Favourite Things of 2014

I might have missed a lot of things but these are the things that quickly came to my mind. This was not a well thought out post.

WAG

VT: Hong Un Jong's EF Nanning

UB: This was kind of hard for me but I will go with Yao Jinnan's Nanning EF. I love how crisp her connected pirouettes are and the stuck DLO. Of course I still like the look of Russians on bars and the unique combos of team Great Britain.

BB: Bai Yawen's Nanning EF. This comes immediately to my mind. I love her lines and clean execution. This will definitely be something I will remember of 2014.

FX: Simone Biles USA Classic floor routine. It's just amazing. Overall this is my favourite routine of 2014 for WAG.

Cool skills: Mustafina's 3/1 Y-Turn, Schaefer's Side-somi 1/2

MAG

FX: Denis Ablyazin & Kenzo Shirai.

PH: Krisztian Berki Nanning EF

SR: Liu Yang Nanning EF

VT: Donnell Whittenburg, Yang Hak Seon & Ri Se Gwang (badass)

PB: Oleg Verniaiev Nanning EF

HB: Kohei Uchimura Nanning EF  

Cool Skills: Bretschneider's 2/1 Kovacs, Shirai's 3/1 DLO

What were your favourite routines, skills or combinations for this year. I would love to know so that I can remember what routines happened this year. Please comment :).

EF Medalists Day 1 || Nanning 2014

I watched this live on FIG feed. I managed to stay alive during all the event finals. By the time it was over I was struggling to blog about it on here. I even had to save this post as a draft. Perhaps last night I should have not been blogging on tumblr :P. This is pretty much a half ass post. I'm gonna try to remember everything from early last night.

MAG FX Full Results 

This final was okay. I think the floor routine I liked the most was Hypolito. Very unique combinations. He came in 3rd for 15.700. Ablyazin came in 1st 15.750. He did a good job. Not his best in terms of landings but his routine had all the nice tricks. I really enjoy a nice DDLO. Disappointed for Kenzo Shirai but even he knew he didn't do enough to win. He went out of bounds again and he wasn't as crisp on his landings this time. What's interesting is that he almost won if it weren't for that out of bounds or perhaps the small little hops on landings. Shirai came in 2nd 15.733. Other guys, Jake Dalton and Korea's Kim Hansol were clean guys. Very nice to see that. Dalton's 3/1 full dismount is always nice and clean. What else? There was Zapata from Spain who rebounded out of something and flew high. I missed what that was. Later I'm gonna go replay it. Perhaps we'll see a gif of it :)

WAG VT Full Results

Hong Un Jong of N. Korea took the gold. Her Amanar has improved a lot. Her Cheng vault was good enough for 1st. At first I wasn't sure if she'll be able to win because Biles had two cleanly executed vaults. The tension was building after Biles finished her second vault. The judges just didn't give her a high enough execution to win. This time I felt Biles had a superior Amanar to Hong's. She had a small hop forward like always but the height and aggression on it was amazing. She really put her energy into it. Skinner came in 3rd. Her Cheng was cleanly done except for the one handed technique. It still bothers me a lot but it obviously doesn't for the judges. The guy commentator said it was beautiful vault. While I do agree to some level I just can't say it since she doesn't block with both hands. Still yeah it's clean enough.

PH Full Results

This event started off with Keatings. He had the highest difficulty but had too many issues. Too bad for him. I really liked the elegant and long lines of Tommasone. He came in 3rd 15.600. I didn't catch much of Ude but it seems he was good enough for 2nd, good for him 15.783. Berki came in 1st 16.033. He is still a world class pommels worker. Very nice routine. I'm still trying to get the hang of the pommel codes :).




UB Full Results

Mustafina kicked off this event. Her difficulty was just too low. And the judges weren't forgiving to her form breaks. She's a great gymnast and I know there are many disappointed fans that wanted to see her medal but everything was not in her favour. She is a big girl and can accept the results. We all know she can do a harder routine. Perhaps this world championships was not to rush difficulty but to mainly focus on team finals. We'll never know. In any case Spiridonova got 3rd 15.283. How good for her? Her routine is based out of 6.4 and she had slightly better escore. How dare she beat Mustafina :P Nah just joking her routine was better. I hope this gives Spiridonova more confidence going into the next world championships and perhaps the Olympics. Please stay healthy! Downie had an exciting release filled routine but her execution really hurt her. The Chinese were in a league of their own. Yao 6.9 and Huang 6.8 Dscores! Just too much advantage for them. Chinese will always find ways to be on top of bars difficulty. It's gonna be hard for other nations to get close to those Dscores but it can happen. I'm happy Yao finally got a gold medal 15.633 and what about Huang 15.566. Badass for not wearing grips. Not even those small dinky tape ones. Badass. Very old school gymnast.



