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A Beginner's Guide to WAG: American Cup Primer!
So.

The American Cup is the one big international meet held in the USA annually. It is given lots of lipservice by USAG and NBC and is supposed to be highly prestigious and whatnot. While this might have been true in the annals of history, not so much anymore!

This is the because the Scam Cup (as it is not-so-affectionately known to many gymnastics enthusiasts) pretty notoriously and blatantly exists only to make its selected American superstars look good. This time around, perhaps not in the mood to indulge the US when they have better things they could be doing during the Olympic year, the rest of the world pretty uniformly didn't even bother to send their A-listers. That or the US didn't invite them. Or some combination. At any rate, the field for the women's side at this competition is four international gymnasts (Alyssa Brown [Canada], Natalia Sanchez [Colombia], Joeline Moebius [Germany], and Xiao Tingting [China]), only one of whom I'd ever even heard of prior to this, and four members of the US's world champion team from last year. Yeah. Totally an even field there.

As such, this meet is only interesting in that it is the first big WAG meet of the Olympic year and it's the first time we'll get to see what some of the top gymnasts are getting up to. Even if they are all American.

AS SUCH. An introduction to our contenders!

Shawn Johnson


What to say about Shawn Johnson? She is the US's reigning perky, smiley wunderkind It Girl and as soon as you tune into any gymnastics competition this year, you will undoubtedly be bombarded with Al Trautwig blathering on about how her timing is so PERFECT since she is 16 in the Olympic year and she is so perfect and the only thing more perfect than her gymnastics is her smile and how everyone else is old and washed up.

Shawn first came to the attention of gymnastics community at the 2006 National Championships where, as a junior, she not only won the junior all around title, but her combined score over both days of competition was higher than that year's senior all around champion, Nastia Liukin, who was having a pretty shitty Day Two. Cue buzz.

In 2007, Shawn moved up to senior and was immediately pegged as The Next Big Thing which she bore out by going undefeated in the all around that year. She won the American Cup, Pan American Games, US National, and the World all around championships.

Shawn's gymnastics consists of big tricks, big tricks, big tricks, and some more big tricks more or less across all four events. She has generally clean form and is mostly consistent when it counts (with the possible exception of on beam). Her technique, however, is extremely suspect given that she tends to utilize her teensy size and loads of power to fling her big tricks around. This has the potential to be disastrous if say she hits puberty any time soon. (Note to Shawn: please don't grow.) Shawn is also not is particularly flexible, original, or artistic, but, hahaha, you don't need to be anymore! So, you know, she won everything ever.

The general consensus is that she's pretty much going to walk away with the Olympic title as well. I, however, do not subscribe to this belief for a few reasons.

First, pretty much all of Shawn's top competitors spent 2007 injured, inconsistent, and/or inconsistent due to injury. There were lots of splatfests in 2007 is what I'm saying and so Shawn was barely even challenged thus naturally inflating one's sense of her invincibility. It is highly, highly, highly unlikely that she'll be quite so lucky (or rather, that everyone else will be quite so unlucky) this year.

Second, it's the Olympic year, this is the new code, and everyone's upgrading and trying to close those start value gaps. Again, a relative evening of the field.

And the final reason that I don't subscribe to the idea that Shawn is going to walk away with the Olympic title is because it's boring! It is boring to declare the winner 6 months out from the competition. It is boring for me to assume that Shawn Johnson, who is highly adorable but whose gymnastics puts me to sleep, will prance through and sweep up the medals. It's boring, boring, boring, and not to mention underestimates the rest of the field. But mostly, it's boring.

In my explanatory posts Shawn's floor and beam showed up. Those are her two best events. Her bars is competent, but nothing to write home about, with the exception of her dismount which is a Ray (named for the wonderful Elise Ray (USA), 2000 Olympian) aka a double twisting double layout, the second hardest ub dismount in the world that nearly gives me a heart attack every time she does it because hers is pretty low and I always think she's going to break her neck. And on vault, last year she was performing the standard double Yurchenko well (usually getting around a 15.2).

