Monday, July 13, 2009

2009 Nationals: WAG Team Final 2

Apparently last night's team final proved so disappointing, a collective unspoken "ooohhh...kaaaaay?" was detected from audience members.

GA takes a lighter look at the event here. IG also has an article this morning but I can't access it right now, grrrr.

P-Liddy says:

“Lauren is about 85%. She’s not 100% fit yet and it was the first time she has done that brand new, fully loaded, jam packed routine.
“She’s been out for six months and hasn’t been able to twist with that rib injury so all that considered, I’m happy where she’s at.
“The element she fell on she can do that in her sleep. It was just a miscalculation.

“Potential wise it’s a world championships winning performance and that’s what we’re going for.
“A national title would be nice but we’re taking that extra risk because we’re going for a medal. Were going for world champion now.
“If she can hit that routine, at a 7.2 that would be the highest start value that’s been performed this year. We’re going all guns a-blazing.”

My Perth peeps, however, had repeatedly used the words "splatfest" and "let-down" in their summaries to me. Mind you, one of those was not a seasoned competition attendee. Here are some notes from Nade -

Lauren looked OK, but below her Beijing form for sure. One cool thing she did was double arabian-immediate stag jump(!!!). She did pike full in (OOB), her double arabian pass, 2.5+tuck front (watering down) and double pike. She is not doing a squat turn on the floor rather than a triple turn. On beam did did ff-ff-layout which was ok. She has added a switch leap half. She seemed to lack concentration, she didn't hit her squat turn at all and sort of stood up in a daze and nearly fell off in the process. She also fell on her front aerial as mentioned, and nearly on her dismount as well. She also has a pike front in the routine now.

Shona was also below Beijing form. She vaulted a yurchenko 1/2 on front tuck 1/2 off, oddly. I dunno, maybe she is training a half-on tucked rudi off? It seemed a weird choice. I did see her do a Yfull in warmups though. She nearly fell on floor and her score was in the 12s. She did full-in tuck, 2.5+front tuck 1/2, a double twist and then double pike. She was reliable but not spectacular on beam as usual. She did not do the shaposhnikova on bars, instead she brought back the piked jaeger which she had omitted at Vics.

Georgia-Rose Brown is a gorgeous gymnast but fell about 6 times across 4 events.
Larrissa Miller has beautiful form and lines. She hit her bars for 14.025 but fell on both floor and beam multiple times.

Mary-Anne, who I was thrilled to see, only did bars, and only a few skills at that. She had a markelov and a tkatchev but didn't seem to have a transition to the low bar because she just got off and did a glide kip. Double pike dismount.

Emily Little had some decent skills (1.5ty, full-in on floor) etc, but she was laboured in a lot of her work. Her new floor is better but still not as good as those of her WAIS counterparts. Her bars reminded me a lot of Melanie Jones at nationals last year, she had to muscle nearly everything, had a scrappy gienger, and lacked the strength and momentum to make it over the bar on some of her giants. Basically she was efficient but lacked flair and personal style.

Victoria was the only state with a team in both junior and senior (which was really unfortunate considering the multiple teams last year) so they won both by default and the team competition was a little worthless.

Oh dear. Hope things are better for Day 2! Can't imagine how our head coach is feeling, or what she wants to say to all of our coaches!

On a happier note - HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVIA VIVIAN!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Anyone got a breakdown for how the 7.2 was achieved? I know she added in a bhs bhs layout combo, front pike and has brough back the switch half but 7.2 still seems ridculously high even with her retaining the aerial front tuck and bhs bhs double pike dismount. for anyone who saw the routine can yuo shed some light?

Anonymous said...

I have a video of the routine bit not enough technical knowlege to work it out. I think there are a lot of conections which were missed last night because of the fall and the wobbles. I will try to get the video up on youtube so you more educated fans can work it out.

Anonymous said...

I have read the IG article and the only thing different from the GA article is that it states that Victoria was the only state to field a full team.

Anonymous said...

good to see georgia made it to perth

nade00 said...

It seemed she also was trying to connect switch ring-back tuck.
This was the whole routine in theory:

-her mount
-front pike
-ff ff layout
-switch leap + back pike
-switch leap 1/2
-wolf jump+ split jump
-2.5 wolf turn
-front aerial + front tuck
-switch ring + back tuck
-ff ff double pike

Wolfie said...

The year after an Olympics is always a flat year in Australian WAG.
- It was the sort of the case in 1997 (the exceptions here were Lisa Moro and a myriad of very talented juniors aiming for Sydney).
- It was the case in 2001 after all those tragic early retirements.
- It was sort of the case in 2005 (though knowledge of Melbourne Worlds and Melbourne Comm Games kept some spark in the team members).
- And it's the case now.

Having said that, it's easy to become complacent and argue about peaking too early, developing skills slowly, burn out, our small population, our focus on outdoor sports, etc.

Though all these things are true, from my fan-only naive perspective, I don't believe our gymnasts are developed young enough or fast enough. We'll never compete with the big nations until we learn how to develop our juniors more rapidly. I don't know how - I just think we delay the necessary competitive progress.

Of course, then we have to worry about burn out, etc. :-(

Anonymous said...

I was in a way expecting the event to not that flash because like wolfy said, it's the year after the olympics. I don't think this year will be anything to remember achievement wise but that's ok so long as the following 3 years they get better - brinds

Anonymous said...

Wolfie I agree with you... its like all our gymnasts peak at around 18 but usually 20... while other countries its 16 (probably younger)... likewise I dont' know how we fix it but it's probably essential if we want to compete against the powerhouses. Perhaps more sponsors for the achieving gymnasts and a little more media coverage would help?