Thursday, October 31, 2013

Baton Brigade

Keep your eyes peeled on the news bulletins tonight, it was a grand day out for WA gymmers!

WAIS gymnastics Olympians Lauren Mitchell, Olivia Vivian and Allana Slater were at the Commonwealth Games Queen's Baton handover in Perth today.

Liv and Allana put up some smashing photos at their twitter accounts.

World champion Lauren received the royal treatment, getting to travel in a helicopter alongside swimmer-slash-amateur chef-slash-undeniable uberbabe Eamon Sullivan to show the baton off at other locations. (It must have been a bit nicer than dirt and a hard hat at least...)

There was some coverage on Channel 10 just now, they all looked very proud. So watch out for more photos and footage tonight!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Vic's the Pick

Rejoice, Melbunnies!

It has been officially announced that the 2014 National Gymnastics Championships will return to Melbourne and take place at Hisense Arena.

Hope to see you there!




Sunday, October 6, 2013

Worlds 2013: Proshy Be Proud

You can't win 'em all the time.

Prashanth Sellathurai unfortunately couldn't repeat his wonderful pommel performance from qualifications in the individual final overnight. Speedy pirouette work saw him get a little overwhelmed with momentum and take a tumble from the horse. He was relegated to 8th place. But 8th in the world is certainly nothing to sniff at, and he'll surely find himself in medal contention again soon. There was a lot of good word on social media about the composition and neatness of his routine, and genuine dismay expressed once his fall occurred.

You can watch a full clip of the pommel horse final, courtesy of Chinese television, at the link below. Prashanth appears 7 minutes in.




Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Worlds 2013: MAG Qualification Roundup

A mixed bag of results out of the men's preliminary round last night.

All-rounder Naoya Tsukahara is sitting in 26th place, the second reserve position, now all subdivisions have been completed. He could move up into the final should two other competitors withdraw in unlucky circumstances.

Luke Wiwatowski had a bumpy night on his three apparatus, with a fall on parallel bars (12.6) and one on floor (12.666) redeemed nicely with a high bar routine (incl. Kolman, Kovacs, double layout full for 14.000) that International Gymnast called "amazing".


In excellent news, our final representative Prashanth Sellathurai held off all comers to cement his place in Saturday's pommel horse final with a 15.416 for 6th place. And he can breathe a small sigh of relief that one of his big rivals, 2012 Olympic champion Kriztian Berki, took a tumble to wipe himself out of contention.


Our last man standing is our littlest, but from little things come big things!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Breaking News: A Retirement

Very best wishes for all that lies ahead for Victoria's Georgia Wheeler who, it was announced today, will retire from competitive artistic gymnastics.

In addition to strong showings nationally, Georgia proudly represented Australia at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, Pacific Rim Championships and World Championships. Georgia was one of several rising stars to emerge from the MLC elite program.

A statement can be read via Gymnastics Australia here.

Image courtesy Nadia Boyce 2010