Whatever Happened To...

Queensland's Hayley Wright?

In the early part of the new millennium, super-flexy sunshine stater Hayley made a name for herself in the Australian ranks with her gorgeous press to handstand pirouette beam mount and elegant floor choreography. After representing the country commendably in a number of meets held in the USA (that also featured the likes of Monette Russo), it was a shame to see her injured and retired before really hitting the big time.

You'll be pleased to know Hayley is still at it to this day, currently working with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas as she has since 2009, with some modelling in the mix, too.

image credit: ModelMayhem.com

It's great to see that, be it some high-flying hoop and bar work or a simple onodi sequence on sand, Hayley can still wow a crowd!

Assignments Due

First senior post-Olympic assignment has been announced:

Victoria's Georgia Rose Brown will be heading to the Mexican Open in Acapulco this October!

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."

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.

Well Then!

Let's all process this news calmly and rationally.

The Queensland State Championships are on next weekend, Sunday the 22nd April at 5:30pm. They are being held in the Arena at the Sleeman Sports Complex, Chandler, Brisbane. Come along and show some support for Olympic hopefuls Joshua Jefferis, Chloe Sims, Larissa Miller, Dasha Joura and myself in our last competition in Queensland ahead of next months Australian Championships and Olympic Trials.

- From the official Tom Pichler Facebook page.

Update Tues:

The whole town's a-buzzing!

Luke Wiwatowski has added some extra fuel to the fire...

I had a chat with Dasha some time ago and she has been training and was looking to compete a couple (Floor and Vault from my last correspondence) of apparatus during the Queensland State Championships. I look forward to seeing whether Dasha can make an impact and from what I saw her do she should have a mean vault.

This brings up another point altogether. My responsibilities during this time of Olympic selection prevent me from disclosing any information I know about selections. The Australian Olympic Committee has the monopoly on selection announcements so I walk a fine line sometimes with what I disclose in public. As such any speculations I make about selection publicly are just that, speculation.

And as to whether Dasha is fit enough for selection, well we will just have to wait and see.

This is all exciting and fun, but in the comments section can we please veer away from really personal remarks? Thanks.

2012 Zibo Cup

4:10pm Saturday AEST Follow along live here (yes, we have annoying pop-up ads again, look for x's to close them or toggle full screen mode).

Best of luck to Lauren and Larrissa in the women's competition.

I just tuned in after the footy to see Larrissa in purple and black Tokyo prelims leo hit a great bars for 14.425!

... she's through to the bars final in 4th!

Update: Lauren is through to the beam final in 4th and is 1st through to floor final!

View view of Larrissa's bars (partial) here. Video of a screen showing Lauren's floor is here.

Update Sunday: What a happy easter for team Oz! Who likes medals? We do!

UB: Miller 6.2/14.6 for bronze
BB: Mitchell 14.6 for bronze
FX: Mitchell 14.4 for gold!

See Larrissa's finals routine in the video below.



Lauren's finals floor is here and her beam here.

We Love You Liz

We have been left a rather sad notice in the comments.


Dear All,

I write to advise that Liz Chetkovich has tendered her resignation from the position of WAIS Women's Artistic Gymnastics Performance Manager. Liz has made this decision based on an extended reflection of not only what she has achieved in her gymnastics career at WAIS and before but more importantly what she wishes to achieve into the future.

As you will all be aware Liz has been the driving force that has developed the WAIS Women's Gymnastics Program into the leading gymnastics program in Australia and a highly recognised and respected program internationally. The personal commitment Liz has made to the program and to the athletes, staff and parents over the last 24 years has been beyond what even the world of high performance sport could reasonably expect. Liz will leave behind all the ingredients for this very successful program to remain so. I am also extremely pleased that Liz as part of her future life wishes to retain a connection to the program which will ensure her knowledge and experience are available to assist the program into the future.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank her for passion, knowledge and commitment to all things gymnastics and WAIS and congratulate her on developing a program that has demonstrated sustained World Class success.


Steve Lawrence

Executive Director of the Western Australian Institute of Sport

please ignore the frazzled idiot on the right.

I'll Be Senior

There is a second West Australian I'm sending my love to this weekend.

Olympian Olivia Vivian is undertaking her last year at Oregon State University, her senior year as a member of their women's gymnastics team.



Liv has gone from a one-event specialist to a hardcore, consistent triple threat with crowd-pumping antics to boot! Last year she spent a short time ranked as the #1 bars gymnast in the nation (the first Australian collegiate to do so) and made the NCAA national championships apparatus final on that event. This weekend, though it was by no means her last competition for the season, Olivia and her fellow senior Leslie Mak were celebrated by the university's team and crowd on Senior Night. The evening was topped off by OSU winning the competition.