What to look out for at the American Cup of course is UPGRADES. Shawn is reportedly adding two new skills to her bars, bumping her mediocre ub scores up a few tenths. Her beam upgrades are more or less shrouded in mystery (a front pike? Maybe!) but one can probably expect her 6.8/6.9 difficulty to get bumped up a little over 7.0 since she's going to want to contend with Li Shanshan of the 7.3 A score. On floor she is adding a whip + triple that's going to bump her up a few tenths there to around 6.4. BUT the upgrade that has been the talk of the internets for months and months and months now is Shawn's Amanar vault. If you recall waaaay back in my vault post, the Amanar, or 2 1/2 twisting Yurchenko, is a .7 bump up from the double twisting Yurchenko and that 6.5 value is the highest value of any vault being done currently in WAG. The general assumption was that with that HUGE start value lead over the rest of the top all arounders (most of whom do DTYs) Shawn would be unstoppable. I personally found this logic flawed since clearly people would try to make it up on other events, particularly since vault is one of the lower scoring events. In actuality, everyone and their sister just decided to start throwing Amanars themselves though no one can know how many of these will actually materialize in Beijing! Shawn's, however, is pretty definite. Thanks to the magic of the internet you can actually see her practicing it in podium training for Scam from EARLIER THIS VERY DAY.


Pretty damn good. A little sloppier in pre-flight than she normally is, but still. Shawn is reportedly going to be showing most (supposedly all, but no one believes that) of the upgrades she will have for Beijing tomorrow.




Samantha Pezcek


To be honest, I don't really know that much about Sam Pezcek. She was one of 2007's new seniors and won vault at the American Cup. She was also on the Pan Ams team. Though, she's probably most well-known for being on the 2007 World Championship team that took home gold. Sam was there exclusively to vault (a DTY) and it's considered pretty much fact that if Ivana Hong hadn't had a leg injury leaving her unable to do her DTY, Sam wouldn't have made the team at all.

What I am sure of regarding Sam is that she's definitely angling for a spot on the Olympic team as a floor and vault specialist.

Here is her floor during prelims at Worlds.


Passes: piked full-in (E), 2 1/2 (D) + punch front full (C), front double twist (D; but there's no way she got credit because she waaay under-rotated it), 1 1/2 (C), double pike (D). She only scored a 14.6 for this and with good reason because that form is not pretty at all. She was also watered down here as I hear it. Though due to injury or inconsistency on some of her big skills, I really don't know. What I do know is that she has to do much better than that if she wants any hope of a floor specialist berth since bum-ankled Nastia bettered this fx score at Worlds and Nastia isn't going up on floor in anyone's team finals under 6-3-3. (i.e. Six team members, three go up, three scores count.)

And here is her very explosive DTY during team finals.


Again, she could stand cleaner form.

As far as UPGRADES (yes, I always have to use all caps for that!) Sam is one of many who is supposed to have or be getting an Amanar (a solid Amanar would very much help her Olympic bid) and she reportedly has a double double on floor, which is huge and could help her out there as well. There's something about ub upgrades as well (full twisting double layout dismount), but though the US has a HUGE uneven bars deficit Sam's not very good on uneven bars so I really have no idea what she's looking to do there.

Basically, Sam Pezcek competing all around will be just as much an adventure to me as it is to anyone else!




Nastia Liukin


Nastia Liukin has had all eyes on her almost since she first went to elite and certainly long before she was a senior. This was the result of a combination of pedigree (her parents are former Soviet world/Olympic champion gymnasts), background (her father's gym WOGA also produced world champion Holly Vise and 2004 Olympic all around champion Carly Patterson), and demonstrated ability (Nastia pretty much completely dominated the junior ranks for years, winning the junior national all around, beam, floor, and bars titles in 2003 and 2004). It was even rumored that national team coordinator, Marta Karolyi would have named her to the 2004 Olympic team if not for the fact that Nastia missed the age cut off by a few months. So, as you can imagine, when she finally did move up to senior in 2005, the hype was colossal. I don't think I'll ever forget 2005 Nationals and the camera pushing in on 15-year-old Nastia's face while she waited to vault, Al Trautwig opining, "And now...the woman. It's as if she already has the crown. That is the way people talk about Nastia Liukin. It's as if this has all been written already in terms of destiny." And in case you didn't think that was ridiculous enough, he called her The Chosen One later.

