a must see: 2000 Euros - Event Finals

Although it may not have been the best day in the history of gymnastics commentary, it's interesting and entertaining.

Nadia calls Produnova's bars "nothing special". Of course Isarescu is "conservative" but clean :)

She seems to like Viktoria Karpenko much better... until she calls her "robotic" - on beam.

Bart is not much nicer either. "look at her bangs, is that like an airfoil?" referring to Karpenko's hairstile while doing a Shushunova on floor.

I liked the fact that they show a little bit of the juniors, with Stroescu and Cojocar dominating the event finals. And you are not going to believe what was Pavlova's specialty. Uneven bars junior champ!

Part 1: bars final, with Produnova, Martinez, Isarescu, Khorkina, Karpenko 

or here

Nadia is openly bored with Khorkina's routine "Not only she can close her eyes and see her routine, I can close my eyes and see her routine" bwahahahaha

Part 2: Vaults by Moya, Zamo and Amanar, Karpenko and Khorkina on beam

or here

part 3 - Amanar and Zamo on beam, Karpenko on floor

or here

Yes,  Bart just called Svetlana "one cool character".

part 4 - Ludivine Furnon, Andreea Raducan and Simona Amanar on floor

or here

I did believe that Raducan was technically better than Ludivine Furnon but really, the French gave one of the most impressive performances I have EVER seen in an event final.

part 5 - and a very energetic take on Carmen by Produnova:

or here

1996 Worlds semi- finals a time for testing skills

Kuy Yuanyuan ( photo source )

I just found this great video from 1996 Worlds . It contains all the routines from semi-finals and finals and most of them are very difficult to find on youtube. As it turns out, this competition held two months prior to the Olympic Game was the perfect time to try out the new skills and see what elements to keep and what to take out from the routine at the Olympics. Some of the risky moves did not make it and would never re-emerge.

Some of my favorite moments:

- Khorkina's "unicorn" transition from low to high:


Khorkina missed the skill in the event finals but still tied with Piskun for gold.

- When I saw Kochetkova's routine on BB my first second thought (after the wooow) was that this is how everyone will flic-flac out of every two skill combo that allows it - under the 2013-2016 code:



as demonstrated by Dina, at min 36:20 and then again at 36:35. Of course, these are series of two while in the new code you have to do three to receive the "series" bonus, but you get the idea...

*if this means everybody will be more like Dina, i can take it

- Kuy Yuanyuan doing seven skills in a row (min 47:20):


(this was in semi-finals, she obviously did not qualify for the finals because of the fall. Medals with falls became possible only in 2007)

- Gina, doing a flic- layout to two feet on beam:

In finals she missed the layout to two feet. She dismounted with a full twisting double back, not very successful. (btw, it bothers me when people hurry to label her as "boring" without having seen much of her work)

- Opening floor with a DLO was the norm in 1996, as demonstrated by Kuy, Anna Mirgorodskaya, Kocetkova and Tsavaridou (min 53:06 to min 59:53)



In the event finals only Gema Paz and Lyubov Sheremeta opened with different skills: triple twist and double arabian respectively.

- Liu Xuan being stunning on beam:

Qualified first for EF. 9.887 - makes you wonder how close to a ten had she been without that step on the landing.


- And finally something that I have been hunting for for a while: Alexandra Marinescu's BB silver medal performance  at Worlds:



She added the full back tuck for the finals, a skill she missed in the EF at the Olympics, two months later.

Other impressions? What did you find interesting?

25 reasons for which we love the 1999 Worlds (PART 1)

(34th World Championships Artistic Gymnastics Tianjin (CHN) October 9 - 16, 1999) 

1) The Team Finals: Romania vs Russia


Romania: Amanar, Raducan, Olaru, Presecan, Boboc, Ungureanu
Russia: Khorkina, Produnova, Zamolodcikova, Lobazniouk,Kovalyova, Kuznetsova

I still remember that morning: it was my first year of high school and I had classes in the after noon. Back then, I was a pretty easily distracted "scatterbrained" child so I was always late for school. That morning I had serious reasons to forget to leave the house: Russia - ruled by the most annoying gymnast I had ever seen in my life, which I also considered my personal ennemy (I had changed my opinion since)- was challenging the Romanians – a bunch of  inexperienced lambs led by the shy Simona Amanar. 

And the final begins at around 9-10 am with Romania on beam and two disasters (Amanar and Ungureanu). The Russians on floor, could not care less: they manage solid routines and my number one ennemy puts on yet another outrageous performance for which she gets a ridiculously high score. On the next rotation things look okish: Romanians manage to recover a big part of the gap - they do not put a foot wrong on floor while Russia faces some long-messy-legs – all-over-the-place related problems on vault. Next: Russia’s darling apparatus – UB- where everything goes according to plan for them, while Romania gets honorable scores on VT.

Final Rotation: Romania on UB… oh well, we know what that usually means. Not that day! Now, that I have re-watched the competition with more mature eyes, I can say that the judges must have been looking at some other apparatus… or maybe they were doing their nails.

Khorky - circa 1999-wearing one of
her most unfortunate leotards

Anyway, Russia does not have the same luck on BB but they are still ahead. And the last routine finally arrives: Sveta on Beam. Sveta the queen of long slow people. She needs a 9.4 (again, I know this because I watched it again a few weeks ago :P) And on her signature move, slowly, and gracefully steps outside the beam. A walk on air. And Romanians were champions again. And I was in the 9^th grade and I got to school 30 minutes later only to find my colleagues in the courtyard waiting for the teacher who was late.

Coolest day of that fall :) 

2)Khorkina on UB

That year, unlike many other times, her favorite apparatus seemed to be on her side: qualifications, TF, AA, EF, she hit 4 good ones at the same competition!

Besides her Uneven Bars Gold, Khorkina also medalled on floor.
You can watch all her routines from the 1999 Worlds here.

3) Octavian Belu - at the height of his coaching wisdom.
It was around that time when Belu, who had already led Romania to three Team Golds in a row, started to be more transparent with his coaching philosophy. He was by then a very successful coach. Three times world champion is not an accident. He felt he had brought to the table the facts and now it was the right moment for him to speak comfortably about his team. He declared that his motto as a coach was "Never enough", that he was not satisfied and nor does he know the feeling.  


4) The Newcomers - the gymnasts that were for the first time at a World Championship had a great success that year: they won 4 out of five individual golds. Gymnasts such as Raducan, Zamo, Olaru, Olga Roshkupkina, Little Lobazniouk, Laura Martinez, Esther Moya, and many many more took the world by storm in the pre-olympic year. It was a feast of newcomers that shone through their artistry and brought the competition to a whole new level.

5) Elise Ray

She was the best US gymnast of the moment and much more than that. For me, Elise had all the qualities: pretty decent consistency, original skills, great technical abilities, some pirouettes and handstants on UB that were quite rare back then, a wonderful floor routine (nice choreo, good execution and a triple twist to punch front on the first pass) interesting gymnastics overall . Vault was the only piece of the puzzle missing.

She placed 8th in the all around and 7th in the Uneven Bars final. But it was a real shame she did not won a medal on floor... I would have given her the bronze over khorky:)

Watch Elise's Floor in the AA

Gymnasts on Dancing With The Stars

Lilia Podkopayeva

Shawn Johnson

Svetlana Khorkina

My favorite is Lilia because she did this almost a decade after he retired from her competitive career.

I know that Corina Ungureanu and Maria Olaru also did this but could not find videos. Do you know if there are any videos of them?