Here's video of Olivia talking about the competition and her collegiate experiences overall, and then there is video of one of my favourite routines of hers.







Liv has hinted that she'd like to try out for Cirque when all is said and done. It has been a pleasure and privilege to watch her grow into such a dynamic and reliable member of the OSU lineup, and I wish her the very best for the future. Now GO GET THAT NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!

2012 American Cup (Contin.)

A correspondent for The Couch Gymnast has dutifully put up a video of Georgia's bar work during podium training today.





ETA: Unfortunately I was not up to watch the stream. However, I believe they showed Georgia's floor routine and it sounds like people were pretty impressed with it. I will post video and photo links as they come in after the event.


The final women's standings were:

1. Jordyn Wieber USA 61.032
2. Alexandra Raisman USA 60.832
3. Larisa Iordache ROM 59.332
4. Victoria Moors CAN 56.365
5. Diana Chelaru USA 56.100
6. Lisa Katharina Hill GER 55.599
7. Georgia Simpson AUS 54.566
8. Rebecca Tunney GBR 52.132


The Gymnastics Examiner has a photo gallery here.

Image via Reuters/Daylife.com

Full HD coverage of the competition as it aired on NBC can be found here. Thanks as always to NastiaFan! Georgia's floor is at 1:01:38

(if you listen veeeeeery carefully, just after she is announced, some encouraging young fans yell out "Go Georgia! Go Aussie!" which I think is very sweet.)

You can see Georgia's (non-televised) bars routine in the video below.




Would you like some G-Simps on your blog? Check out these groovy gifs!

Gymnastike has a brief pre-meet interview with Georgia up at their website.

The Seniors Situation

We've had some recent news on Aussie seniors.

Wide World of Sports have a short piece on camp here, with Lauren Mitchell hinting there are some vault upgrades happening in the group.

Liddick has already stressed to her charges the importance of working together, even using a bit of Hollywood star power - via the movies that is - to help them along.

"Last camp we watched Moneyball with Brad Pitt and it was kind of like Peggy suggesting to us to see where our weakest links are and work and focus more on those things," Mitchell said of the flick.

Based on the book, it's about how a baseball side breaks down their sport scientifically in order to assemble their best possible winning team.

"One of our weakest apparatuses is vault and so everyone is kind of churning out these quite big vaults now," Mitchell said.

"It's only into the pit, but if we get them, we can compete them."

The VWHPC have updated on Ashleigh Brennan's journey towards the Olympics (including a luvverly new photo).

"Olympic Gymnast Ashleigh Brennan is limbering up for the London games with a busy few months. First stop for the 21 year Berwick student is an Australian team tour to Canada from March 9-11, followed by a World Cup appearance in Qatar at the end of the month. Then come the selection trials in Sydney."

So we can expect to see Ash in Doha in a little while!


There has also been a small Penrith Star feature on Katie Wurth which you can find here

Finally, a West Australian piece on Georgia Simpson, who we will see at the American Cup this weekend!

2012 Olympic WAG Draw

Yup, it's upon us!

According to the draw, Australia's women's team will compete in qualification subdisivion 2 and start on floor.

See The All Around's full draw listing here.

Australia WAG Teams Update!

This weekend saw the trial not just for the Pacific Rim 2012 team, but the juniors and seniors heading to Gymnix in Canada as well.


GA have updated the following assignments, congratulations to all our gymnastics representatives:

Pacific Rim team: (Everett, USA)

Senior: Lauren Mitchell

Emily Little

Georgia Simpson

Reserve: Georgia-Rose Brown

Junior: Alexandra Eade
Madelaine Leydin
Jazminne Casis

Reserve: Georgia Godwin

Gymnix team: (Montreal, CAN)

Senior: Lauren Mitchell

Emily Little

Georgia Simpson

Georgia-Rose Brown

Georgia Wheeler

Nickola Chung

Ashleigh Brennan
Mary-Anne Monckton
Larrissa Miller

Junior: Alexandra Eade
Madelaine Leydin
Jazminne Casis

American World Cup: (All Around competition)

Georgia Simpson

The VWHPC has photos of their gymnasts up at Facebook.

You can also read about the WA girls (lovely pic!) in a new article here.

Aussie NCAA Head-To-Head

Aah, it's good to be home, and even better to be home to gym news!

In an interesting match-up over the weekend, collegiate Aussies Mel Jones and Olivia Vivian (Oregon State) took on conference rivals Stanford, where one of their stalwarts is fellow Beijing 2008 squadder Shona Morgan.

