Paris World Cup

UPDATE: Lauren Mitchell is out and will be replaced by Georgia Wheeler who compete all 4 events and Jenny Pinches is also out and will be replaced with Niamh Rippin competing vault, beam and floor. Other changes: Halina Ivanets and Elsa Garcia are not competing, Jiang Tong has been added to the Chinese team (vault).

This is the 10 - 11 April and it actually looks like there is going to be some competition! Some of the most notable entries are below:

Lauren Mitchell - Bars, Beam and Floor

Larissa Miller - Bars

Emily Little - Vault, Beam, Floor

Halina Ivanets - All 4 Events

Bruna Leal - All 4 Events

Dominique Pegg - All 4 Events

Brittany Rogers - All 4 Events

Wu Liufang - Bars, Beam

He Kexin - Bars, Floor

Huang Quishuang - Vault, Beam, Floor

Ana Maria Izurieta - Bars, Floor

Youna Dufournet - Vault, Bars, Beam

Marine Brevet - Floor

Pauline Morel - Bars, Beam, Floor

Becky Downie - Bars, Beam

Jenny Pinches - Vault, Beam, Floor

Beth Tweddle - Bars, Floor

Valeriya Maksiuta - Vault, Beam

Elsa Garcia - All 4 Events

Ramilya Musina - Vault, Beam, Floor

Aliya Mustafina - Vault, Bars, Beam, Floor

Adela Sajn - Beam, Floor

Luisa Galuilina - Bars, Beam, Floor

Jessica Lopez - All 4 Events

There are some interesting new Seniors competing:

Wu Liufang who won Beam and Floor at the Doha World Cup last weekend, unfortunately she is not set to compete on floor but she will still be one of the favourites:




Jenny Pinches - She is one the of the new hopes for Team GB and is coached by Amanda Kirby the same coach as Beth Tweddle. I hope she can be competitive at Worlds this year so it will be interesting to see how she does here. She has 2 good vaults as long as she hits, a nicely presented floor routine with some upgraded tumbles and big skills on beam if she puts them in.


Aliya Mustafina- She is replacing Anna Dementyeva who was supposed to compete. She is stogon all 4 events and my favourite of hers is floor:

Emily Little - She is powerful gymnast and has a big chance of making the vault final and perhaps medalling depending on what her 2nd vault is.

Apart from the new senors against the older seniors there will also be some other interesting battles including He Kexin vs Beth Tweddle who are both competing on bars and floor, as well as Larissa Miller who will be looking for medals on bars. Lauren Mitchell, Huang Qiushuang and Youna Dufournet will be fighting with new seniors for medals on beam. And finally the vault competition will have a lot of young talent including Youna Dufournet, Brittany Rogers, Dominique Pegg and Ramilya Musina.

Doha Videos Day 2

A few videos of the floor final are up on youtube. I really like Wu Liufangs floor routine, her choreography and performance really suprised me. She just needs to upgrade her tumbling but she has shown she can perform under pressure winning both the Beam (14.700) and Floor (13.975) finals.

Huang Qiushuang won the silver medal on floor (13.850) but fell apart on beam scoring only a 12.600. I think she is one of those gymnasts who cannot perfrom consistently under pressure as was the case last year at Nationals which I think is why she was left off the worlds team. I hope she improves or I think she won't be given a chance at bigger meets when the Chinese have other gymnast who have proven to perform under pressure. Her floor routine was nicely performed but lacked difficulty.

Goksu Uctas from Turkey won the bronze on floor (13.700) which was the first World cup medal for a Turkish woman. She actually had the highest difficulty on floor (5.4) with a tucked full in, double pike, double tuck and 1 1/2+front layout full. I'm happy to see different nations starting to come through in the International scene as it can only improve the sport.

Artistry

People say the code doesn't encourage artistry but I think coaches are just becoming lazy because it is not as highly rewarded as it used to be, however there are still routines from this year that have artistry and still score well. I have posted a few floor routines that I think are 'artistic' as well as having high difficulty. So I urge all coaches please make more effort to produce artisitc routines please for the sake of the sport!

Ana Porgras (I also love the beginning of her beam routine) - Worlds 2009 Event Finals Score 14.125 (probably under scored as well).

Aliya Mustafina - Doha Gymnasiade 2009 Score: 14.650

Viktoria Komova - Voronin Cup 2009 Event Finals Score: 14.850

Huang Quishuang - Japan Cup 2009 AA Score: 14.350