EF Medalists Day 2 || Nanning 2014

Alright this day was filled with some disappointments and excitements. I watched the FIG stream. I still wish it was streamed free for all. As I really hate to use proxy apps but I do what I have to for the love of this sport.

Full HB Results

First off Kohei Uchimura. That HB finals! CASSINA + KOLMAN!!! What a nice surprise. He went all out and increased his difficulty to 7.2. Very nice combo and it made me happy that he did that combo. In a way I missed the tak 1/2 + Kolman but that will be his regular combo. Uchimura is amazing. I can't wait to see the tumblr gifs. He scored 15.725. It wasn't enough to beat beast Zonderland's 7.7 difficulty routine! His routine is insane. Filled with sky high releases. Similar release of Uchimura with Cassia + Kovacs a bit less difficult but still amazing. I like the Kolman + Gaylord. Zonderland is still the best on high bar for 16.225! Croatia's Moznik fought for 3rd for a well deserved 15.000. I know some won't consider this a disappointment but Zhang. Zhang's hand guard broke. It was not meant to be. He would have medalled somewhere on the podium. And Calvo from Columbia fell and that was sad to see. I like his routine.

 Full MAG VT Results 

This finals was disappointing for my friend. She was sad for Yang Hak Seon. But we both agreed that the podium finish was well deserved and good. I felt for Yang. I believe he will get the vault named after him? He did get a score for it. He is still amazing and gutsy for going for it. We already know he can do it. As he already did it at Korean Cup and it was nicely done. It wasn't Yang's day today. His second vault was not much hope too. He landed but fell. He's really courageous for doing these difficult twisting vault. Who would have imagine we'll see these kind of vaults in this day and age? Yang came in 7th. The winner was Ri Se Gwang. It really pains me to see him after the Ri vault but I guess it's worth it when he wins. It's his vault and of course he'll want to compete his own skill. It's an insane vault! He really deserved that title. Really difficult vaults. Radivilov 2nd and Dalton 3rd. They both did good vaults to finish on the podium. Just one quick comment, haha it's quite amusing that Radivilov's Dragulescu travels far.

Full PB Results

This was a nice podium finish. OLEG VERNIAIEV! He finallys leaves this championships happy :). I felt really happy when he won. When his score flashed 16.125 I knew it would take something special for the other guys to overtake him. His routine was beautifully executed. When Leyva competed I knew it wasn't enough but Leyva did a well deserved 2nd 15.933 routine. And then there is Kato :). It's nice to see him in 3rd even if for a bit he was pissy when Leyva went ahead of him :P. That made me laugh. Deng Shudi had the highest difficulty but he lost lots of execution. I was nervous when he competed the Bhavsar but nice that he stuck his dismount. He seemed happy enough that he did all he could do and even later smiled at the camera when he knew it wasn't going to be enough to medal.

Full BB Results 


This finals was a disappointment. Well I'm glad Biles took the title because it was well deserved. I'm crowning her the Queen of this championships. 4 GOLD medal wins. What an incredible athlete. My favourite part of her routine is the the dismount. Really difficult 2 ff into full in tuck. I really enjoyed watching fan favourite Bai Yawen's routine. She was on today. Very lovely dance elements, loved the slow mo replays. I hope tumblr people gif those.

Okay so now for the interesting bits. Mustafina's routine. Everything was going well. She missed her connections from switch leap and majorly failed to connect the acrobatic requirement. She lost 5 tenths for that mistake. Not arguing anything there. Yet still managed to medal. I'm not happy about that. Teramoto really deserved that bronze medal. The judges rejected her inquiry. The judges were really cruel to not give credit for the 3/1 twists dismount.

This is what Teramoto's beam got:

2/1 Turn (D)
Onodi (D)
Leap series
2 ff + LOSO 0.1SB
Front Aerial (D)
Side Somi (D)
Johnson Leap (C)
Switch Leap (C)
Aerial Cartwheel (D)
5/2 Dismount (D)

3.0 + 0.1SB = 3.1 + 2.5CR = 5.6 D-score.

I agree with everything except the dismount. Her feet was all the way around IMO. Judges needs to be consistent when crediting twists. If she had been credited with 3/1 twists she would have been given 5.8 to lead for 3rd. They rejected her inquiry quickly. Well when I thought about it, it might of been harsh to discredit Mustafina's acrobatic series too. So in many ways everything worked out. Seeing the replay made me more calm. The results seems legit enough. I just felt the judges are harsh on WAG twists and in the past they always gave credit to undeserving gymnasts incomplete twisting. Teramoto should have been credited. I just felt this final was lackluster. Thanks to Bai Yawen beam or else this finals would have been boring for me.



