OK, it's now official. Kohei Uchimura is the best gymnast of all time... For now. His 4th world championship in-a-row fixed that. This was vintage Uchimura, tallying scores of 15+ on all six events (92.69). It wasn't perfect, as he had a good save on PH and suffered a bobble on FX, but it was good enough for the end result to never be in doubt. His margin of victory was 1.659 over surprise silver medalist Marcel Nguyen. The real battle was for [...more]
The day started out with high hopes and confidence, and it ended in disappointment for Team USA. Meanwhile, the Chinese men, fresh off a funk of their own, roared back with a vengeance. The three-up/three-count format was much to their liking. How does a team win the Olympic gold medal? [...more]
Team USA, despite some bobbles here and there, is sitting at the top of the field. Led by their two all-arounders, Danell Leyva and John Orozco, the Americans plowed through their session in workmanlike fashion. Two falls by Jonathan Horton (PH & PB) and one by Sam Mikulak (HB), just didn't matter, since the team was able to post good scores on all six events. Mikulak showed absolutely no signs of fragility from his sore ankle, and in fact, performed two vaults which propelled him into the [...more]
The current 2-panel gymnastics scoring system has been in place since 2006. It made its Olympic debut at the 2008 Beijing Games. It's based on two separate panels of scores. The "D" panel judges the requirements, difficulty, and connections of a routine. This is what is known as the "difficulty" of the routine. The internationally recognized Code of Points attaches values to the myriad of skills that gymnasts perform. The easiest skills are labeled "A," while the most difficult skills are labeled as high as [...more]
This blog is now four years old, and in that span, the most fun I've had with it has been the interviews. I've interviewed four of five of the current new Olympians. My first two interviews were with Danell Leyva and John Orozco back in December of 2008. At that time, I had no contacts in the sport and wanted to provide a forum for the best of America's club gymnasts. A big part of the reason why I started the blog in the first place was my frustration [...more]
SAN JOSE -- The 2012 Men's Gymnastics Olympic Selection Process is now complete, and the Selection Committee came up with an outstanding team. They ended up allowing the top 5 all-arounders to earn well-deserved plane fare to London. Arguably their toughest decision was to determine the three alternates from the remainder of the field of fifteen. Eight gymnasts were selected, while seven gymnasts stay home. Rather bittersweet for the latter group, but they all were very [...more]
SAN JOSE -- 2/5 of the 2012 Men's U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team were officially announced at the final day of Olympic Trials competition. To no one's surprise, Danell Leyva and John Orozco maintained their insurmountable leads over the 15-man field to clinch automatic trips to London. How they did it was remarkable and demonstrated outstanding consistency throughout the four days (2 days of VISAs/2 days of Trials) of competition. Leyva posted top-3 scores on PH (2nd), PB (1st) and HB (1st), while Orozco [...more]
SAN JOSE -- Almost predictable, the first day of the 2012 Men's Gymnastics Olympic Trials in San Jose boiled down to virtually no movement in the top 8 finishers from the VISA U.S. Championships. Sam Mikulak (91.80) edged out Danell Leyva (91.70) by one tenth to lead all gymnasts on Day 1 of the competition. Leyva, however, is the overall leader of the Olympic Team selection process, which happens to be a [...more]
Guest blogger Matthew Rusk completes his two-part preview of the 2012 Olympic Trials, by featuring CJ Maestas, Sam Mikulak, Alex Naddour, John Orozco, Paul Ruggeri and Brandon Wynn. In this installment, Rusk again goes into great detail for each of these gymnasts' chances for making the trek to London. John Orozco, as Danell Leyva was predicted in Part 1, is also lock to make the Team. The competition for the remaining three spots is relatively limited to a handful of gymnasts, with still a slim chance for a [...more]
StickItMedia is pleased to present a two-part preview of the men's Olympic Trials. Guest blogger Matthew Rusk, a gifted young writer from Houston, TX, analyzes this year's field in great detail. Rusk just finished up his freshman year at Indiana University, and has plans to head for London next month to attend the Games. The field for next week's Trials is arguably [...more]
