ceebeegee | Entries tagged with gymnastics

So this weekend I watched the old '80s miniseries Masada via Netflix. I remembered hearing about it back in the day but had never watched it. Have to say, it stands up pretty damn well. It is a little dated-feeling (feels very '80s and my GOD does Peter O'Toole camp it up--that EYELINER) but the story and the performances really hold up. I especially liked Peter Strauss as the Jewish commander, Eleazar ben Yair--it's not easy bringing to life the stolid hero but I thought he did a credible job. Since it's a siege story there aren't a lot of dramatic battles to stage, so the focus goes to the psychological game and the Zealots make a point of taunting the Romans about the heat and the desert. The scenes where they just pour water down the side of the cliffs--water which the Masada fortress collects in cisterns and water which the Roman soldiers crave desperately--is pretty awesome. And there was a really cool recreation of Roman theater at the time--they showed the ending of Oedipus Rex and then a political satire. I also liked how nuanced the characters were--the grudging respect ben Yair and the O'Toole character have for each other is great. On a shallow note, ben Yair was HOTTT.

Watched the US Classic (a gymnastics meet that's a qualifier for Nationals) this weekend--I had to stream it from my phone because my fios went out on Saturday (MOST annoying, since I just had it installed a week ago). For the record, McKayla's vaults were on point and Kyla Ross won the AA. I had been thinking about attending Nationals next month--it's in Hartford CT so not too far away. But it's kind of difficult to get there--believe it or not, Metro-North doesn't have a stop in Hartford. Peter Pan has a bus there but I'd be leaving at the end of the evening and I don't really want to catch a bus in the late evening and get back into the city at what--2 am? 3? SO I don't think it'll happen. HOWEVER! Next year's Nationals are in Pittsburgh! And I know someone in Pittsburgh! *sly smile* That *would* be fun, a weekend trip to the 'Burgh. Good food, quality gymnastics, spending time with dear friends--win/win/win!

BTW this? Is beyond obnoxious. Being a good citizen dictates you should offer your seat to pregnant women, the disabled and the elderly. Children as a group do not fall into those categories. The "tipster" who sent this in is a drama-stoking a-hole. You have no idea what that woman's situation is--she may have hidden disabilities. And trying to stack the deck by trashing her appearance? All-around dick move.

Had a soccer game Sunday. My Dolphman team isn't doing too well this season, I'm sorry to say, and we're still not sure if we'll make playoffs. We've had a hard time with numbers (nearly every game has had 1-2 subs at most) and I personally have been sick for most of the season which is affecting my stamina and energy. The last two games have been frustrating, especially yesterday's. 5 minutes before game time the other team only had four players--you're supposed to have 7 on the field. Suddenly 3 new players show up, none of whom had the team tee-shirt, and they were all really good. Every team is allowed two players who are not on your team--but not 3. At half time the ref was asking the captain about it and I could hear them saying "....no, she's on our team...she just didn't have the tee-shirt" and then something about "...we didn't have enough girls" (you have to have two girls on the field). So, in other words, she's NOT a team member. And girls ARE subs--girls do count toward your 2-sub total! WTF? Clear cheating. The league is expensive and this is something we're supposed to be paying for--enforcement of the rules and fair play. We ended up tieing them and it was so frustrating--we didn't even play THEM, half their team wasn't them. I did at least score a really cool goal--Sam was coming up the left and I floated in toward the center, hoping he'd see me. He looped it over the heads of several of their players and I kneed it in. My team was talking about it for quite awhile afterward, it was quite picturesque!

So, I am a huge gymnastics fan and The Olympics is my happy time. (Although World's is fun too.) Most Olympics fans are what we call four-year fans--nothing wrong with that, BTW! But I thought I might give you a little bit of background on the American team and the likely contenders.

The team format:

This Olympics, we have a different team format. There are only five members per time (plus 2-3 alternates), in contrast to past Games where we had 6 (Sydney in '00, Beijing) or even 7 (Atlanta in '96). Also 3 team members compete on any one apparatus--and most importantly all 3 scores count. It used to be that you could drop the lowest score on an apparatus, so if one member flopped, it wasn't such a big deal. Not any more. This format is known as 5-3-3. Bruno Grandi, the head of FIG (Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique, the worldwide governing body of the sport) in an effort to curry favor with less-represented countries that traditionally have not been featured much in gymnastics, devised this system to that countries like the US, Russia, Romania et al. have less of an advantage--you need fewer good gymnasts to win. I personally hate the system, as do many fans, because I think it's crappy to make the teams smaller and allow fewer gymnasts to become Olympians. Small countries have plenty of opportunities to qualify for event finals or the AA--team finals are supposed to decide the best TEAM, as in plural.