Full WAG FX 

What can I say? Biles was ahead of everyone. Her difficulty is amazing. And she really deserved that medal without any doubts 15.333. She is a very strong and athletic gymnast. Nice to see Iorchace get 2nd 14.800. Good for her :). The moment for 3rd was Mustafina's routine 14.733. Nice to see her make her floor more exciting with the 2 whips. Generally she is an artistic gymnast. But I didn't like her overall routine, in terms of music and choreography. It lacked something that she used to have in her past floor routines. This one was kind of boring and those socks! Those socks are not really elegant :P. But I'm happy that Mustafina fans can celebrate and be happy for her 3rd place finish.

Overall I felt this world Championships was nice. It's nice to see full teams competing. If anything Kohei Uchimura winning his 5th AA tittle really made the difference for me. I'm glad I was able to watch this whole competition. It was all worth it to wake up at insane times. It's all over and now I can relive it all in replay. Well I hope all the replay become available without the proxy restrictions. Thanks to my gym fan for skyping with me during worlds. You know who you are and it was fun :) Now it's time to celebrate Canadian thanksgiving gobble gobble.
  

Epke Zonderland 2014 Doha Cup HB & PB

He was a double gold medalists today. He tied with Marcel Nguyen on pbars and won on high bars. Full results.
 

Part 3: Favourite Gymnastics of 2013 ~ MAG

My favourite would be king Kohei Uchimura reigning as world AA champ for the 5th time in a row (one being Olympic AA). It never gets boring watching him win. He is truly an amazing gymnast. What makes it more exciting is to see if any other guys can beat him. Uchimura has the execution that most gymnasts do not have. Even when he is not perfect he is still ahead of his competitors. Not many gymnasts can execute skills like him. He also has some insane difficulty that he doesn't even compete because he is working the code to his advantage. He doesn't need to do some difficulty because he doesn't need them or he sacrifices them for safety and execution. Hopefully one day we will get to see his full out difficulty in competition. He always comes out with some of the best training clips. Like Kovacs + Kolman + Kolman or Cassina + Kolman + Kovacs.

My favourite HB routine. Check out the 3/1 DLO Fedorchenko dismount (F).

Denis Ablyazin FX from Universiade is one of my favourite routine of this year. He does a lot of hard difficult salto skills. Love the fwd 2/1 twists + dbl front tuck (D+D) 0.2CV and the 2/1 DLO (F). Also someone in the comment section from part 1 mentioned his dbl front twists + dbl front pike (D+E) 0.2CV. I can't believe I forgot that. That's a nice combo. It's a shame he didn't qualify to world's floor finals.
  Jake Dalton FX from worlds EF. He won 2nd on this event. I like the Tamayo (F) and the stuck 3/1 Twists (D).  

Kenzo Shirai FX from worlds EF. I can't leave him out. I like his gold medal performance. That quad twists (F)! I also like the side-somie with a 1/1 twist (C).

Yang Hak Seon being a badass on vault. His 3/1 front handspring (6.4) still impresses me. I hope he will get the Kas 5/2 by 2014 Nanning. Ri Se Gwang is another badass vaulter. Too bad he didn't qualify to worlds vault finals because his vaults are insane. Check out his vaults from this year's Doha's Cup. They are easily some of my favourite vaults from this year.

Epke Zonderland's HB from worlds EF. I get that he's not the cleanest guy on bars but his routine is still insane and worth fanning over. His high D-score advantage helps him a lot.

Bobby Baker's full twist double front. I wasn't sure if I should post this in the new skill section since technically we knew he was doing it in 2012 but this is still MAG and it's a favourite skill that I like, heck this whole routine is good.
What were your favourite MAG routines of the year?

Worlds 2013 MAG Day 2 Event Final Results

VT - Full Results

1) Yang Hak Seon KOR 15.533 AVG

He upped back his difficulty on his first vault. In prelims he only FHS 5/2. Today he did his Yang, the FHS 3/1. It was a very clean vault with a small step forward, 15.733. On his second vault he only went for Kas 2/1. Big hop back but still a very clean vault with nice leg form, 15.333. He submitted the Kas 5/2 for this championships but never did it. Maybe next year he will be more prepared. So happy he won.

2) Steven Legendre USA 15.249 AVG

First vault was a Dragulescu, very deep landing but still good vault 15.266. Second vault was Tsuk dbl pike. It was done well, 15.233 better execution than his first vault.

3) Kristian Thomas GBR 15.233 AVG

His first vault was really good. He stuck a very nice Yurchenko dbl pike for 15.500. His second vault was less difficult and it was okay. FHS tuck 2/1 and he hopped back, 14.966.