I have always been inclined to automatically hate the It Girl, the wunderkind, The Chosen One. But that never happened with me and Nastia. Initially, I had no choice but to owe it to the fact that I just genuinely enjoyed her gymnastics so much. Later, added to that was the fact that she had hard times, but just kept on pushing through, pretty much through sheer strength of will. In 2005, she won the senior national all around title and ended up on the podium four times at Worlds. She won bars and beam, placed second on floor, and second in the all-around. That all around silver, however, was highly controversial since the actual scores added up to a tie for gold, but they were truncated thus lowering Nastia's score artificially causing her to lose by .001. In 2006, Nastia won the American Cup and Pacific Alliance Championships all around titles and took the senior national title yet again. She was expected to contend for the all around gold at Worlds, but a few weeks before the competition suffered her Nagging Ankle Injury of Doom that essentially stole an entire year from her career. Bone chips ensured that she would not be able to compete all around, but Marta still took her for the sole purpose of swinging bars, screwed up ankle be damned! While she was there Nastia managed a silver on bars in event finals despite the whole thing where she basically had to land her dismount on one foot. Then she had surgery and due to recovery time and an unfortunate flare up, Nastia didn't compete all around again until 2007 Nationals. The facts that she'd only had two weeks of training, the new It Girl had been chosen, and Al Trautwig is an asshole coalesced into Nastia falling in 6 out of 8 routines over the two day competition, Al going on and on about how nearly-18-year-old Nastia was ancient and crippled and washed up, and the world going she has lost it and should accept her fate as an event specialist. Two weeks later, at Worlds, Nastia, ankle still suspect and competing watered down routines, placed second in the all around in prelims (after the absurdly overscored Steliana Nistor; seriously, judges, wtf), placed fifth in the all around final after an unfortunate beam fall, took ub silver again, and became a double world champion on beam. People kinda shut up.

In the course of my explanatory posts, I have shown you Nastia on everything but vault, her weakest event. Nastia is not a particularly powerful gymnast (she's tall and thin and relatively fragile for a gymnast) and she's been criticized a lot because she only does a 1 1/2 Yurchenko (5.5 difficulty value) in contrast to the other top all arounders and their DTYs. There was always talk that she was going to upgrade eventually, but her ankle injury left her unable to train vault for a year, so late last year she was still only showing a 1 1/2. Nastia's watered down floor was around a 5.8 at Worlds, though back in 2006 before her injury she was trying to do a 6.2 routine. Due to aforementioned lack of power she gets most of her difficulty from leap combinations (she's extremely flexible and has insane amplitude on those things, so unlike most of the rest of the world she doesn't routinely get downgraded) and using her high technical ability for combination tumbling, as opposed to lots of big double saltos. Nastia's beam is excellent largely on the strength of her exceptional execution, though the difficulty bar on beam has been raised quite a bit over her normal 6.5-6.7. Nastia's bars are arguably the best in the world and among the best of all time, despite her having come in second for the last two years. Her 7.1 was the second highest difficulty in the bars final at Worlds last year, beaten only by Ksenia Semyonova (Russia) who had a 7.2.

In the area of UPGRADES to be watched out for: reports from training camps and such say that Nastia has a DTY now or, at least, will for Beijing. She threw a not very good one at a camp a few weeks ago and apparently won't be competing it tomorrow, but will later this year. Which I would definitely believe because she's going to want those extra .3 on vault when the rest of the top AAers are chucking Amanars all over the place. I expect some manner of upgrades on floor, though I have little idea of what they'll be or where they'll put her A score. On beam, I'm sure she's going to want to get into the high 6s AT LEAST. A report from training mentioned some manner of front aerial to arabesque (which sounds just like a very pretty-in-concept combination that people kept doing HORRIBLY at Worlds last year), but mostly I am just ecstatic that she has apparently jettisoned that godforsaken back pike. [Insert Angelic Choir] And on, bars. Okay. Guys. I won't lie. I saw this video from training a few hours ago and I basically sat there going "Holy shit." to myself for like ten minutes because it is just that sick.


