A maCHIIIIINE

The Pacific Alliance Championsips (or Pacific Rim whatevs that they are inexplicably calling it this year) airs today on NBC at 4:30.

I will probably have some thoughts worth posting once I can see at least SOME routines in non-home-video-on-YouTube quality recordings.

Since the beginning of the month when I indicated that I had MOAR THOUGHTS on the American Cup, I have failed to bring them to you. In that time various other things of note have taken place in the gymnastics world. SO instead of just more thoughts about SCAM and how Shawn'll be fine and Nastia > everyone acts like she is, you get UH...sundry other stuff too. Some serious, some less so!

Neatly sectioned off for your convenience. THIS IS ETERNAL. AND CONTAINS LOTS OF VIDEO.

( HARD TIMES, or Notable and Extremely Unfortunate Injuries )


( SCAM Cup REVISITED. Well, technically this is a rant about judging and difficulty and people not knowing wtf they are talking about that is slightly related to SCAM! )


( SCAM Cup Revisited: FOR REAL THIS TIME! )


( The Fifth Element Is...Underperforming? or That Meet In Italy Right After Am Cup )


( An Aussie Interlude )


( America's Next Top...Gymnast? )


( I never have been able to figure out why exactly AT&T specifically sponsors gymnastics?! )


AND that is about it for this post. I have a few more PLANNED currently.

One is going to be about the rest of the US girls who are vying for an Olympic berth but haven't done much this year and the other will be about the Pacific Alliance Championships.

I was going to include PAC in this post, but it took me too long to actually get around to FINISHING this eternal post so it was sort of...today. However, NBC will not deign to AIR the competition until the 13th of April. SO, you know. Whatevs.

PAC has a three junior, three senior format and the US team was Nastia, Jana Bieger, and Darlene Hill (a national team b-lister) for the seniors. And was SUPPOSED to be Rebecca Bross, Samantha Shapiro, and Jordyn Wieber for the juniors. But little miss phenom Jordyn Wieber rolled her ankle, so she was replaced with Rebecca Clark who hails from the same gym as Ivana Hong! Olivia Courtney was the alternate. It is also notable that Shapiro, Wieber, and Courtney (the fourth was the lovely Mattie Larson who is injured currently) were part of the Junior Pan Ams team that went 1-2-3 in the all-around and swept up a bunch more medals last year.

So yeah. That soon.

ETA: AND I am dumb so totally forgot another bit of NEWS. The Code of Points will be TWEAKED for 2009 such that now only the 8 highest difficulty elements will be counted instead of 10. WELL, that's something! Which is better than nothing. Now they need to make it so that vaults get DOWNGRADED if you fall on them and that you lose difficulty value for elements that you fall on in other routines. I guarantee you people would chuck shit less if a fall wouldn't mean that they just break even.

Well, that was interesting.

( Uh...spoilers lol. )

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 )


( Samantha Pezcek )


( Nastia Liukin )


( Shayla Worley )


( IN CONCLUSION )

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

Rudimentary Routine Evaluation Made Easy: Floor Exercise Edition

One last time, guys. I TOILED on this one. Dear God, HOW I TOILED.

( ONTO THE FLOOR )

AND SO we have come to the end my friends. Well, of these basics explanatory posts anyway.

This evening I’m going to do an American Cup primer post since the American Cup is, uh, tomorrow! EXCITING TIMES.

Rudimentary Routine Evaluation Made Easy: Balance Beam Edition

And we’re back! THIS ONE GOES FROM MY HEART TO YOURS. I am still not a gymnastics expert! And I am still basing these evaluations on general opinion and the Code of Points. Other people’s mileage may vary etcetera and so forth.

( ONTO THE BEAM )

Last (but not least...sort of): the floor exercise!

Rudimentary Routine Evaluation Made Easy: Uneven Bars Edition

Second verse, same as the first. I am not the all-knowing gymnastics queen! I have biases, but I try to both be aware of them and keep them in check! I'm basing the vast majority of what I say off of the Code of Points and what is generally acceptable and what is generally not!

( ONTO THE BAAARS )

Next: the balance beam! (DUN DUN DUN!)