Still thinking about the second day of the Junior men's competition in St. Paul. That was amazing. Adrian de los Angeles quietly had a great AA (84.65) in the early session. The top four gymnasts from the two junior divisions ended up competing in the evening session with the seniors. Meanwhile, the rest of the juniors, along with a smattering of seniors, competed in the early session. After a quick perusal of the math, de los Angeles had put himself into strong position [...more]
Danell Leyva followed up his Day 1 performance (92.50) with an equally outstanding one in the finale (91.30) as he coasted to his first Senior U.S. Men's Gymnastics all-around title. Leyva hit 12 for 12 as he bested his World teammate Jonathan Horton by 2.75 points. Horton kept it close until he fell doing a Cassina on high bar. Leyva is now arguably America's premier gymnast, and still has room for growth. Also packing his bags for the Tokyo World Championships will be young [...more]
Danell Leyva posted a career high all-around score of 92.50 to easily outlast Jonathan Horton (90.40) in Day 1 competition at the 2011 VISA U.S. Men's Gymnastics Championships. Who needs to put up huge floor and vault scores to win a title? Not Leyva, especially when he's busy cranking out parallel bars (16.20) and high bar (16.90) scores like nobody's business. It's only one day, however, and he has one more day to prove he's America's best gymnast, but his 2.1 lead over Horton is [...more]
Guest blogger Matthew Rusk is back with part 2 of his analysis for this week's U.S. championships. In this installment, he highlights C.J. Maestas, Tim McNeill, Alex Naddour, John Orozco, Paul Ruggeri and Brandon Wynn. Rusk, a native of Houston, TX, will be enrolled as a freshman at Indiana University this fall. He doesn't pull any punches, and tells it how he sees it. Without a doubt, Rusk is a gifted gymnastics analyst and a remarkably [...more]
For the third August in-a-row, talented young gymnastics analyst Matthew Rusk is back to dish out his commentary on 12 American gymnasts who will be battling it out for 6 spots on the 2011 World team. 2012 and the end of the quadrennium are rapidly approaching, and as Rusk points out, the U.S. roster of 2012 Olympic hopefuls is deep. Well, the 2011 World Championships is one step closer to that Olympic dream, and next week's VISA U.S. Championships will be the [...more]
