Gymnastics News #15

[Karpenko]

Oh boy.. I bet that's code for "Amanar training"...

I have a bad feeling about her and Kocian, but I'm probably overreacting. Other gymnasts are getting lots of momentum..

Hopefully Maggie just pushes bars as far as possible. If she and Simone can get legitimate 15 routines (and both are capable) then a bar specialist isn't needed all that much more.

By now we knew the five gymnasts that would make it last time, and they competed in all of these spring competitions..

I'm not even 40% confident this time, the only spot I wasn't sure about was Kyla (still had the Bross/Nastia hats on)

My gut says this will be a much more emotional team selection than last time.

 

[dramagrrl]

Simone won the AA at Pacific Rim as expected with 15+ scores on all events and 16.050 on FX. However, it is interesting to note that she was "only" about three points ahead of Raisman, who was the silver medalist. (It was very very close between Raisman, Hernandez, Dowell and Smith - in that order - only about 0.1 separating them from Raisman and from each other.)

Locklear had the highest UB score of the event with a 15.550, 0.3 ahead of Dowell who had the second highest UB score.

Team USA decimated the rest of the field in team scores - they were around 20+ points ahead of Canada, who placed second.

I really do not like the music choice or the choreography for Biles' new FX, but I guess if she can score 16+ with it, choreo doesn't matter that much.

While on the subject of choreo - I like Ragan Smith's gymnastics quite a lot, but all the Zmeskal-isms in her choreo are jarring. Her FX choreo is cheesy and embarrassing (and makes her look even more junior-ish than her height, etc. already make her look), and there are several extraneous hand movements she makes in her (otherwise very good) BB routine that look like bad imitations of Zmeskal's competitive days.