At last!
Videos of Perth's own OSU debutante Olivia Vivian have emerged on YouTube.
See her in her debut performance (where she scored 9.7), at the Cancun Classic, here.
See her in the team's meet against Brigham Young University here.
According to reports, Olivia is currently struggling with a foot injury so participation in upcoming meets is uncertain at the moment.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
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8 comments:
Ive only recently found this blog but i would like to thank you Mez you have proved to me there are other people like me that are unhealthily (if thats even a word) obsessed with WAG and i am so glad that there is now a blog i can allways refer to when i need updates on news :)
thank you so much
love from another huge gymnastics fann
Thanks for the link. Olivia really looks like a levels gymnast with poor body form and technique. She looks to be a weak link in her USA university team and not at all on par with an Olympic gymnast. I do hope she is enjoying herself over there, what an opportunity and certainly an inspiration to many looking for an alternate pathway in university.
My lord Anonymous you said exactly what I was thinking. Those routines would definitely suggest she is the weak link. Those college girls are pretty pro compared with Olivia. She looks so sluggish and so "levels gymnast" as you put it. I've got a soft spot for Olivia coz she's a great kid, but I've NEVER liked her gymnastics style.
At the best of times, Livvy may appear to lack the polish of Dasha/Naomi Russell etc. Bear in mind, though, that she'd just got over one injury (after a long period of not being able train with the team because she was waiting to hear from the NCAA clearance commitee) and now has another. She was playing catch-up with the team after the Olympics and throughout early January.
I'm sure the coaches will give her tips, and her execution will develop as she progresses through the NCAA system and sees what other athletes are doing.
Why would a gymnast who went to Beijing really need to play 'catch up' to college gymnasts?
I believe she at one point used the term herself (or at least, a similar one). She wasn't able to train with the team, didn't have ample enough opportunity to train at her fullest for a long period, to get used to the equipment, to get used to the atmosphere and how the college training system can differ to the elite Olympian one.
ETA: From a Gazette Times article:
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It took a few extra months of waiting, but she’s now part of the team.
“The first couple months I went along with it, I was like, ‘OK, well, my body needs resting anyway,’ ” Vivian said. “It got a little hard in the last month. I felt a little bit that I wasn’t with the team kind of thing and they are looking amazing and I haven’t started training yet. I was worried about playing the catch-up kind of game.
“But the team is really supportive and the coaches are really helpful. They comforted me a lot and they made it a lot easier.”
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And from an article posted in the last few days -
"To be honest, I thought it would be easy, but life always seems to dish out problems to make it harder. My main obstacle was getting cleared to train and compete by the NCAA. I arrived here in September, and I was not cleared to train until the 26th of November.
Now in gymnastics, if you take a week off, it takes you two to get back to normal. I took three months off.
With time off you tend to lose strength, but more importantly, orientation of your whereabouts when doing skills. We spend most of our routines upside down, and if you don't know where you, are the end result isn't pretty [especially on beam]. I saw this problem as a challenge, and straight after Thanksgiving I was back in the gym, ready to play "catch-up" to the other girls."
Thanks for posting that Mez, you defintely have done your research, but I still have little faith that Olivia will ever be in the top echelon of NCAA gymnasts. She doesn't have (and never has had) the polish of a lot of those girls. Knees, toes, posture, FORM etc. She is a brilliant gymnast, and did wonderful things for our WAG team, but I don't think she'll ever be at the top. I don't want to put her down, cause she is great, but I'm not optimistic those form errors will ever change. But I hope she's having the time of her life over there anyway!
All I hope is that they keep her on the team for the duration of her college years because the experience would be pretty damn awesome. I hope she's living it up US college style!
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