I hope you all had a nice Christmas holiday. Here’s some stuff that happened in the gymnastics world while I was being lazy and not blogging about them:
Olympic gold medalist Cătălina Ponor (ROM) announced her retirement after coming back to help the Romanian team, which is unfortunately still floundering in the post Octavian Belu/Mariana Bitang era. Apparently, back problems forced her into retirement. Although I was not especially fond of Ponor post-Athens (although she did get lots prettier), any former gymnast who comes rallying back to save the sport in her country should be admired. Kind of like Chow and Dawes in 2000, if I may say so.
Chellsie Memmel acquitted herself well in the Toyota Cup thingy that happened after the Beijing Test Event, winning floor and getting second on balance beam. Steliana Nistor (ROM) won beam, if you wanted to know. Bridget Sloan was third on both uneven bars and floor exercise.
Finally, at the 2007 Elite Canada meet, Kristina Vaculik (CAN), who represented her country at the Beijing Test Event, swept the all-around, uneven bars, and vault. She was second to world bronze medalist (at 2006 Aarhus) Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs on balance beam.
Here’s Kristina Vaculik doing bars in Beijing, wearing a nice blue leotard with the Canadian maple leaf in sparkles:
Second to Vaculik in the all-around was Peng-Peng Lee (CAN), the poor girl who got jeered at by the Brazilian crowds during the Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Lee is too young to qualify for Beijing, but anyway I’ve taken a liking to her, especially after watching her compete in front of an unsympathetic crowd. She rushes through her beam routines as if the apparatus scalds her (I don’t like that because it makes her mess up), but she does do a flare (think pommel horse) mount on beam that I like, even if others think it’s ugly.
Here’s Peng-Peng Lee on floor exercise during the Pan-Ams.
She is using Allyse Ishino’s old floor music, “Gypsy Rhapsody”.
For comparison’s sake, here is Allyse Ishino herself, at the 2004 Pacific Alliance Championships (where she did the ‘impossible’ and beat Carly Patterson in an all-around competition. Ha).
Ishino is an old sentimental favorite of mine, so I am using Peng-Peng’s floor exercise as an excuse to post a video of her. Ha.
wow… how in the world did Peng-Peng come in second? To me that routine was horrendous! She needs to mature a little.
Peng-Peng Lee is my favourite junior right now, by far. Thus it is not surprising that I love her beam mount.
I also sort of feel like the only person in the world who likes quick beamworkers. I mean, sometimes they come off as just being twitchy/nervous/rushed, but from others I actually get confidence.