Individual All-Around format:

Only 2 gymnasts per country can qualify, as opposed to the past where 3 could qualify. And I believe the top 24 (not 36) overall qualify.

The Players:

The US team are the current World champions. This is no guarantee of gold, though--in both '04 AND '08, we also came in as world champions. But we are definitely the favorites--I believe our strongest competition is probably the Russian team. However, interestingly, the Romanians beat the Russians in Europeans. China is likely not a threat in team competition. But anything can happen, as Beijing proved!

American Jordyn Wieber is the current World AA champion (and two-time US champion). Jordyn beat out Russian Viktoria Kimova in a controversial finish--Jordyn had had a bad bars routine which seemed to take her out of contention but then came back with flawless beam and floor routines, which were also difficult. Vika made no major errors throughout the meet but her sets weren't as difficult and she gave away a lot of tenths here and there...and they added up. When she saw that she'd ("only") gotten silver she burst into tears, and was...shall we say, not exactly sporting on the medals podium.

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BUT. She is a lovely gymnast, and I hope both she and Jordyn hit in London. Vika is definitely out for blood and motivated, but she is a bit of a headcase. We shall see.

Another AA contender is American Gabby Douglas, who actually beat Jordyn Wieber in the Olympic Trials. ("Oooooh, All About Eve drama!") That dynamic is actually reminiscent of '92--Kim Zmeskal was the current US and World champion, but Shannon Miller won the Trials, and then Kim fell off the beam in the team prelims. Gabby's biiiiig strength is bars--she absolutely flies over them, as high as Dominique Dawes used to, she gets incredible air. Her weakness is that she's a little unreliable--in last year's Nationals she fell off the beam 3 (3? maybe 4) times. In one set. She's also relatively inexperienced, just a few big meets so far. But I think if she hits she has an excellent chance of medaling.

A Romanian AA contender is little Larisa Iordache, who is absolutely darling, a real old-school pixie. I am hoping she will sneak onto the podium, I enjoyed watching her at Europeans. Another Romanian is Catalina Ponor, whom you may remember from the '04 Olympics! That's right, she's making her comeback and doing very well. Catalina's events are the beam and the floor--she and Larisa traded golds and silver on those two events at Europeans.

McKayla Maroney is the current World vault champion, and you will see why when she competes. She has the biggest vault you've ever seen--she gets mad air. Goes up higher, stays up longer, lands further than anyone else. She makes vault exciting.

The vault final at Worlds was interesting--they had gymnasts from EVERYWHERE. Two particular favorites of mine were Yamilet Peña from the Dominican Republic, who tried to throw a very difficult vault and ended up sitting it down. She got up and with a big smile saluted the judges. What a trouper! She gave it her all--gotta love that. Peña has in fact qualified for London at the Olympic test Event, so I can't wait to see her. The other vaulter was a tiny slip of a thing, Phan Thi Ha Thanh from Vietnam who ended up winning the bronze! The joy on her face was incandescent--she was thrilled just to BE there, but to actually medal...!

VaultMedals

Since she medaled at Worlds she automatically qualified for the Games but funding for her sport is very low and she's had much difficulty training. The other gymnast on McKayla's right is Oksana Chusovitina, a fierce HBIC who has been competing FOREVER. Remember Barcelona in '92? She was THERE. She competed as a Soviet, for the Unified team, for Uzbekistan and now for Germany. Chuso is Da Woman.

He Kexin, one of the age-controversial gymnasts in '08, will be back although just barely. She actually hasn't done so well since Beijing--a shame as I like her gymnastics. (Yes, I think she was underage--bitch, please. No, I don't blame her and would never blame the gymnast--she's part of a totalitarian system, she has no say in this.) But China needs her bars, so she's back.

