To watch or not to watch

I’m not excited for the American Cup, which is coming next week.

• Mostly because I’m not interested in watching Shawn Johnson dominate the meet. Not even if Shawn throws her Amânar vault, which she probably won’t.
• However, what I am pleased about, is that this is the time when Nastia, Shayla, and Shawn will likely unveil their Beijing upgrades, except for maybe the aforementioned Amânar. Shayla and Nastia were reported to be training Yurchenko 2.0 twist vaults–do you think will we see them?
• Though who knows? Nastia may surprise me and actually defeat Shawn; I say Nastia because there’s no way that the Stupid Important People will let poor Shayla beat Nastia, even if she does better. I bet Shayla will get lowballed if she actually does better routines than Nastia, God forbid.
• The Cup will only be a SHOCK HORROR if: Shayla actually beats Shawn and/or Nastia, and if Xiao Tingting (CHN) beats Nastia on bars.
• Anything else is just predictable.
• And anyway, the only American Cup I remember actually enjoying was the 2003 2004 American Cup, and that was only because of Terin Humphrey. (I was like, “Carly who?”)

I am much more excited for the Pacific Alliance Championships.

• For one thing, the awesome Aussie duo of Dasha Joura and Lauren Mitchell is going, with their compatriot Ashleigh Brennan, who is very pretty.
• I don’t think the USA team has been announced yet. Please don’t let Shawn be there. (And oh God please let Jana be there…)
• What irks me, however, is that even though I live at most two hours away from San Jose, schoolwork prevents me from actually making time to go there and see the Pacific Alliance live.
• But I’ll even tolerate Elfi if NBC shows it; they showed it in 2004 and 2006, so there’s a good chance, maybe?

Even more exciting to me is the ESP-ITA-POL-ROU-USA meet that I talked about before, which is to be held in Italy in March as well. (March is quite busy, eh?)

• I don’t know if Spain or Romania is going to send a senior women’s team, but if Romania does, I shall be overjoyed! If so, I would REALLY like to see Daniela Druncea there. I wouldn’t mind seeing Steliana Nistor either, although I was a little worried that they were sending the poor thing to too many competitions. (Selfishly, I want to see Sandra Izbasa, but I know that she’s been really tuckered out lately, and I would rather that she be healthy and ready for Beijing!)
• EDIT: Apparently, the Romanian senior girls were not planning to go. Excuse me while I go cry in the corner. And yes, it appears Spain is sending a full team; apparently, the 2004 Olympic bronze medalist Patricia Moreno is going, along with Stuttgart teammate Lenika de Simone, and others.
• On the other hand, rumors abound in the USA camp! The list of potential USA candidates that Martha K. is considering to send to Italy is LOADED. When I say loaded, I mean LOADED: think big names like Johnson, Memmel, Bieger (yay!), and Sacramone. (However, it hasn’t been finalized yet.) It would be kind of cool if Alicia went; she is of Italian descent, after all.
• EDIT: The potential junior USA team is just as LOADED at the senior team: think junior standouts like Bross, Wieber, and Shapiro.
• EDIT: The updated list of seniors going to Italy are Johnson, Peszek, Sloan, Trani, Bieger, Mattie Larson and/or Olivia Courtney. Yay for Bridget and Jana! But no Alicia, boo. She rolled her ankle (!), and so I guess it’s best that she get healthy first; as long as I see her in Beijing, it’s all good.
• EDIT: If Trani is going then that means *GASP* the Mrs. is going!
• And there’s like no way Italy ISN’T going to put Vanessa Ferrari out there. They used her to advertise the whole thing anyway.