Competing in front of a home crowd, OSU came out on top, with Olivia scoring an awesome 9.925 on bars. More great reviews are flooding in for Mel's floor (I still haven't seen video of it?) while Shona competing without major error on beam and floor. I do so love her choreo!

(ETA: If you would like to watch an archived stream of the meet, go here.)

Camp As

The Victorian Women's High Performance Centre is putting up photos from camp at their Facebook page! Hurrah!

London Prepares 2012

It's upon us!

Gymnastics Australia have put up a new page for ongoing updates and photos from national coach from Peggy Liddick. Emily Little now tumbles a piked full-in!

"Emily and Georgia went through their programs normally without anything unusual.... Both girls conducted themselves like professionals and were ready for the podium."

The FIG have photos up on Facebook here and will reportedly be doing a livestream of the competition through their Youtube channel here.


*** Gymnastics Australia advises that Australian MAG competitor Sam Offord has had to withdraw due to an injury sustained during the friendly at Waveney. He will be replaced by Josh Jefferis.***


As at 7:30am Wednesday, Georgia's bars and beam are up here. Em and Georgia start on bars in session 2 tomorrow (late tonight our time)

You can follow the women's proceedings live here at the Gymnastics Examiner or here at The All Around. Unfortunately I can't stay up to follow proceedings but according to Blythe, the Aussies are in their green, gold and white national leo (hooray).


ETA Thursday...

Australia has officially qualified one MAG spot to London; the selectors can choose between Josh OR Tom to compete at the Games.


The Gymnastics Examiner and All-Around links above should take you to quickhits of the women's session. By all accounts the Aussies did a great job, notably newbie Simpson.

Check out her STUNNING floor below, as well as Em's vault.






See Emily's beam here
See Emily's bars here
See Georgia's beam here

Image below courtesy of the FIG



The Australian has a piece on Josh here.

"It's a tough situation but everyone has been great about it, Sam's been a legend," Jefferis, who knows the heartache of Olympic disappointment, said.

2011 Mexico Open

Hi guys.

Thanks to all those who sent birthday wishes! You unquestionably rock (what didn't rock was the rubbish weather)!

There is now an official website up for the Acapulco event that was mentioned during the World Championships. It's this weekend! Note that Emily Little is listed to compete, not Lauren Mitchell.

Speaking of Lauren, VISA have uploaded a lovely-looking new promotional feature on Lauren. Hope that gold filter is a sign of things to come!

Lauren has Landed

Lauren's VISA commercial is up!



For those of you in or near Perth, Loz will be appearing at Challenge Stadium this Saturday (nov 26th) to sign autographs with other WA sports stars from 1:00pm as part of ABC Grandstand's 21st birthday.

2011 Massilia: Videos!

Thanks to Couch Gymnast for pointing out the hard-working French fans who captured Aussie routines (Chung, Wheeler and Brown at least) in Marseille.

Merci a tous!

Check them out here. The highlights for me personally are Nikki's rocked tumbling lines on floor (mistake on the final one aside... she FLOATS them beautifully and nails the landings) and Georgia Rose's crisp bars set.

A report featuring detailed results can be found at IG here.

Visa Champ

An update from the Australian Olympic Committee just gave a tantalising teaser...



(click for higher res)

Adnews.com.au says:

Visa signs Mitchell for Olympics campaign
Visa has signed Australian gymnast Lauren Mitchell as one of its sports ambassadors for its London 2012 Olympics campaign, "Go World", to be unveiled 24 November. Mitchell joins American swimmer Michaehelps and New Zealand shot putter Valerie Adams.

LATER THAT DAY...

Lauren's official Facebook page has put up a comprehensive update on the campaign, including a press release and some STUNNING shots from the advertisement. Checkit!

“The Olympic Games begin and end with the athletes and we’re excited to have Lauren join Visa as our first Australian Olympic ambassador,” said Vipin Kalra, Visa’s Country Manager, Australia. “Lauren is a true inspiration to thousands of young gymnasts around the country and we are proud to be supporting Lauren in what will be one of the greatest sporting challenges of her life.”

2011 DTB Stuttgart

Hi guys.

Just got word from The All Around that the standings from the WAG team qualification in Stuttgart went thusly:

1. AUS 110.350 (!!!!!)
2. GER 106.250
3. RUS 105.950
4. NED 105.200
5. SUI 100,500
6. AUT 99.500

See a results pdf here. Lauren scored phenomenally on beam while Nikki rocked the second highest start scores on beam and bars (of the team).

Gymnastics WA have put up some of Desiree Jones' photos from the training gym on Facebook. Like their page and check 'em out!