Britain might actually medal this year, which I believe would be an Olympic first. Their big gun is Beth Tweddle, who is a past World champion in both bars and floor. REALLY pushing for her, I love her work *and* the fact that she's an older gymnast. I also get a kick out of how very ENGLISH Beth looks. Case in point:

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Those are some CHOPPERS! But I kid because I love--best of luck, Beth, hope you perform well for the hometown crowd!

As more evidence has come out, but the IOC has turned a blind eye, I haven't wanted to blog about this because frankly, I found the story alternately maddening and depressing. Everyone could see there was evidence (and China has done this before--one of their medalists in Sydney admitted to being underage. Admitted it on state TV) but the IOC just kept saying "her passport says she's of age, therefore it's a done deal" and FIG just shrugged. That's the maddening part. The depressing part is how cynical some people have been--how they don't seem to realize that if this is true, it's spitting in the face of those who AREN'T cheating, those who DID wait their turn until they were old enough to compete. Like the AA gold medalist, Nastia Liukin--who almost certainly would've competed in Athens if the age limit were lower. She was that good even back then. And we have 14- and 15-year old who could've competed this year. But the rules say the gymnast has to turn 16 the calendar year of the Olympics--and it's to protect the gymnasts themselves, to keep them from pushing their bodies too hard, and in response to some scary-ass stories of exploitation in the '70s and '80s .

So I tried not to think about the story too much because I figured nothing would happen. The IOC has extremely selective vision and they pick and choose their battles. they had no problem going after poor Andreea Raducan in 2000 with both guns firing, stripping her of her gold medal in the AA for a cold tablet, but when convincing evidence turns up that the host country might've falsified documents to screw over athletes in order to scrabble a few more golds? No way, man. They don't want the fight. They can bully a Romanian sixteen-year-old but not China, not the country that sentences 70+-year-old women to hard labor (and how damn sad is that? That article brings tears to my eyes, that is just unbelievable).

Until I saw this:

Faced with almost insurmountable evidence which suggests that [gymnast] He is two years younger than the birth date listed on her Chinese passport, the IOC has launched an inquiry that could result in the stripping of He's gold medals.

About damn time.

I read an article on Salon.com about a new book that's coming out about women's gymnastics, a memoir by an athlete who competed in the '80s, Jennifer Sey. It sounds very interesting. Actually the article is an interview with the athlete herself who matter-of-factly talks about eating disorders, the de facto physical abuse and the inherent skeeviness of some of it.

Throughout the book, you make elliptical references to male coaches who are attracted to young girls and imply that your own personal coach, John, was one of them. What did you mean when you said that he was "lewd and lascivious" and "may have liked being near all the barely dressed teens, but … never explicitly let on"?

He was never inappropriate with us, but he was a really flirty guy, and we all saw that. And sometimes the women he flirted with were very close to our age -- 18, 19 years old, and we were 15 or 16. There were a lot of things he did that made me feel weird -- he was a weird guy. The conditions of the sport are strange, and that was what I was trying to say. Most men that coach women gymnasts have never been gymnasts themselves. So I always wondered, even as a child: Why do these men want to coach little girls? In some instances, it's purely financial. But I think in the minority of cases, there are men who are interested in little girls.

I've always wondered that myself! Steve Nunno and Bela Karolyi weren't gymnasts--I'm not even sure they were athletes! (I don't know that much about Al Fong's background but his coaching career has been pretty cursed--TWO dead gymnasts?) I always thought men who only coached girls have this need to be the ram among ewes--the unquestioned authority figure because girls are eager to please and will push themselves for that (this applies to younger boys as well, but IMO as boys get older they're more likely to rebel than girl athletes). And frankly, yeah, there is the skeeve factor--any guy who chooses to coach only girls (as opposed to a mixture of boys and girls) is always going to seem a little weird. Bela Karolyi creeped me out, sorry. Sure, he's been successful but his reputation is too controversial within the gymnastics community for me not to wrinkle my nose.

But what fascinates me about this article are the comments. Most of the comments are pretty thoughtful (other than the dullard who wrote "here's a thought
If it's so terrible quit"--gee, that's helpful! She'll just step in her time machine and go back to the '80s and quit, and then come back to resume her adult life.). But there are a few letters from respondents who attack the interview for what they see as bias, especially the headline. Fair enough, we can look at that--the headline is titillating, I agree, although I certainly think the issue of why these men choose to coach only girls, and the potential resultant risks, is a valid topic. But every now and then a tone comes across from some of the letter writers and I click on "Read other letters by [name of poster]." Oh mah Lord. Some angry little men out there. Check out this one guy, "Parson Jim":

[quoting an earlier letter] "The avoidance of teaching/coaching careers by men in many fields is exactly due to the sexism of this article and Sey's book.

