoon, now all three of the USA's 2 Vault competitors now have an international title. There's no doubt that I (and many other fans) miss Jade Barbosa and wish her a speedy recovery, but overall, the girls did well. While the field was slightly disappointing without any Amanars and only two DTYs, I have to respect the girls and their coaches for the high E scores in comparison. All the girls hit mid to high 8s and half of the girls reached a 9.0. You have to respect them for that. 

The same cannot be said for Yamilet Peña Abreu, a gymnast from the Dominican Republic who attempted the Handspring Double Tuck. As only one of few women ever to attempt the vault, she immediately gained my respect when I heard about her earlier this fall. "Wow," I thought to myself, "a gymnast from a minor gymnastics country competing such a difficult vault!" Well, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. Of the 5 different occurrences that I've seen her vault, she's fallen twice and never, ever had a non-scary landing. Every single vault looks like she's going to tear a ligament, or worse. Seriously, If you're taking a vault to your back 40% of the time that you do it in competition, and looking like your going to break something the other 60% of the time, Why are you doing it? Even when she landed the vault, her highest E score of the season was a 7.9. She competed a watered down vault in Prelims and still ended in Bronze Medal Position. Why take the risk when your body, your reputation and possibly even your life is at stake? 

Watch her Worst Vault of the season: 

And her best: 

Do you think that it's worth it? 

Pan American Games - Day 1

(Photo property of Grace Chiu, USA Gymnastics)

I, like many gymnastics fans at the moment, am dealing with some very conflicting feelings. If you weren't following gymnastics this afternoon, the USA won the team title at the Pan American Games as everyone around the world understandably expected. However, what people around the world didn't expect was the USA's lead only consisted of two points, Johnson's double fall on beam, and DeZiel, who is a first year elite, leading the US on each event that she competed. While the US should certainly be commended for their first place win as well as their standings on vault and bars, I can't help but be disappointed in the fact that not 1 US Gymnast qualified for beam finals. In fact, DeZiel was the highest beam scorer and she placed 16th. Unfortunately, this means that for the first time in at least 10 years, the a US Gymnast will not win the Beam Title at a Pan Am Event. 

(Photo property of Grace Chiu, USA Gymnastics)

To be honest, I have NO IDEA what Marta's thinking at this point. Are her feelings mixed like mine? Is she pleased with the team win? After all, she does always say that "it's all about the team". I'm at a loss. I asked the Twitterverse what they thought Marta was thinking, and the answers were all across the board. 


@Laura722: "they won by over 2 points, no big deal"


@TommyStark11: "shes thinking "THIS is our B team?!?!?!" Then she swears a bunch in Romanian"


@caseymagnesium: "I think she is currently forging a birth certificate for Katelyn Ohashi... that's what I would be doing."


@BTOgymblog: Thank god I chose the girls I did for worlds! Or WHY DID MY FEED NOT WORK?


That feed was horrendous, wasn't it? Oh well, at least it's free coverage. The point is, there's no way to know what she is really thinking, or whether today's performances will have any positive or negative effect on the girls' future assignments. 


Looking forward into Wednesday's All Around, 2 girls from the USA qualified: Brandie Jay in 5th and Bridgey Caquatto in 4th. The girls in medal position included Ana Sofia Gomez of Guatemala, a first year senior whose DTY and strong beam helped her qualify first, Peng Peng (Christine) Lee of Canada who finished 19th in World All Around final and her teammate, Kristina Vaculik, a gymnast for Stanford who may have qualified for the World AA Finals, had she hit in prelims. 


My predictions for the Podium: 
1. Bridgette Caquatto (Not just because I love USA, but today's score was in fact, her season low) 
2. Peng Peng (Christine) Lee 
3. Ana Sofia Gomez 

In my opinion, two girls have a shot at the Vault gold medal, USA's Brandie Jay and the Dominican Republic's Yamilet Peña. Peña, who qualified for the World vault event finals, only attempted a handspring tuck today, but landed a handspring double tuck (SV 7.1) in Worlds Qualification. In finals however, she took it to her back and received a zero. I'm not sure whether or not she'll go for it in finals, but if she does, and lands it, the gold isn't necessarily  hers. If she lands the vault the was she did in Worlds Prelims and gets a 15.0, she'd still fall a few tenths short of Jay's 2 vault average. If she lands it well though, I don't think there will be any argument. Regardless, Today she qualified 3rd without it. 


If I had to guess the podium:
1. Yamilet Peña Abreu (I've got a hunch!)
2. Brandie Jay
3. Elsa Garcia (of Mexico) 

The USA would have qualified all 4/5 of their gymnast to bar finals if the 2 per country rule didn't exist. Unfortunately on this event, it does. Caquatto and Johnson will compete in finals for the USA while  Peng Peng Lee of Canada qualified in 3rd with a score over 14. The next qualifier, Marisela Cantu, the next highest qualifying competitor qualified more than 6 tenths lower than Lee. For this reason I believe that the top 3 qualifiers will be the medalists. If history has shown us anything in the past, it's that when she disappoints herself and others, she goes out and she redeems herself. For this reason (and also because I know that she can get rid of that stall she had) that I think Shawn will take the Bars Title. 


Podium Prediction: 
1. Shawn Johnson 
2. Bridgette Caquatto
3. Peng Peng Lee 

While the US didn't qualify any girls to the beam final, it's still a pretty interesting field! Ana Sofia Gomez (Guatemala) is the clear favorite (watch for her beautiful Back Walkover into a Full), but Vaculik (Canada), Gil Ortiz (Columbia), Salzar & Estrada (Mexico) all had routines that could potentially medal. Canada's Peng Peng Lee and Talia Chiarelli tied for 4th place, so I'm not sure which one they'll put up in finals and to be honest, I'm not really sure what the rules say about it all. The wonderful blogger at Tsuk the Pain believes that it's the highest E score, which would send Chiarelli to the finals. 


Anyway, here are my predictions: 
1. Ana Sofia Gomez 
(Insert Lee here, if she goes up in finals! Her 4th Place finish was with a fall!)
2. Kristina Vaculik (Even her 8.675 Qualification E score seems a bit low) 
3. Jessica Gil Ortiz 

(Photo Property of Thomas Scheyer)

And finally, we come to floor. I'll be honest, I wasn't really very impressed by any of the gymnasts' floor routines today. It seemed like most of the girls either were incredibly sloppy, made fairly major mistakes or had awful choreography and music. My projected winner falls in the third category. 


Podium Predictions:
1. Mikaela Gerber (Canada) 
2. Elena Torres (Cuba) 
3. Kristina Vaculik (Canada) 

(Photo property of Grace Chiu)

These are all just guesses, of course. I'm not psychic, I honestly don't know that much about gymnasts from Cuba and the Dominican Republic and unlike Komova's mother, I haven't heard the judges talking in the lobby. What predictions do you agree with? Which ones do you think I got totally wrong? Let me know! It will be fun to find out who wins!