Since I probably won’t be blogging over the weekend, I am taking this opportunity to extend difficulty plus execution’s Mother’s Day Greetings to Lavinia Miloşovici.

Milo’s daughter Denisa (born 2004) has cerebral palsy; she was premature and had suffered from complications. And yet Milo is determined to raise her child well. Two years ago, Romanian gymnastics fans and others rallied to raise money to send Denisa to China for special treatment.

Here’s an old feature on Romanian TV from 2007 that shows clips of Milo and her daughter at a special preschool (it’s in Romanian).

You’d have to have a heart of stone to not find that touching.

Happy Mother’s Day, Milo. I hope you know that even if she doesn’t say it, Denisa loves you with all her little heart, just as much as you love her.

Japan’s women’s team:

Kyoko Oshima, Miki Uemura, Mayu Kuroda, Koko Tsurumi, Yu Minobe, Yuko Shintake.

Oshima, who won the all-around in the recent NHK Cup in Japan to secure her spot on the Olympic team, is notable for her admirable cover-up after botching uneven bars at the 2005 World Championships.

Kyoko Oshima, 2005 World Championships all-around uneven bars

Oshima is an Olympic veteran, having already been to Athens:

Kyoko Oshima, 2004 Olympic Games qualifications

The leotard is pretty.

Mayu Kuroda, in my opinion, should have at least shared the bronze with Beth Tweddle in the uneven bars event finals at 2005 Worlds. Even Nadia said she was underscored!

Mayu Kuroda, 2005 World Championships, Uneven Bars event finals

And Koko Tsurumi joins Jiang Yuyuan and Daniela Druncea in my OMG Cute! Roster.

Koko Tsurumi, 2007 World Championships, all-around balance beam

Very very recently, from 2008 Chinese Nationals.

Pretty Amânar. So that’s Barbosa, Johnson, Pavlova (splatted), and Jiang. Who’s next please.

And Jiang’s floor from the same meet:

Youtube user fanbutterfly has more videos from this event, which will give us a very good idea of China’s Olympic A-team.

(I haven’t gotten the book, and if I do it’s because I want to read the tidbits about the Mrs. Oh, and about how tyrannical USA Gymnastics was.)

A somewhat vocal consensus is that Jennifer Sey is loopy and we shouldn’t listen to her because her ideas are OUTDATED and everyone is more LALALA HAPPY now than back in those antiquated days so she is a liar and irrelevant, so no one should listen to her or buy her book.

What do you think?

I know this has been posted elsewhere, but anyway, here you go:

Yoculan Interview with Inside Gymnastics Part 1 and Part 2

Here the great Madame of Georgia gymnastics talks about…stuff. And about her successor, UGA’s assistant coach Jay Clark (who called Courtney McCool a wimp, ha ha not funny).

And Katie Heenan is engaged, and yes I mean engaged to be married…
Where has all the time gone?! It seems like just yesterday I was watching her in 2004.

For a long time I had wondered about what might have happened to 1991 world uneven bars champion Kim Gwang Suk (PRK), who had competed when she was like seven years old or something.

But she was recently part of the Olympic Torch relay. Yes, folks, she’s ALIVE!

It was her age-falsification that got the DPRK suspended, though it was a very lukewarm punishment and the PRK has continued being careless with their gymnasts’ birthdays. After Kim left the scene, North Korea was very tight-lipped about what happened to her.

As a toddler world champion in 1991:

Kim Gwang Suk, 1991 World Championships Uneven Bars event finals

OMG Revamped Site!

For those who can see it, NBC has done an okay job profiling some of the non-American gymnasts, although the picture that they used for Sandra Izbasa’s profile sucks. She is MUCH MUCH prettier than that.

And the site, although pretty-fied, is still not very nice to international online vistors. That’s stupid.

Please Click Here

I have no comment on Shawn’s poetry.

You may remember that I wondered what had happened to 1996 Olympian Mirela Tugurlan (ROU).

Well, there was a (rather) recent article about her; she’s married (tied the knot in 2005) and has a daughter (born 2006). Apparently a broken knee ended Tugurlan’s international career in 1997. She began her coaching career at a gymnastics club in her hometown of Focşani in 2004, and is still pursuing a coaching career though I don’t know if she’s still in the same place.

Mirela Tugurlan, 1996 Olympics Compulsory Beam

Now if only one could get a more recent article (younger than 2003) about Ionela Loaies…

Here’s a book that’s been on the radar for a while; Chalked Up, the gymnastics memoirs of former USA National Champion and World team member Jennifer Sey, who competed in the 1980s.

Sey was part of the Parkettes gymnastics club, home gym of 2000 Olympian Kristen Maloney, but better known as the lair of (gasp!) the Mrs. It is therefore not surprising to me that Sey would not have good things to say about her experience as a gymnast.

While the book does have some interesting dish on the wily ways and vile plans of the Mrs and USA Gymnastics, this is not a sequel to Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, as some might accuse it to be. (Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, as I recall, wasn’t even written by a gymnast, and 1992 Olympian Betty Okino blasted that book in an editorial.)

However, from all reports that I’ve heard, Sey restrains herself from going for the OMG DRAMA, preferring to tell her own story rather than blathering all over the place about evil coaches, etc. So Chalked Up isn’t going to be the quite the drama-fest you would expect.