Alive and Kicking

Sorry for the scare, everyone, I am still here! Battling a nasty cold but still here! I am still without a working laptop and, in response to someone's suggestion, am nowhere near an internet cafe. A solution is only a couple of days away though, so until then I am making do with alternating between my phone and our slow old PC. I'm as frustrated as you all are but appreciate your patience. So here's a quick catch-up. 1. Cottbus Cup: We were represented in Germany by Rotterdam team members Ashleigh Brennan and Larrissa Miller. Ash managed a commendable 7th in the floor final, Larrissa finished 8th in bars qualification to unfortunately miss out on that final. 2. Paris-Bercy World Cup: Lauren Mitchell and Prashanth Sellathurai are currently flying the flag for Australia. Qualification has proved to be a bumpy ride, with errors for Mitchell on bars, beam and on her new floor tumble - whip immediate double Arabian. Her best result was a 4th place qualification for the beam final. Prashanth is having more luck, blitzing pommel qualification with 7.0 difficulty and 9.000 execution according to IG. Wowzers! See a report from IG and scores from the qualification round here. The Gym Examiner has an on-the-scene report and videos from podium training and the qualification here. French Youtubers are dutifully putting videos up here. ETA: Rough outings for both Mitchell and Sellathurai in their finals. Lauren suffered a fall on her 2-foot layout to finish 4th on beam. Prashanth also had a fall from pommel though the crowd got behind him to finish. Both finished in 4th place. 3. Gymnix International: Another mixed bag of results for our budding superstars after their duel with Great Britain. Several of our delegation made finals, but only one held on for some hardware- Nikki Chung showed a masterful beam routine that scored her bronze in the final. Onya Nikki! I certainly hope to see Georgia Wheeler's new double layout bars dismount in action at national events! You can see videos of Team Australia at the event here. Results are on the competition page. 4. Pac-10 Championships: It was an all-Aussie affair today with adopted homes Stanford and OSU competing alongside a handful of other schools in one of the biggest meets on the road to the NCAA gymnastics championships. The PHENOMENAL news out of the event is that Perth's own Olivia Vivian has clawed back her #1 national bars ranking, scoring a 9.9 to tie for first place on the event and, in the process, help Oregon State to the team title. And she scored a second place on beam with a 9.9! A #1 NCAA ranking and Pac-10 title is the first for an Australian gymnast within the NCAA program. I hope to have my videos from the VWHPC open day up within the next fortnight. The event's official photographer has some lovely photos up here. Coming up next in their gym is the Senior Invitational on April 9. Sorry (again) for the delays. Drop me a line at ozgymblog@gmail.com to raise any issues you might have.