Part 4: Favourite Things From This Quad

Alright this is the final part. I won't do much explaining tonight. I might have missed some of my favourite moments. There were so many great gymnastics this quad. If you guys have any favourites please comment. Here are some honourable mentions:

Kohei Uchimura 2011 WC FX EF. Also for being the king of the quad. Four time AA gold medalists in a row! Now that's history for gymnastics.

Chen Yibing 2011 WC SR EF

Part 3: Favourite Things From This Quad

Sui Lu and Ksenia Afanasyeva. Most gym fans consider these two gymnasts "headcases" or basically inconsistent gymnasts. Usually falling and making silly little mistakes. It's not completely a bad thing to be considered a headcase. Most of the time headcases are the type of gymnasts you want to see succeed because they deserve to be recognize for their beautiful gymnastics. They are like the underdogs that you are rooting for. Sometimes I want to give up on these type of gymnasts but it's fun rooting for them. When they hit their routines it can be a special moment.

It was amazing how Sui Lu transformed into this consistent gymnast in 2011. She totally rocked in the WC event finals. Her beam was near perfect. It amazed me how confident she was. When she went to compete FX I was shocked at her upgrade. I was not expecting a stag out of the triple. She lost the gold to Afanasyeva but she proved that she can be an artistic and solid gymnast.

Part 2: Favourite Things From This Quad

Aliya Mustafina in 2010! Oh the memories. She was a BAMF, destined to be a world champion. She lead her teammates to a team gold at the 2010 WC. She was the leader. One of my favourite routines from her was her '10 FX prelim. She stuck pretty much every single tumble and her 3/1 spin was perfect. She immediately became a star in 2010. I even remember making a thread poll titled something like "gymnast of the year" on the IG forum and Mustafina won! LOL 2010 memories, sadly I'm now banned from that board, boo. She's basically my second favourite gymnast of all time. She knows how to compete and doesn't give up easily. I'm happy that she was able to win UB gold at the Olympics after being seriously injured for a year.

Aliya MUSTAFINA UB from javier collados on Vimeo.

Part 1: Favourite Things From This Quad

It's that time of year again when gym fans starts to blog about their favourite gym moments of the year. I'm going to blog about my favourite moments of the quad, '09-'12. I might have missed some moments but these are some moments I can think of off the top of my head. It's been a crazy quad. I am really happy that I was able to see it all unfold. There were so many disappointments and happiness. I'll start off with 2009-2010.

One moment that comes to my mind was when Koko Tsurumi won 3rd AA in London 2009. Her clean execution was refreshing. I'm glad that Tsurumi was able to win medals at a world championship (WC). I really liked her beam and her very beautiful Ono pirouettes on bars. She even won 2nd in UB EF.

Happy Holidays!

Andreea Iridon's Memmel Spin On BB

Here is Romania's Iridon doing a Memmel spin on balance beam! Pretty cool. Has anyone else done this before? I think this was just a training video. It would be cool if she could do it in a full beam routine. I think this will be rated at "E" if a gymnast can successfully perform it at worlds or Olympic.

 

Ablyazin 2012 Voronin Cup FX

Here is Olympic bronze medalist Denis Ablyazin Voronin Cup FX routine. He moves really quick. One issue about this routine is that there is no real artistry. Great routine though. Shame about the foot going out of bounds on the Piked Arabian.

Just Because...Random

I'm running out of ideas for this blog. I guess I have to think harder :D. This blog post is pretty much random/rant.

It's no secret that I am a huge Afanasyeva fan. I was watching some training videos of Afan when I came across a video of her training the double attitude spin. The double attitude spin is named after Ksenia Semenova. It's no surprise that these two have the best double attitude spins in gymnastics. They both come from the same gym and have the same coach. I personally find attitude spins more aesthetically pleasing to watch than any other spins in gymnastics. Doing a double attitude spin is hard and it's hard to make it look beautiful like Semenova's and Afanasyeva's. I have seen a lot of nice single attitude turns from many different gymnasts but no beautiful double attitude turns like Afanasyeva and Semenova. The Memmel Spin is probably harder than the attitude but most gymnasts make that spin unpleasing to watch. Plus there are too many gymnasts doing the Memmel. I've seen some gymnasts attempt double attitudes but none of them come close to looking anything like Afanasyeva's and Semenova's. Even some of the other Russians who attempted the "Semenova" made it look wonky.

Here's the short training vid. It was during the 2010 Netherlands tri-meet.

(Source: echoesinthewind)

And here's another turn being done by Afan. It's the leg at horizontal turn or L-turn. I absolutely hate that turn. It's ugly. It began to be a trend in the 05-08 quad and it never died. I can't stand that spin. Afan adds a little elegance to that ugly spin on FX. I like how creative her coach is. Afan eventually stopped doing the double stag because it's worth nothing. Later on Grishina started to do the stag too but took it out.

 (Source: starkofwinterfell)