La Divine Ludivine Furnon

One of the most unusual gymnasts of the ‘90s, Ludivine is born in November1980 in the beautiful town of Nime She starts taking dance classes when she was 8 years old and starts taking gymnastics lessons no sooner than on the 8th of April 1992 (at 12!!) following the advice of her school’s principal.

Her progress is amazing: in 1994, so only after two years in the sport, she is invited to train with the national team.

The 1995 World Champinships brings her an unexpected oportunity. Being only an anternate after the qualifications, she gets out of the blue the chance to compete in the FX finals when Shannon Miller withdras due to an ackle injury. Her excellent dance skills and natural athletic abilities gain her a bronze medal; the floor exercise, choregraphed by Adriana Pop is still regarder as one of the most spactacular of the ‘90s.Between 1996 and 2000, Ludivine consistently competes for her country, qualifying for more event finals in major competitions: she is 7th on Floor at the 1996 worlds, 4th on Beam at the 1997 Worlds and 6th on Floor in 1999.

The 2000 European champoinships are held in France, at Paris. With yet another extraordinary floor exercice, Ludivine has manages to win the gold medal. This is her wonderful performance, From 2008 she starts working with Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. Her work is equally beautiful and spectacular in this new field.

France vs Romania vs Great Britain

Crazyfairy12 has started posting videos from the meeting. This is Ana Porgras, even if she fell, her sheep jump and illusion turn never cease to amaze me :

RoBlogFest - Fangymnastics, 3rd place

I am very glad a gymnastics blog made it to the top 3 in our national (more or less) blog competition. Fangymnastics, you are doing a great job!

5 things you might not know about Tanya Nabieva

… and you can find out from facebook

1) 1. Tanya loves gymnastics, her friends and… Robert Pattison

2) 2. She has a brother

3) 3. Her favorite book is Svetlana Khorkina (?!)

4) 4. She describes herself as being “blonde with blue eyes”

5) 5. She fancies to become the female version of Robert Pattison

But I think that the most important is that she is having a great time alongside her team mates!

L

Romanian gymnasts will have a busy schedule till the Europeans

Gazeta Sporturilor published recently a more extended article about the gymnasts from Romania. It seems that the team will have 3 meets before the Europeans: one with England, one with France and the Romanian Internationals.

Forminte did not name yet the gymnasts that will be going to the Europeans in Birmingham, probably because he will have to think about this after the upcoming meets. He only said that „The ones that remain healthy till then, will be going”. The gymnasts that will be participating to the meet with Great Britain are: Porgras, Chelaru, Racea, Haidu, Trenca and MAYBE Cerasela Patrascu (yaaaaaay!).

Tamarjan and Dragoi are still struggling to recover, as their medical problems seem to have been solved. About Sandra Izbasa, he said that she’s back in the gym and that she will not have weight problems but for her, building strenght is the more difficult part. About the rest of the team members, he said they seem a bit tired as they have all worked a lot to learn new skills but he was confident that the preparation process is going very well.

In his characteristic bitter-sweet tone, he said that he doesn’t have any Nistor or Izbasa in the gym any more and Porgras or Chelaru don’t have the necessary maturity although they have a dose of talent and they are hard workers... But „I believe in them, I wouldn’t remain at Deva otherwise”.

You can read the entire article here.

The Couch Gymnast's online magazine - second article

The Couch Gymnast was kind enough to publish my second article in the second issue of her online magazine. If interested, you can read it here.

But don't read just this, the other articles are very cool as well :).

Was she or was she not... good on floor?

Many people have called Steliana a gymnast of two aparatus. Although she has won All Around titles, it has been generally considered she had two strong events, the uneven bars and beam and two mediocre ones (vault and floor, of course). But if we look back a little bit, at the year 2004 when Steli became Junior European gold medallist on floor, we could see things differently. Many fans and commentators have tried to find the reasons of Steli's inability to have as good performances on floor as on Uneven Bars. Some have blamed the injury from 2005, others the "ugly" choreo, others the "mean" coaches.

But the reasons for the decay are not as important. In my opinion we should just acknowledge the fact that she had as great potential on floor as she had in the other events. Here is her performance at the Europeans in the AA.

Or watch it on youtube.

Which one is cuter?

Alicia or the little Stella?