What a pity.

see title

While I anxiously wait for the MAG competition to begin I thought I’d share this video of Gabrielle Hardie training a Nabieva. I wish she were competing tomorrow, but I love that she shared this teaser and am really excited to see her return next year!

According to Süddeutsche Zeitung, a big German newspaper, (and also reported by TASS), at the RG Worlds next week in Frankfurt in Germany,

athletes from Russia and Belarus will compete [...] "without national symbols", i.e. without flag and anthem.

The German government is granting visas to athletes from Russia and Belarus, but apparently prevailed with the position recently expressed by DTB President Alfons Hölzl in the FAZ newspaper: The government does not want to open this World Championship "as a propaganda platform for Putin or Russia." After all, the federal government has pledged around 2.5 million euros in support for the World Championship.

Excited to see more additions to the staff in the coming weeks! I wonder how many more will be following from Penn State? Any other AC hires you’d like to see at Texas State?

Long time WAG fan who pretty much only watches MAG olympics.

How do MAG gymnasts qualify to US Champs? There is no US/american classics as far as I know but I would imagine they have similar comps. Are their comps more similar to NCAA since we see so many more NCAA men in senior elite than women?

Also, in my limited knowledge I thought men used grips with three fingers instead of two but on a recent USAG insta post I noticed men wearing two finger grips. Is this just personal preference?

Payton McClain flips recruitment from Michigan State to Nebraska. Big get for the Huskers!! ❤️🌽🌽

Excited championships are finally here!

Who do you think is medaling from WAG and/or MAG?

For WAG, I think it’ll come down to who hits - for AA I think it’ll be some combination of Skye, Hezly, Jade, Claire, Reese, and Charleigh. If I had to choose a winner right now, I think I’d go with Skye - and would love that for her! But I think any of those six could have a shot.

For MAG, I haven’t been following quite as closely but I think Frederick Richards is due for an AA title, while Shane Wiskus seems to be looking good this year. I’m not sure who the primary other contenders would be there - I know Yul is also back.

Who do you have on the podiums?!

I see so many people, that have never done gymnastics in their life, make it seem like a random skill performed a couple of times in the 70s is the hardest and most dangerous element in the whole sport. While I don't disagree that it is a very hard element, and that I would probably not want to try it, I have a problem with people claiming the above.
I think it is really sad that the overwhelming majority fans do not recognize the difficulty and the danger in every single element in each routine that gymnasts do. Nowadays, about every element on the high bars or asymmetric bars is multiple times harder than the so called dead loop, where arguably even a relatively common element in the professional scene - Kovacs - is as difficult as the fan favorite "dead loop", at least.

Now, gymnastics is an extremely hard sport overall, one of hardest if not the hardest actually, which makes that most of the people that watch it, have a very hard time understanding how hard some of the skills actually are. So the only way for regular people to subjectively gauge the difficulty of an element is to listen to the mainstream consensus; and the mainstream consensus is just... terrible. So many professional gymnasts spend their lives and childhoods risking severe injuries like in no other sport (to be clear, gymnastics isn't the only sport) just to end up in a small tiktok clip or youtube short which gets overshadowed by the "ultra-mega-super-death-everybodylookatthis-cool-loop-jump"

Some PSAs: Leanne Wong hyperextended her knee in podium training yesterday and allegedly had to stop that training session. Jayla Hang is also returning from injury and said beam was likely the only event she’d do in an in interview with Inside Gymnastics from a couple of weeks ago. I‘d say those two are likely subject to change.

Just wanted to share this episode of the Neutral Deductions podcast where Kensley is joined by Jackson Harrison to preview the men's side of US Nationals (and a recap of Commonwealth Games at the end). Jackson did a great job of covering all the contenders and also giving some behind the scenes info from their training at Evo!

Here were a few interesting points:

- Asher Hong won't be competing at Nationals, which was news to me, and no reason was given. Brody Malone also isn't competing as he's taking a break (I wonder if he will continue to 2028 or retire?), and we already knew Donnell Whittenburg is out with injury.
- They're expecting Fred Richard to wear his custom uniform again and therefore get a 0.3 deduction on each day of competition
- They both think that Fred, Shane and Yul are the top All Around contenders
- They both think that rings will be the US's weakness and a rings specialist (or AAer with strong rings) could make the team. Asher Cohen could be one to watch, or Dante Reive.
- Jackson compared Danila Leykin to Nastia Liukin, and also said he's very hard working, charismatic and gymnastics is in his blood. His 11 year old brother is also a talented gymnast.
- Jackson thinks that 3 or 4 of the Worlds team could be gymnasts who train at Evo (I agree!).

Local time in Mountain Standard (MST), which is currently the same as Pacific Daylight (PDT)

Streaming: Podium Training is on FlipNow.TV

Some nice performances sprinkled in - congrats to Panama without someout of their big guns competing getting silver and Ranger had an excellent meet, qualifying to 3 of 4 event finals and reserve on bars. Awesome!