"But the decline in male teachers has been taking place for decades, and feminist organizations have been fueling it for the same time with their hate speech against men."

Look around you, Mr. Feminist, and you will find hate in fellow feminists who preach "equality", [sic] but who are bigots or the worst type.

I clicked on "Read Parson Jim's other letters" and EVERY SINGLE LETTER is about this shit! Almost every single letter denounces feminism or asserts how bad American men have it compared to American women or denies the existence of male chauvinism/sexism/etc. (I read through the first ten pages of the guy's 60+ page archive of posts--there were maybe 5 letters that addressed other issues. I didn't want to read past the first ten pages--too creepy!) Oh my God, dude, CHILL. OUT. You will never get any action with that kind of bitterness seeping out of your pores. (Maybe that's the cause? Nothing pisses a certain kind of loser off like not getting some when he feels entitled. You know the saying, "a whore is a woman who sleeps with everyone. A bitch is a woman who sleeps with everyone but you.")

UGH. I seriously feel creeped out now. Hey dude, like it or not, feminism is here to stay, abortion is still legal and we're not shutting up. Welcome to the 21st century.

I am a huge women's gymnastics fan, and in the wake of the most recent US National Championships (which Nastia Liukin won), have been inspired to look up favorites past. I found Mary Lou Retton's page on Wikipedia. MLR has something of a controversial rep among gymnastics fans, believe it or not. On the bright side: she won the Gold medal All-Around, something no other US woman had done, and she won medals in the event finals (and helped lead the US team to the silver). She's also a very good sport and very positive. But on the liability side: she won in a boycotted Olympics in the US (it is almost certain that if the Russians had participated, she would not have won) so to some her victory is qualified. Also some critics think she lacked artistry and ushered in the area of "pixies doing tricks" as opposed to women showing more artistry on the floor and the beam. This view is silly, IMO--Olga Korbut in '72 was definitely the first gymnast to de-emphasize artistry in favor of athleticism. She threw some amazing skills, like the one during uneven bars where she'd stand on the top beam and doing a back flip and catch the top beam again. I have a video of Elena Mukhina doing that element in '79 and your heart stops. FIG finally banned the skill, probably because it looks so dangerous. Anyway, Olga Korbut made such a splash with her athleticism, which is why she's so famous--she's not truly one of the greats of the sport, as she never won an Olympic or Worlds AA title. And her kind of gymnastics is why female gymnasts started trending younger and skinnier. Before Olga Korbut, the female gymnasts were all relatively older women (with BREASTS) doing ballet, basically. Olga strated the trend, and Nadia was the perfect realization of it--tiny, nothing but muscle, absolutely no fear, and flawless. Nadia's artistry was that of the perfect physical specimen, the athlete executing her routines perfectly. Mary Lou capitalized on that trend, because she was an athlete, tough and muscular, but she didn't start it.

Anyway, I found something interesting on MLR's wikipedia page:

During the 80's, at the height of her popularity, she was an outspoken supporter of the Reagan Administration in the United States. She appeared in a variety of televised ads supporting Ronald Reagan. Though still an outspoken Christian and conservative, she has since denounced Reagan and his years in office stating that had she "known the impact his inability to address the AIDS epidemic would have" she would "never have given him (her) support."

Well, good for her. Way to think for yourself, and be able to say "I made a mistake." So many conservative Christians just love him (God knows why--he was only nominally a Christian, and rarely went to church) and I find her ability to reverse a stand refreshing.

Yay Carly Patterson! (Although after seeing her interview with Bob Costas, she is a bit of a CarlyBot.)

Yay USA gymnastics!!! This'll answer all those naysayers who say Americans only win titles on American soil!! We rocked tonight and last night!! Eat Greek dust!!

And congrats to Sveta too--I've always liked her and her extravagant Russian personality.

Shit. Some guy at work here just fucking spoiled the results of the women's AA for me. Spent all day trying not to find out, and he had to blurt out the news. I'm so pissed I could cry.