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?

Some Thoughts on American Cup '13

First congratulations to Dalton and Ohashi for winning. Results here I missed the first half of the competition for MAG: FX, PH, SR and WAG: VT. I watched the German coverage which had Philipp Boy commentary. Of course I didn't understand any of the commentary but he seemed to of enjoyed Ohashi's beam and I think he even asked his co host if Ohashi's Memmel spin was elegant, and it was.


I kind of felt sorry for Danell Leyva :( Apparently he was sick so hopefully that was the reason why he was faltering. I'm happy that Victoria Moors came in 3rd AA. I like her floor routine but what is up with her spin? I might sound like an ass for saying this but I hate the spin. Someone please enlighten me on it. I don't get it. One of my friend said that it looked like she was covering up a hurt knee :D I just don't like how she falls to the ground. I know that she does it on purpose but why?

I thought the judges were harsh on Asuka Teramoto's downgraded 3/1 twists but then it was fair game because Ohashi was also downgraded on her leap elements.

I'm still not sure if I like Ohashi's floor routine: Ohashi's beam is growing on me. Ohashi never connected what she intended to but the fact that her difficulty score was still 6.8 is astounding, it's just crazy that it can be up in the 7.3 range when she hits everything. Vanessa Ferrari is still kicking ass on floor with a dbl dbl tuck! Aside from Ohashi and maybe Teramoto's beam, I wasn't really impressed with the beam performances. Well Simone Biles two flic flac to full in tuck impressed me but not the other parts of her routine.

This competition is the beginning of the gymnastics season so I can understand that not everyone was at their best peak. I will say this though, I miss Kohei Uchimura's good form and execution.

*All gifs made by: jyosef

Gymnastics Olympic Event Finals Day 1, Part 1

This competition will start tomorrow at 9:00 AM EDT time. It will feature the men's floor exercise and pommel horse. The women will only have their vault finals.  Each event will only have 8 competitors. The best 8 gymnasts went through a grueling process to qualify to an event. They will vie for a gold medal as a specialists. I love the event finals. 

Floor: can go in anyway. I would love for Kohei Uchimura to do his double triple tuck, yes double triple tuck or known as the Ri jong Song. It's a crazy skill worth 7 tenths. I'm not expecting him to do well if he goes all out. He has already won his most important gold medal (AA) and that's all that counts IMHO.

There is Zou Kai from China. He's not liked much by fans but he will be one of the strongest competitors. He is really good on floor.

Koczi of Romania has good difficulty but way toooooo much twisting combos with even worse form than Zou IMO. He got a pretty good score in prelims.

There is also the stylish Gonzalez and fan girl favourite Dalton. Uchimura and Zou will go up 1-2 first, so they will both have to be almost perfect and impress the judges.
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Vault: I'm all about Maroney. She must win the vault title. She has IMO the best Amanar in the world. She will have some competition IMO from Izbasa, Paseka and Chusovitina. Yamilet Pena Abreu is also another fierce competitor. She can do a tucked double front vault (Produnova) but she usually falls on it and sometimes doesn't get credit. It will be interesting to see if she can land the Produnova in finals. Also shout out to Black and Rogers from Canada for making the finals.
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Pommel Horse: It will definitely be all about Smith VS Berki. I really don't care about this event. Wouldn't it be cool if Tommasone won? Allez allezTommasone, sorry I couldn't resist.

Start List for tomorrow:  CLICK HERE
I'll be watching live coverage here: BBC