Woohoo! A timely GA update allows us to heartily congratulate...
Ash Brennan!
Georgia Rose Brown!
Emily Little!
Larrissa Miller!
Lauren Mitchell!
Maryanne Monckton!
(res: Nikki Chung and Georgia Wheeler!)
Check scores and standings at GA.
Onya, girls! Good luck in camp, see you on the other side.
63 comments:
Great team! Congrats, girls -- you'll do us proud!
Ashleigh must have a Tsukahara 1.5 -- her DV is higher than at Nationals.
I have to say that the tone of comments has changed dramatically in light of camp news.
I said not to sound any deathknells when the team hadn't even been picked!
It's nice to see people are looking up. Come on, guys, keep on cheering.
Ashleigh has competed a Tsuk 1.5 in the past. Good to se her back as a 3 eventer, we could definitely use another vault higher than 5.0.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk3CJM8fcO4
That's the first time she's competed it since her comeback, though, isn't it?
Good luck to the boys, too -- MAG team is announced tomorrow!
That's correct she's only done a Tsuk full since coming back so it's nice to see her regaining some more difficulty on an event where it's really needed.
I would love it above all things if we:
a) qualified our WAG team to team finals (and therefore the Olympics!), and
b) qualified our MAG team top 16 so they get another chance to compete as a team next year, and
c) Prashanth medals on pommel and gets to the Olympics
I'd like to see everyone do well individually as well, of course, but for me it's all about the team this year! Olympics first!
Thought MAM was a bit dissapointing after all the fuss that is made about her. Chung was close behind her. Little not over impressive apart from vault. Think Chung should be on the team, not resesrve.Don't think Little should do AA.
The selectors should be able to work out where we would sit ,roughly, on the international stage from these scores. Wonder where that would be? Hopefully top 8.
yeh MAM needs to pick it up or she might get replaced by chung at the last minute.
Were you there, or are you basing that on scores?
I must say that I strongly disagree. Mary-Anne is likely to contribute counting scores on bars, beam and floor, and is level-pegging with GRB on vault. She looks like she is hitting her difficulty consistently over multiple days of competition. Nikki would most likely only contribute on bars, at this stage.
That being said, I think it is simply an amazing achievement to Nikki to be back as strong as she is after such a recent injury. If she had had a bit more time, who knows? But for this team, she is fighting for the bars specialist spot against Larrissa, not against Mary-Anne.
There is nothing to say that Little will definitely do all-around, but it is likely. the only apparatus I can see her potentially being pulled from is (surprisingly) floor, if Miller and Brown are out-performing her there. Ash won't do bars and Larrissa won't do beam, so Little MUST do those apparatus in qualifications.
If we get to team finals, I think our line-ups will be:
VT
Lauren
Emily
Ashleigh
UB
Larrissa
Lauren
Mary-Anne
BB
Lauren
Ashleigh
Mary-Anne
FX
Lauren
Ashleigh
Mary-Anne
Good for Nikki, She may even overtake Emily soon, all she needs is her vault upgraded.
Add Georgia to the team final bars in place of either Lauren or Maryanne, I think is more likely.
Nikki seems to be in the right gym to have her vault upgraded, they seem to know how to train Yurchenkos there!
Lauren's double
Emily's double
Allana's 1.5 (a huge achievement given her struggles on vault!)
Jenny Smith's fabulous 1.5
Nice team! I'm definitely pleasantly suprised by the D-scores. Lauren has the highest fx score in the world at the moment, I think. If all the girls hit in prelims, we definitely should be in a shot at TFs. Go girls!
Yes WAIS does have a good record with vaults except you forgot to mention Dasha being first Australian to do a DTY was also at WAIS
Anon 11:11 I would put GRB in above MAM. MAM seems to let her self down with execution.It let her down in Japan earlier in the year and at Nationals.
Any video's yet?
Has anyone worked out how the Team score from trials compares to our Team score at last years Worlds? Are we close?
From Anon@11.11 -- yes, I meant to put Brown in the line-up, had a bit of a brain fart!
Ah of course -- Dasha! Her's was great, too.
MAM is not performing to capacity yet
VT
Mediocre FTYs, worse than Chung and Brown's
UB
High DV with 5.9, but execution scores were 6.700 and 7.800. These are not good and completely cancel out her difficulty. She cracked 14 at nationals so she is capable of better.
BB
Did fairly well here with 8.000 and 8.700 e-scores.