SR Full Results

It was a battle between Liu and Zanetti. Last year Liu qualified first and disappointingly finished 4th. This year he was out for blood and came on top. Very strong and cleanly executed routine 15.933. Zanetti was not quite on today but managed 2nd 15.733. There will be a battle in Rio. You Hao put in an inquiry and so his Dscore raised to 7.0, the highest in the competition. Ablyazin was on fire today. He tied with You Hao for 3rd 15.700. Let's see what Ablyazin can do in VT finals.

Overall day one event finals was nice. I can't wait for day two. Hwaaaaaah I'm tired. Next quad wolds needs to be in N. America. At least the Olympics will be in Rio so the times will be sane for us North American people. Well for us east coasters that is :P.     

Gymnastics Olympic Event Finals Day 1, Part 2

The competition will start in about 5 minutes. I'll be watching here live: BBC

EDIT 1: HELL YEAH, Zou Kai! He was on today on floors. Uchimura had tooo many twists but at least they were CLEAN, I'm happy he won silver. No more event finals for Uchimura. Russia's Ablyazin had a pretty sick routine, congrats to him. Floor Results

Women's vault finals was a DIRTY competition. I felt so sorry for the majority of the ladies. Especially for Maroney. What a sad day. I thought she had it. Honestly, I thought she had still won even with the fall but it wasn't meant to be. I'm happy that Izbasa won but I hate to be a downer but she was pretty scrappy and her vaults weren't really pretty. She didn't fall so she deserved her win. I really want to see her step it up in floor finals though. I would be more happy for her on floor if she wins. OK so Maria Paseka's Amanar was not fully rotated and she had huge landing problems but got third, oh well that's the COP. Vault Results

In Pommel Horse finals Smith and Berki tied but Berki won with the better execution. Berki was truly the cleaner gymnast. He floats much better than a heavy and a bit laboured Smith. Congrats to all the medalists.

PH Results

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

Some MAG European Vids

Smith D-6.9 + E-8.855 = 15.755

 

VS

Golden Berki D-6.9 + E-9.058 = 15.958

 

Marcel Nguyen Gold PB 15.766

 

Vlasios Maras Bronze HB- 15.266 - I liked this routine

2012 MAG European EF

Just finished watching live stream of finals. Europeans is nothing like worlds but still worth watching. Here are the final results. I put the results down like this for my own personal reference. Having a blog is good because I can go back and re-read things for references :)

Floor Exercise: CLICK RESULTS
1) 15.766 GRE Eleftherios Kosmidis
2) 15.300 BLR Dzmitry Barkalau
3) 15.166 FRA Gael da Silva
3) 15.166 ISR Alexander Shatilov

Pommel Horse: CLICK RESULTS
1) 15.958 HUN Krisztian Berki
2) 15.755 GBR Louis Smith
3) 15.300 ARM Harutyum Merdinyan
An interesting tidbit: Louis Smith tweeted, "Berki's start score was wrong and I should have won." Oh oh someone is mad. Smith thought he should of won. I'm not an expert on PH. Here is the article source from BBC: bbc.co.uk/sport

Still Rings: CLICK RESULTS
1) 15.666 RUS Aleksandr Balandin
2) 15.466 ITA Matteo Morandi
3) 15.433 RUS Denis Ablyazin

Vault: CLICK RESULTS
1) 16.166 ROM Flavius Koczi
2) 16.066 UKR Igor Radivilov
3) 16.062 RUS Denis Ablyazin

Parallel Bars: CLICK RESULTS
1) 15.766 GER Marcel Nguyen
2) 15.666 UKR Oleg Verniaiev
3) 15.600 SLO Mitja Petkovsek

High Bar: CLICK RESULTS
1) 15.833 RUS Emin Garibov
2) 15.566 CRO Marijo Moznik
3) 15.266 GRE Vlasios Maras

Friday Gymnastic News

Since I already started talking about the Canadian National's I felt like I should finish what I started. There hasn't been any official scores out yet but the very reliable gymnastic blog gymnasticscoaching.com has a lot of Canadian National news. I especially liked how he had some MAG details.
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MAG Europeans is going on in Montpellier, France. Here are all the details from: International Gymnast
The official website: ffgym.com
Tons of videos are being uploaded here: GymPOWER1 YouTube Channel
Official European YouTube Channel: europeangymnastics

Olympic hopeful Louis Smith of GBR tied with world champ Krisztian Berki of Hungary on PH in qualification. But with the tie breaking rule Berki finished first because of Smith's lower E-score.

Berki D-6.7 +  E-9.2 = 15.9
Smith D-6.9 + E-9.0 = 15.9