Stuff and Nonsense

Things Are Happening – October 27, 2017

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A. NCAA Training

It’s a mostly NCAA training kind of week since everyone is still in a worlds hangover and little else is going on.

Alabama held its annual Halloween-tide Ghosts and Goblins preview, with the featured attraction being how Bailie Key looked on beam.

https://twitter.com/laurennn_emily/status/923231718735261697

Key did only beam and the interior of bars. The UA Medalist Club streamed the whole thing on facebook (the future is now!), so you can watch all manner of routines if that’s your kind of thing.

Vault

Bars

Beam and Floor 1

Beam and Floor 2

Florida is showing off floor passes this week (with IDs! 10 points to Florida!). We have to keep in mind that it’s October and, as you may have heard, sometimes people train things in October that don’t make it into the competition season, but I’m pleasantly surprised to see Baumann working the double layout. I had her in the “immediate front 2/1 in college” column.

Also, Baumann is good at beam. Sort of duh.

Denver’s floor passes. To answer your questions, 1) That’s Emily Glynn with the open full-twisting double back, and 2) Yes.

Oklahoma is vaulting, with a nice showing by Jade DeGouveia at the end.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bal5gyvBJux/?taken-by=ou_wgymnastics

Higgins to L-grip giant to L-grip giant 1/2 from Alma Kuc. I’m not mad at this routine.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BacJqdqn5Co/?taken-by=calwgym

B. Everything’s coming up Hungary

This week, the FIG approved Olivia Cimpian’s change of nationality to Hungary, effective immediately, so it appears she’s out of nationality limbo quicker than originally anticipated. Looking toward 2018, Cimpian can be a top-2 AAer for Hungary and provide a vault and floor that Hungary will need in worlds qualification to protect against a disaster dropping them out of the top 24.

In the same meeting, the FIG awarded (or “approved willingness to assign” because FIG) the inaugural junior worlds in 2019 to Hungary.

Hungary, Hungary, Hungary!

C. Danusia

The glorious Danusia Francis is returning to competition gymnastics with the hope of competing for Jamaica at the Commonwealth Games in April.

She has discussed on twitter that Jamaica has only one spot for CWG, hurting her chances to go, which is a shame.

But I’m thinking, if Danusia has her routines from 2015 back, then really the only Jamaican WAG option whom you would even consider selecting over Danusia would be Toni-Ann (all things being based on, you know, gymnastics—what a concept). However, because of course it does, CWG conflicts with NCAA regionals in 2018, so Toni-Ann couldn’t do both. Issues for selection all around.

[Clarification update here: It appears Jamaica has just one spot combined for BOTH men and women at CWG in gymnastics, hence the problem. Even if Danusia is the best WAG option, it’s likely that they will send no WAG gymnasts.]

D. Northern Euros

An actual meet also happened! Last weekend, the top gymnasts from northern Europe gathered in my favorite place ever, the Faroe Islands, to compete for titles without those pesky central Europeans and southern Europeans and Englishwomen hogging all the gold for themselves with their D scores and whatnot.

The all-around title went to Martine Skregelid of Norway, having a much stronger competition than she did at worlds when she was one of many to suffer disaster beam and disaster bars. She beat out the pre-meet favorite, Olympian Irina Sazonova of Iceland, by nearly an entire point. Another positive was seeing Thea Nygaard out there competing for Norway since she had to pull out of worlds at the last minute with a concussion. We were all very distraught about it. Lauren and I basically spent that entire subdivision going, “WHERE’S THEA NYGAARD?” and everyone else was like, “I’ve literally never heard that name before.”

Also significant was Camille Rasmussen of Denmark’s fifth-place finish. She is not a senior until 2020, and she’s already scoring near the best gymnasts in Scandinavia, even winning the floor title here.

E. GymCastic

Two episodes for you this week! The first one, the less fun one, concerns the Maroney and Gutsu sexual abuse statements from last week. We talk through all the stages of anger, and WHAT, and how, and UGH, and work through the correct and incorrect ways to respond to women making these brave statements on social media (with real-life examples!)

Then, once you’ve been a good citizen and nodded your head supportively for Maroney and Gutsu, your reward is our recap of the 2000 Sydney All-Around Final. Also known as the worst meet in the history of time. FUN! Hate-watching is a pastime! #TrashOlympics

F. Beam routine of the week

In honor of the 2000 Olympics, this week’s beam routine belongs to our dear Miss Karpenko, who will definitely not have any horror befall her at the end of the all-around final thereby preventing her from winning a medal. No chance.

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