FX
Regressed since Vics and nationals. 5.3/6.550 and 5.3/7.750 is not up to standard at all. Her routine was worth 5.5 at Vics, why the watering down now? Concerning she can't get an e-score in the 8s for an easier routine.
So essentially, I'd say she is only performing at her optimum on beam right now.
Hers, I meant to say, not her's. Time to go to bed.
It isn't likely to be watering down. If she stumbled on landings she would miss out on connection bonus, which would simultaneously drop her D and E scores. It's like a double-whammy. So, paradoxically, we actually see better E scores with the high D scores, because it means they've hit their routines.
Good for GRB, nice to see someone with artistic flair in the team.Hope she does floor over Emily. MAM does seem to be watered down, no injuries I hope? I hope Chung is in over Wheeler, again, a bit more Artisitc flair.
GRB is just rocking at the moment!
This year she seems to have doubled in confidence, and she has upgraded as well.
She did a double back off beam for the first time in competition at Vics, which she took out at Nationals. Can anyone comment if she has put it back in yet?
I can see her doing a full-in on floor in the near future; her doubles are quite high and tight. I wonder if she has ever worked any front tumbling? The front double salto and front twisting seemed to work for Nastia moderately well (ignoring the leg form).
I can see her upgrading to a Yurchenko 1.5 as well -- the full looks comfortable.
Floor line-up with Lauren, Ash, GRB, MAM and Larrissa would be quite pretty!
What a terrific team! I knew the girls would be working towards kicking some ass at trials and looks like they have delivered! I have complete faith in them.
Such a pretty team too - I am looking forward to seeing GRB on the world stage - she is lovely to watch!
Sometimes I think Emily Little is not worthy of a place on the team either as she only seems to be strong in vault, but I think truly she is a bit of a Monette Russo - no real strong events but no real weak events either, and this makes her a good AA gymnast. Not a stellar one, but a good enough one that she'd be included in teams for her stability and consistency.
I can't wait to see this team on the floor in Tokyo! What date does the comp start?
Lauren is looking quite good leading into London, slowly building her routines. By then I think they should and will probably be going for
VT - amanar (has mentioned Nikolai wants her to try it)
UB - add back in inside stalders and build DV that way (Lauren mentioned this in video/article/somewhere recently)
BB- Add double arabian dismount to get up to 7.0 (seen training on video)
FX -Add 1/1 to front layout to get DV to 6.6 (highly logical)
She absolutely needs that vault if she wants to challenge in 2012 given her bars. If she can be somewhere around 6.5/6.3/7.0/6.6 I think she will still be competitive.
Don't forget Lauren used to do arabian double pike, too!
My wish is that she does whip, double arabian, punch front. That's 0.9 in a single line!
I would be in constant fear of her knees if she was trying the Amanar. But I suppose I trust Lauren and her coaches to know what is best and what she is capable of.
Does anyone know if there will be any streaming of Worlds? I sadly assume Fox will not air it live. Can Gymnastics Australia do this- stream online? I am sure there are many who would pay for a streaming of Worlds?
Good luck girls in Tokyo:)
An individual federation would NEVER be able to broadcast a Worlds competition live on the Internet. The media bigwigs would never let it happen with their copyright stranglehold on Olympic sports broadcasting. Best hope is using hide-my-ip or something to sneak onto a BBC or Chinese broadcast I think... those two are ones I try first, and it's not often both let me down! Otherwise, they usually get live broadcasts online in the US for finals, and there's often at least one fan who will put the complete video up on YouTube later.
I remembered it- CCTV5 is the name of the Chinese tv channel that often shows Worlds finals live.
If Brennan is doing Tsukahara 1.5 all I can say is Hooray! About time she made an upgrade somewhere!
She is a very consistant gymnast who I think has been a bit lazy with upgrades.Same goes for Little. A year on and no upgrades.Vault is her best apparatus but no major improvements.Lauren at least seems to be always striving to improve on D scores.Miller is also at least trying to improve on AA.If some of the injured girls can get back on track, some of these may see there positions taken in the future. This is what we have got to work with this year, hopefully it will be strong enough.Not saying it is not a good Team, just a bit inconsistant.
Good luck to the team - I like it! Lauren is a superstar, from what I hear she works real hard. I don't know how you can call girls lazy - do you know what they do every day. (sitting there at your computer. all I can say is get a life)
You do realise that both Little and Brennan have both been recently injured, don't you?
Emily couldn't even compete at Nationals, for goodness sakes!
