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I mean, AAAAAAAARGH MELBOURNE! 40 DEGREES! WHAT THE TROUSERS!?
Anyway.
So. The Youthlympic Festival. How 'bout it, hey?
Yeah. *cough* How 'bout it.
Stop me if you've heard it all already, but for my own closure and for those not members of forums etc, I'd like to have a run-down.
The Australian WAG team battled injury, with Mary-Anne Monckton and Ashley Cooney out and Zoe Lorenzin in. Emily Little, as I stated, won vault and was the highest-ranked Australian in the all-around, coming 4th. Britt Greeley, second to Emily in the vault final, was next highest in 7th. The Australia 'A' team placed 4th and the Australia 'B' team placed 5th in the teams final. Numerous spectators remarked that this team really didn't live up to expectations and have a lot of work to do before entering the senior ranks. Whether or not they were over-worked or nervous, we won't ever truly know. They did their best under the circumstances but they've certainly got some doubters to disprove.
Our men's team fared slightly better (we don't always get to say that, hey!). Team A placed 3rd and Team B placed 4th in the final. Again, we missed all-around medals with Ben Astley finishing highest in 4th. Thankfully, we snared medals in the floor final (silver and bronze), rings final (silver), vault final (bronze) and high bar final (silver). Onya, boys!
At this point I wish to give epic thanks to Nade, innocent_bystander, Chachakid and Flippin_Crzy at GGMB/WWGym for their great photos and videos and information. You guys really brought me up to speed!
In terms of multimedia (courtesy of the above sources):
Full results can be found here.
Some other photos can be found here. (Scroll down)
Photos by Gymnastics Australia can be found here.
Numerous videos can be found here. Watch Natalia Joura's bars from the team final if you can stomach it. It's a nervous splatfest (and then some).
On top of the rather disappointing results, these insights from attendees made me a little sad -
Saddest moment of the day had to be when Natalia fell on her last pass on floor and hurt her ankle. Her coach was sitting only a few steps away and could clearly see that she was in pain but did nothing to assist her. She limped a little bit then was forced to crawl to him. Whilst sitting next to him he continued to ignore her. This unknown man came up to her with ankle tape and she was given a bag of ice.
ETA: Video of this can be seen here, thanks to ChaChaKid. Quite concerning, I must say. She CRAWLS over to the seats, without assistance.
*****
I heard Peggy say to some unidentified lady afterwards that the elite gyms are either going to have to "get on board or get out". Oh joy- more broken Aussies!
*****
From what I heard from my coach, Peggy was NOT happy at all. To quote his Russian-English "This results, no good. 8 Australians, and no result. Long talks with coaches."
Hm... I can't WAIT to find out how the post-AYOF camp plays out...
9 comments:
This is OT but seems Mark Carlton has resigned from his position as WAG Head Coach at QAS.
After all the AIS coaches left in December, I wonder if he could be headed there? Maybe Kaladzinski will get the boot?
I hope this doesn't affect the gymnasts too much, they have a big crop of juniors and seniors coming up in QLD. I am wondering who will take over at QAS now; it is a big job.
Anyone know any more information about this?
Mark has apparantly gone to Cirque du soleil or so someone form QLD told me
Is anyone able to ID the gymnasts in the very first picture.
Ta.
Gymnasts are (in back) Tierra Exum (HPC/VIS), Karina Brooks (QAS), Georgia Rose Brown (MBC), Emma Collister (WGC/VIS), Svetlana Sanders (HPC/VIS)
In Front: Zoe Lorenzin (HPC/VIS), Maryanne Monckton (AIS), Natalia Joura (WAIS), Britt Greeley (HPC/VIS), Emily Little (WAIS)
I wouldn't take too many "i heard that so and so said that Peggy said blah blah blah" too seriously, i have read comments before that people have "heard" and a few times they have been completely inaccurate, it's very easy to manipulate information on the internet. Yes there is a lot of work to be done but it was not all doom and gloom - some of our girls have beutiful technique it's just that people want to see difficulty and think we are not in comparison because it is not out there yet. The british girls had a lot of difficulty but were often sloppy. i would rather see the girls not do a move rather than do it badly and not have it count anyway. i saw so many shootovers on bars that were awful and dangerous because they were so bad - let them perfect these moves first rather than just do them for the sak of it.
Yeah, I agree, Let's not misinterpret one comment. The 'get on baord' comment was directed at folks who weren't comp ready. When you represent Australia, you should be comp ready. A four day camp won't get anyone fit. Christmas is an important time for every one, but you don't get to represent Australia every day .. there will be another Christmas next year. I can understand the disappointment.
Ribbit
How come Emily Little looks so miserable in every photos?
How do this years WAG AYOF results compare with previous years? Are the girls better or worse?
Actually if you go back and look at results then previous years aren't that much better. In 2007 we finished 4th and 6th against the same countries with the best AA being Emma Dennis in 7th, Maryanne got a 2nd on floor and emma got a 2nd on vault.
2005 has Sims, Dykes and Joura and they finished 2nd with the B team in 3rd with the only other countries being china, chinese taipei and malaysia. 2003 there was 1 Aus team, china, canada, Japan and NZ. they finished 2nd and included Monette, Karen Nguyen, Steph Morrehouse and Lyn Silcock but the scores were quite low, even for the old code. it just seems our girls blossom more when they are seniors.
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