Just to clarify, when she gets up to the high bar...guys, she does three E elements. In a row. And if she doesn't connect that Tkatchev (:28) to the Pak (:35), I will be massively shocked since she changed the direction in which she does the Tkatchev, thus setting it up perfectly. This routine is out of a 7.7, with the Tkatchev + Pak it'll be 7.8. It's...the highest recorded A score in WAG ever? At least, that I know of. It also pretty handily says, "Fuck you!" to the Amanar Advantage. And making this even more OMGWTF MUST SEE NOW is the fact that according to eye witness reports from training (and it can be observed even in this video), Nastia's infamous bent leg giants are no more, thus there should be a bump in her B score as well. She also cleaned up her dismount some.

She wants to compete, you guys. She wants it hard. And this is why I love her.




Shayla Worley


Shayla first burst onto the scene in 2006 when she finished second to Nastia at the American Cup. It is widely thought that she actually should have won because Nastia had some errors and Shayla is very good, but, well, it was the American Cup. Injuries (which seem to plague Shayla) unfortunately kept her off of the 2006 Worlds team. And she has a history of turning down various assignments because of injury. She finished second at 2007 Nationals and was rather indispensable to the world championship team. Why? Because Shayla Worley is one of the only gymnasts in America who can swing bars worth a crap. You have Nastia, who is like a fucking titan on the uneven bars and gets 16.2+. Then Shayla who pulls out mid-15s if she manages to hit her dismount. And then...no one really. No one to the extent that in team finals at worlds Shawn Johnson was up on bars aka her worst event because they literally couldn't do better for a third score than her low-15s.

That said, Shayla is also strong on beam and floor. She was up on floor in team finals as well as bars, though the mid-to-high 14s from were the best they could get then, that's not likely to hold true for this year. Her beam is mid-to-high fifteens as well, but she actually lost her beam spot to Alicia Sacramone who was routinely pulling out a few tenths more. On vault, she does a 1 1/2 Yurchenko. Shayla's chances competing against Shawn and Nastia for an all around spot have been a topic of discussion recently as well, but I have to say, as much as I love Shayla (she actually has artistry, guys!) I don't really buy that as a terribly likely possibility. Shayla's a bit behind in A score, but more important than that, in my mind, is the fact that she tends to give a lot of B-score deductions away. She's not a sloppy gymnast form-wise, but she always seems to have iffy landings or extra steps or wobbles and what have you. Shawn and Nastia (Nastia especially) tend to either HIT or MISS. All caps just like that. They're not ones to really do so-so. Nastia particularly, when she has mistakes has a tendency to do everything else to near perfection; master damage controller, that Nastia.

At any rate, I have never actually shown you ANY Shayla. So have some.

Beam from Nationals.


She has great skills, but again, those bobbles and small errors knock her score down some.

Floor from Nationals, Day One.


Look, dance! Passes are: front layout (B) + front double twist (D), double arabian (E; monster cowboy!), triple (E; slightly under-rotated), double pike (D).

Bars from Nationals, Day Two.



UPGRADES one can expect from Shayla will probably be on all events. I'm not sure what exactly they'll be, but if she is thinking about vying for an all around spot, she'll need them. I know that she was throwing DTYs at the very same training camp that Nastia was, but like Nastia I don't think she's going to be doing one tomorrow. Unfortunate buzz going around however is that she might be injured yet again. At one point she was supposedly not going to Scam at all, but that was later debunked. However, the report from training today said that she seemed to be having some back problems. Major sadface there.




And so, TO WRAP UP.

DEAR UNIVERSE,

Things I Want from This Year's Tyson American Cup



1) Nice gymnastics! Beyond our above ladies, I hear Xiao Tingting has a hot bars set, at least. Perhaps the others will have some surprises too. Not that NBC will bother showing them!

2) Hit routines! You know what would be totally awesome? IF EVERYONE HIT. That would be good times.

3) Minimal retarded NBC fluff! This will never happen, but a girl can dream.

In Hopes of Much Badassery,
Rawles <3


The American Cup airs "live" Saturday, March 1 @ 1PM EST on NBC.