These girls go into the gym every single day to train. They adjust their lives around training and competing. They do it when they are tired, emotional, and when they are in pain. No one is paying them to do it. They don't get any sort of widespread recognition. They do it even when the end result is they never make a World or Olympic team. They do it when training gets harder and they start losing the skills that used to be easy.
Please do not EVER use the word lazy in relation to one of our elite gymnasts!
Anyway, Ash looks the best she EVER has, in my opinion. And what she has already achieved after sustaining the elbow injury early in her career is already awe-inspiring.
The Australian team is damn lucky to have both of them.
Think about where we would be without them?
Agreed! Ash is the most inspiring of them all in my opinion! Pretty gymnastics, comeback queen when everyone else thought she'd retire just like all the other before her, veteran performer, fantastic team leader/captain, a wealth of experience used well whenever she is in competition. She is reliable and consistent and next to Lauren Mitchell I think is the most accomplished member of the team.
What a shame Shona Morgan went OS, was there a chance she could have been brought back for Worlds??
MAG team named!
Joshua Jefferis - AIS/QAS
Sam Offord - AIS/SASI
Thomas Pichler - AIS/QAS
Prashanth Sellathurai - AIS/NSWIS
Luke Wadsworth - AIS/VIS
Luke Wiwatowski - AIS/QAS
Travelling Reserve
Sam Simpson - AIS/QAS
Non-travelling Reserves
Jayden Bull - AIS/VIC
Michael Mercieca - AIS/NSWIS
We are buzzing here in QLD I was talking to Toms mum and Sam S dad this morn. Also its a great present for Tom his bday is today.
Happy birthday, Tom!
I agree you could never call elite gymnast lazy. Emily like many of the other girls has never let the team down when called on. And no matter who has been picked in the team I wish them all well and will be behide them 100%. go the OZ team.
I don't think anyone was calling the gymnasts lazy but more perhaps a bit comfortable with their exsisting routines. When they already perform well it can sometimes take an effort to push themselves out of their comfort zone and on to new skills.
Yes I agree, Ash is an amazing gymnast and has done Australia proud, but she also has been performimg the same routines and skills for a long time. Perhaps she could push the boundaries a little more.I agree that some gymnasts do become comfortable with the same skills.Lazy was perhaps the wrong word to use.
Trolls gonna troll.
Just ignore them. Trying to stir something up.
these comments about Ash are completely fair. She is a nice gymnast but nothing in the past couple of years about her routines and skills has been updated or made more engaging. There are certainly areas in her routines where there is room for upgrades too - like she could get to 6.3 on beam if she trained ff-ff-double pike instead of roundoff double pike.
I realise her body has changed and she cant be expected to do everything she could in Beijing but the best gymnasts are the best because they keep adding skills and playing with composition, not sticking with the same stuff and waiting to be overtaken.
If she goes out there in Tokyo and hits all her routines for us, well, that's fantastic. But she didn't at Commonwealths. If it's not going to be consistent anyway why not mix it up a bit?
I would say look at Ponor too, she is now competing more difficulty on floor than ever before - double layout, whip- whip thru to pike full in, and triple twist in the one routine. Her Athens routines were easier, but she has shown that being older doesn't mean you cant keep working and upgrading.
No, but Ponor was at the very highest levels before she retired (3 Olympics Golds), unlike Ash. Not that I don't love Ash, but I just want to point out it's not just a matter of a gymnast deciding to sudden;y start competing a skill like an Amanar.
I don't know where people's heads are at. I think Ash looks the best she ever has. AND she is doing all that AND going to Uni AND working.
Ash can only upgrade if her coaches are happy to teach her some upgrades - maybe they aren''t helping her up-grade. Don't blame the gymnast as it is not up to them only.
Well done Ash you are fabulous and keep up the good work.
I really hope britt and Amelia can get back on top so it's a real fight for positions. Also Zoe is back on crutches :(
Zoe is not back on crutches, you have no idea!
Do you actualy know what Zoe looks like? Where did you think you saw her on crutches?
Im friends with her and saw her the other day..
If you were zoe's friend you would know she is not on crutches
Does anyone know why she did not trial?
Recovering from some elbow issue
Strange medical treatment.....crutches for an elbow. First time I have seen this.
lol
Zoe is not on crutches
I know Anonymous September 24, 2011 3:09 PM, I was making a joke
Anyone know what is happening with the junior girls in Japan?
See comments under most recent post.
Great team! Good luck and have fun because that's what really counts!!! :)
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