Bus A Move

Pride of Perth, Lauren Mitchell, will be revisiting her "GymBus" beginnings with a special appearance on May 12 alongside London hopefuls Emily Little and Nikki Chung.

Check the vitals here.

Unlucky in Osijek

Australia unfortunately came home empty-handed at the Osijek World Cup, with Nikola Chung toughing it out for last place in the floor final and only making a reserve position on beam.

Despite this, Nikki is to be commended for doing her best in a field that included medallists from the recent Pacific Rim Championships. This will be a valuable experience on the road to Nationals.

Scores can be found here.


Onwards and upwards, Nikki!


(Loooooooove that dramatic ending!)

Victor: Victoria

Hello.

I am updating this at stupid o'clock.

Unfortunately I'm not able to attend the Victorian State Championships over at JETS this weekend.

Thankfully, some of you are! The Couch Gymnast has a report up, and a few of you have noted in that comments that results are up at Gymdata.

My biggest thanks is reserved for special ops agent Ange for getting video.

Congratulations to the senior and junior AA champions, Ash Brennan and Kiara Munteanu! Full results will be up here.

GV has linked to video of Zoe Lorenzin's cool Baitova warmup here!

Forever Chung

The West Australian has a small feature on Nikki Chung today, which reveals she has a World Cup assignment this week and that Olivia Vivian has indeed returned to the WAIS fold.

Update: Nikki will indeed travel alongside Larrissa Miller this weekend to compete at the Osijek Grand Prix Challenger Cup on bars, beam and floor. Good luck, ladies!

The Satellite also has a quick feature, including video from the Kyle Shewfelt Invitational, on male Olympic contender Josh Jefferis.

"I'm not going to count my chickens before they hatch," he said.

If you can disregard all the background crashing, check out this new video interview with WAIS wondergirl Lauren Mitchell (filmed in the AIS gym). She talks about her London expectations and funding for the national program.

Pop'd, Locked and Loaded

London sneaks ever closer!

Get a sneak peek of Lauren Mitchell working with Adriana Pop at camp in Canberra in this news footage.

Jonesin' for a Win

Australia is yet to have a gymnast score coveted silverware at an NCAA National Championship but we must absolutely applaud Melanie Jones for her efforts over the weekend.

Now in her third year at Oregon State University, Mel made it to the floor final (her first ever apparatus final at a collegiate nationals) in front of a parochial Georgia crowd. She displayed a stunning routine which you can watch below, scoring a 9.925 for equal 4th place. The amazing thing is, verdict among fans and spectators was that not only was it a great routine, it deserved first place! It's not every day you have an overseas audience clamouring for one of your own. Buuuuuuuut you can't fight the system, and she got a nifty trophy out of it anyway (not to mention the acclaim of the crowd).


Onya, Jonesy!

"Mel did a fabulous job, I'm really proud of her," head coach Tanya Chaplin said. "She's done a wonderful job for us this season and put in a lot of hard work and it is great to see that pay dividends today."

Hot Squad

Well then indeed!

Welcome back Dasha Joura and Chloe Sims!

GA has a brief camp report available here

Thanks to my Sunshine Staters who kept me updated about state championships throughout the night as I was out, I really appreciated it. And the videographers, you guys rock.

The Couch Gymnast has a wrap up + video links here. Nice work, Larrissa!

You can see Dasha's floor here.

In other squad news, expect to see more of Lauren Mitchell very soon:

Mitchell broke her preparations for London's July Games on Wednesday to film her role in a Fox Sports promotion for the network's Olympics coverage.

"It's going to be really different to anything I've done before and it's really exciting," she said. "There's a bunch of Olympic athletes and they kind of morphed us all into one sequence, so it'll go from a diver, into me doing something, into a taekwondo person doing something else."

Your Favourite TV Family

Loathe though I am to promote reality tv shows, this week sees a gymnastics connection make it to the screen!

Acclaimed Victorian singer Peta Jeffress, sister to Olympian Georgia Bonora, will appear in an episode of 'The Voice' tomorrow night (Tues) on Channel 9. I have had the pleasure and privilege of seeing Peta perform in person, she is just a delight. We wish her the best in her pursuit of musical fame!


Check out Peta's performance archived at The Voice website here.