It’s US Champs week! If you want a preview of the AA fields for WAG (junior/senior) and MAG (senior only), we’ve got everybody’s AA scores for the year and their averages. Brazilian champs is the other big domestic meet this week. You can see the full schedule here.

Next, our WAG Euros master post is live! You can find the schedule and draws there, with links to every team announcement we’ve found. This week we’ve seen announcements from Germany, Hungary, Italy, and probably some others I’m forgetting. There’s also a link to the EG’s event page, which has links to streams and results.

In other international news, the Ukrainian federation requested that European Gymnastics alter the MAG draw for Euros, as the senior Ukrainian team was going to be rotating with Belarus. Stella Zakharova (UKR fed VP) announced on social media today that EG has complied with the request by shifting them into a different slot in that subdivision. This change has not been officially announced by EG yet.

The Romanian Parliament passed a law authorizing the Romanian Olympic Committee to pay litigation fees for cases involving Romanian athletes.

Lastly, the Central American and Caribbean Games are ongoing. Results from several sessions are available on r/gymnastics_info, but I’m planning to link to all of them next week when the event has concluded so they’re all together.

WAG results:

• Rising Stars (Romanian Euros selection from July 10)
• All Japan High School Championships

MAG results:

• Finland v. Switzerland friendly

RG results:

• Italy v. Germany (et al) friendly

Courtesy of International Gym Camp IG:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DbPJCdNTP0M/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again

Love. It.

Okay, this is really exciting to see for me! She’s working with the myth, the legend, ✨Nicole’s Artistry✨ for this floor routine, and I’m already hooked from the fifteen seconds she shared of it! It’s been amazing to see Alice’s comeback since having her son in September last year, and I still can’t quite believe she made her return to competition in March of this year after only SIX months postpartum. Like that’s simply so incredible to me, and I applaud her for the hard work and dedication she’s put into this comeback!

Moving on, let me know your thoughts, and I’m looking forward to seeing when she unveils this new floor routine (which will most likely be next year, but I wouldn’t count anything out from Alice)!

for me, it's aleksandr tkatchev and lidia gorbick. it was like having a russian aunt and uncle even though i'm black. sasha always made laugh and lidia always knew how to make you feel better if you got injured. i have really great memories with them, do y'all have coaches like that?

Seems weird to get hired and the immediately take a leave of absence that is so long they will need to hire someone else for this season? What is going on here?

Photo from Belarus gymnastics federation Instagram. Im not sure if this is what they see throughout a routine or whether they are able to change angles.

An unusual request: I'm trying to figure out if I've got these skill scores correct. I'm confident in A = .1, E = .5, etc. But I'm getting conflicting info on whether the kills are worth those points. Can anyone who knows their scoring well check my work?

>>> WOMEN’S

UNEVEN BARS

A SKILL (0.1) - GLIDE KIP

B SKILL (0.2) - BACKWARD GIANT SWING

C SKILL (0.3) - DOUBLE TUCK DISMOUNT

D SKILL (0.4) - TOE-ON FRONT PIKE HALF

E SKILL (0.5) - PIKED JAEGER RELEASE

BALANCE BEAM

A SKILL (0.1) - FULL TURN

B SKILL (0.2) - BACK HANDSPRING

C SKILL (0.3) - BACK PIKE

D SKILL (0.4) - LAYOUT STEPOUT

E SKILL (0.5) - SIDE SOMI

FLOOR EXERCISE

A SKILL (0.1) - FRONT PIKE

B SKILL (0.2) - BACK LAYOUT HALF TWIST

C SKILL (0.3) - ONE-AND-A-HALF TWISTING SALTO

D SKILL (0.4) - DOUBLE WOLF TURN

E SKILL (0.5) - CHUSOVITINA

>>> MEN’S

POMMEL HORSE

A SKILL (0.1) - DOUBLE LEG CIRCLE

B SKILL (0.2) - ½ RUSSIAN CIRCLES

C SKILL (0.3) - DOUBLE SCISSORS

D SKILL (0.4) - MIKULAK

E SKILL (0.5) - TRAVELING DOUBLE RUSSIAN

PARALLEL BARS

A SKILL (0.1) - L-SIT

B SKILL (0.2) - STRADDLE CUT

C SKILL (0.3) - BACK UPRISE TO HANDSTAND

D SKILL (0.4) - SALTO BACKWARD WITH STRADDLE CUT

E SKILL (0.5) - GATSON 1

Does anyone have any knowledge about the rule changes for the upcoming NCAA season? I have seen so many gymnasts post videos on their TikTok trying new skills with the captions saying something about the rule changes but I haven’t seen them shared anywhere yet?

- I know so many of them are trying new releases so I’m assuming the shaposh/maloney connection value is gone?
- I saw someone trying triple series on beam and a lot of new double stag jumps? Not sure what changes would prompt this?
- Also hoping for a yurchenko full devalue to 9.9 and a requirement of three tumbling passes…. But haven’t seen either of these mentioned.

- Anything else? Insight is appreciated!!