Oh and Kenzo Shirai did his 3/1 Yurchenko! Crazy how he can do it. He pre-twist slightly but still amazing. I think the vault is named the Shirai-Kim since Hee Hoon Kim also successfully did it.

PB - Full Results 

1) Lin Chaopan CHN (6.7) 15.666
1) Kohei Uchimura JPN (6.7) 15.666
3) John Orozco USA (6.8) 15.533

This finals was weird because some guys had major errors. Tsolakidis basically gave up and didn't do a dismount. I liked the Chinese. You Hao was good but had an error. He had the highest difficulty today. It's weird that at this championships gymnasts can tie. I don't understand the rules for ties. Actually I do get it but some years gymnasts don't share ties so it's weird. It needs to be consistent. Kohei upped his difficulty by 3 tenths for this final, I like his execution.

HB - Full Results

1) Epke Zonderland (7.7) 16.000
2) Fabian Hambuchen (7.4) 15.933
3) Kohei Uchumura (6.9) 15.633

I'm cool with these results. Epke may not be the cleanest guy but his routine is exciting. He has a crazy 7.7 difficulty that helps him win over guys who have clean execution. Fabian did well. I wanted him to win but he was down on difficulty and execution. I think maybe if he had stuck his dismount he would have won. Kohei had a very clean and nice routine except for a near big mistake. During one of his pirouette he almost lost strength and maybe had to take an extra swing but he went right into his Yamawaki.  

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.

Gymnastics Olympic Event Finals Day 3

I'm really excited about this finals. The gentlemen will compete on parallel bars and high bar. The ladies will be on beam and floor exercise. The event finals will begin live at 9:00 AM EDT. Good luck to all the ladies and gentlemen. Start list: CLICK HERE  

The competition will start in about 6min I'm watching it live here: BBC

EDIT 1:

FULL RESULTS
1) Feng Zhe (CHN) Very high difficulty 7.0. Good clean stuff.
2) Marcel Nguyen (GER) Good difficulty 6.8 and difficult Tsuk dismount.
3) Hamilton Sabot (FRA) Good 6.7 difficulty and very clean routine.

EDIT 2: FULL RESULTS

This was a weird competition. Too many mistakes. Thank you China for being awesome. Afanasyeva showed GOOD SPORTS-MANSHIP. Ponor wining third is a travesty. I was rooting for Raisman to take 3rd. What a shame! Ponor was too wobbly and had many many execution faults. This will be one of the most controversial event finals. Congrats to the daredevil Deng Linlin, you rock. I thought Sui should have won but hey China 1-2, cheer up Sui.

1) Deng Linlin (CHN)
2) Sui Lu (CHN)
3) Catalina Ponor (ROM)
3) Aly Raisman (USA)

Edit 3: Raisman in 3rd Catalina in 4th. WTF this final was crazy. What is wrong with the judges! Get it right the first time!

EDIT 4: Oh god Sui Lu is such a DIVA!

EDIT 5: What an AMAZING high bar final! One of the best in history. Zonderland finally gets a well deserved gold medal. Hambuechen really stepped it up I'm happy for his silver. Zou in 3rd.

1) Epke Zonderland 2) Fabian Hambuechen 3) Zou Kai FINAL RESULTS

EDIT 6:

1)ALY RAISMAN. She is so powerful and such a phenomenal tumbler. Powerful gymnastics is just as beautiful as artistic and elegant gymnastics. Raisman may not be elegant but her attitude and determination is beautiful. She is a class act. She has such a difficult routine it's crazy. She finally gets a well deserved GOLD! It's really easy to like Raisman as a person. She seems like such a nice girl. Congratulation Aly Raisman :)

2) Ponor did a wonderful job. She had two stuck landing on DLO and dbl Pike. She really fought out there for a medal. I may not like her routine but she deserved this silver. She's freaking 24! Cool.

3) ALIYA MUSTAFINA! I somehow knew she could do it. She is a born champion. She just knows how to compete. I'm happy she got this. We at least got to see grace and elegance on medal. Mustafina is boss and I'm looking forward to seeing more of her in the next quad.

6) Afanasyeva. Once a headcase, always a headcase. I knew it was coming. She majorly went out of bounds on her third pass. She stuck her triple full from connections though :D. It wasn't meant to be Afan. She's still a wonderful gymnast.

8) Izbasa - I was rooting for her to take gold if Afan couldn't do it. She failed on her last pass. Everything else was going good though. It was really unexpected. Hey she has a vault gold LOL and she still has her 2008 floor gold.

FULL RESULTS