Sunday, October 2, 2011

2011 Worlds: WAG Training

The Couch Gymnast, The Gym Examiner and Gymnastike are all inside the arena in Tokyo tapping, filming and snapping as fast as their fingers will allow!

Brigid (TCG) Facebooked the following brief remarks from Aussie podium training who are rotating as we speak!

Emily Little pounding out a solid beam set. She looks quite polished on her back tumbling and switch side. Nice high double pike off.

Mez Monckton training terrifically. Solid skills, great back pike, best leg up full turn today. Fell on switch half but got it again and AWESOME double pike dismount!

Mitchell BB looks fab... Combined wolf turn with single pirouette. Great ring leap! Timer off. Yep, the slow cook approach works for her. She is IN form.

GRB beautiful on beam as ever, but having trouble with full turn in split.

Missed a bit of floor [had battery issues]. Miller sat down two passes, but recovered her double arabian later. Mitchell crunched toes on a pass but generally looked okay. Chung fell on double tuck but looked very pretty. Missed HPC girls.

While Blythe (TGE) adds...

This team has two first-time Worlds competitors in Mary Anne Monckton and Georgia Rose Brown, and both look to be adapting to this climate very well, particularly Monckton, who was all power and drive on beam (very nice double pike dismount).

Props to Ashleigh Brennan of Australia, who looks totally fit and in control of her gymnastics here. Her floor is very nice (full in, front layout to front full to single stag third pass) and she's one of the steadiest on beam.

Seeing some nice tumbling on floor from the Aussies, particularly the powerful Emily Little (great half in half out) and Lauren Mitchell, who appears to be getting a handle on her whip to Arabian double.


No word on leos yet.

Gymnastike hopefully gets some Aussie-related videos!

Check this page at FullTwist for an excellent breakdown of competition session times.

Now, just a quick note to the Pedantic Pollies who like to pop up now and then.

1. Please don't take what happens in training as outright indication of how the team will perform later. That's just presumptuous and pointless.

2. The people reporting from this event are being extremely gracious with their time and resources (I do also point out my one known Aussie contact cheering on the team in Tokyo who will probably have some nuggests for us as well). They could very well just sit and watch the competition but instead they are in dedicated fan mode and getting information for other fans around the world as it happens.

Please please PLEASE do not pipe up with, "I think you'll find x-gymnast does Y-skill, NOT z-skill!" or "BUT WHY DIDN'T YOU MENTION X-GYMNAST/TEAM!? THEY'RE THERE TOO YOU KNOW!" or "You spelled that wrong, duh!" and things of that nature. It's just rude, and says more about you than it says about gymbloggers. Mistakes do get made in reporting due to speed - you've sat in a gym competition, you must know there are multiple things going on at once - and the author usually does their best to correct errors as soon as time permits during or after live coverage. Something like a World Championship is a fast and furious time and they do the best they can under the circumstances. I myself made an honest mistake this afternoon and was VERY RUDELY advised of it in comments. Thanks so much for that! Hope you get spoken to in that manner one day and can learn how it feels!

Please keep comments civil, and be mindful how much work is being put it in to bring you coverage of the event.

There. I'm off my grumpy stool now. Back to the gymnastics.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you'll find that l and many others greatly appreciate all the work and effort that Mez and the others put into reporting and documenting these meets.
Thank you to each and everyone of you.

Anonymous said...

Yes I agree. I definitely appreciate the efforts. I am so happy that we have access to what is happening. I think sometimes comments can sound harsher in print than what the person may have intended. On another note, more often than not, Australia always seems to start on beam in important comeptitions!! 1996 Olympics, worlds that year we came 11th and was a bit of a metldown, commonwaelths in 2010....ok so not every comp....but we do seem to draw beam more often than, for example floor. Ow well, what can you do??

Anonymous said...

Beijing TF we started on beam, too.

Anonymous said...

i dont think corrections should be verboten! after all, it clarifies things for others. what if someone mistakenly said brennan was tumbling a double layout instead of a double tuck, for example. if that was left uncorrected, you could very well end up with a dozen more comments after prelims saying 'WHY DIDN'T BRENNAN COMPETE HER DOUBLE LAYOUT?!'

Mez said...

That's a fair point, and I realise genuine corrections are ok (eg a gymnast mistaken for another, or the kind of issue you raise) but by the same token you get people saying "Um, they've NEVER done it to a 2.5 twist, and they weren't training it on the training days, you obviously can't count properly" or something like that. I've seen it crop up in the past.

I guess if anything, if people do wish to suggest a correction, they do it nicely!

Anonymous said...

Yep, it's not hard to be courteous!

Ahhhhh, I'm so excited -- it's so close!

Full Twist said...

Thanks for the link Mez :)

Anonymous said...

wondering what happened to all the comments posted re the Japan junior comp?

Anonymous said...

If I was to guess I would say Mez doesn't want to embarrass herself and us by leaving those comments on the blog during a heavier traffic time. Probably things got a bit too silly and car park gossip like. Also, worlds is on - time to get excited about team australiia!

Mez said...

I opted to make those comments are Hidden. They are not deleted, just not displaying.

For a number of reasons.