2003 Balance Beam World Champion Fan Ye, is in the United States to promote the 2014 World Championships in Nanning, China. We talked to her about the quality of education at the national training center, her university studies, how the loss of the 10 effected her personally along with the current code and the current state of Chinese women’s gymnastics. We owe a special thank you to national team coach, Jiani Wu, for interpreting despite having a bad case of laryngitis! Follow Fan Ye on Webo.
Blythe gives us a behind-the-scenes report from France where she covered the French International, we discuss the crime against gymnastics that was the Utah vs Florida meet, and our most memorable gymnastics related show-off accidents.
Enter our contest! Five of you will win TWO tickets the Women’s NCAA Championships hosted by UCLA in April. All you have to do is like us on Facebook or follow us (by adding us to one of your circles) on Google+. For more information on the meet, visit ncaa.com/gymnastics.
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Holland America’s Dancing With The Stars Cruises featuring Shawn Johnson. Get a Grip Gymblog on NCAA mess this past weekend, Judge Well, Lest Ye Be Judged.
2003 World Championships Fan Ye Beam
Fan Ye in her favorite blue leotard from the 2005 Chinese National Championships where she won the all around.
Tweet of the Week from Catalina Ponor.
Marine Brevet (FRA) – FX – French International Final
Vasiliki Milousi (GRE) – BB – French International Final
Anne Khum (FRA) – BB – French International
Uchimura Kohei mini-documentary Samurai Soul
A response to the comments about the French International FIG Cup meet. I attended the Glasgow World Cup which had the following characteristics: Music throughout felt like I was at an American rock concert including music during all routines (although Ebee found it distracting – one gymnast at a time at AA competition), a scoreboard that tracked each gymnast throughout the competition such that at any time a fan could see what the current rankings were, after first rotation gymnasts went in order of their ranking after the last rotation, a big screen in the middle which showed the person currently in the lead and the score needed to overtake that person along with the person currently up on the routine, the score would move around like slot machine numbers until it landed on the actual score of current gymnast Fans could tell immediately if there was a new leader or not and could look at the screen with all the gymnasts listed to see what place everyone was in. It was exciting and USAG could take a lesson from Glasgow on how to make a gymnastics meet exciting. Best meet I’ve ever attended. There was a white semicircular sofa (Ebee sad it was really hard although it looked comfy from far away) the gymnasts had to go sit on after their routines and they would show them up close on the overhead screen. They also interviewed the gymnasts live during the meet. Ebee was interviewed after she was in 1st place after rotation one. I also took photos of her talking to Niamh Rippin and the local cameras showed her and Niamh talking to each other on the overhead screens. If USAG can replicate that I think non-gymnastics fans would start to like the sport.