Saturday, January 19, 2013

2013 Australian Youth Olympic Festival

What a weekend for gymnastics! What a weekend to be a fan!

There are a number of ways to keep tabs on AYOF gymnastics if you're not in Sydney for the free fun.

Get up to speed on team lineups, venues and daily results at the official event website here.

Videos from artistic competition are going up quick-smart thanks to my old buddy ozgymnast. Check 'em out!(View the "Uploads" tab.)

Rapid-fire results and roundups from all sports can be found at twitter. You'll also find geat insight from around the grounds. The festival has had some pretty famous spectators already!


AYOF official twitter
Gymnastics Australia twitter
The Couch Gymnast twitter


If you're reading this from Sydney, keep an eye out for gymnastics expert and festival roving reporter Olivia Vivian!


Fellow 2008 Olympian Lauren Mitchell showed some wonderful sportsmanship by taking five in camp GB (see below). She is acting as athlete ambassador, and this AYOF release about her role mentions she has "no solid plans to compete this year", but to continue rehabilitating her shoulder.


Photo credit British Gymnastics Facebook


On Friday, Australia's rhythmic and artistic campaigns kicked off in style. The Aussies were triumphant in team rhythmic (Australia fielding two teams, 'Australia 2' finishing 4th), though the artistic men and women settled for a team bronze each; Fuscha-Chan-James-Norman finishing 4th in women's the standings behind medallists Eade-Mizzen-Tarvit-Freeman.

Olivia interviewed some of the competitors, and you can see video of that here.
Brigid McCarthy, dutifully blogging on the ground, wrote up the women's team event here

GOLD! Photo credit: Gymnastics Australia

“I thought our whole team did really well. We all pushed up and even if we dropped or anything we still made it,” Wilkie said. “I think (next time) we just have to relax and go out there and fun.”  -- Rhythmic gymnast Tara Wilkie

"Pre-comp pep talk", image courtesy Aus Olympic Committee instagram

Pretty as a picture. Photo credit Getty/Matt King/AOC


Artistic results from today can be found here, while rhythmic's over here and trampoline's here.

An interview with the men's medallists has gone up here.

Trampoline gets underway Saturday with individual and synchro competition being held. The rhythmic gymnasts are vying for individual all-around and apparatus titles, while artistic gymnasts also take the floor for another day, and for individual all-around glory.


I will update ASAP once I can locate a list of apparatus final qualifiers.


25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is there any videos available of the Australian gymnasts? The video links that are provided show all Chinese and GB gymnasts. In one of the beam routines you can even hear Eden Tarvit on floor, yet we don't get to see her routine. Seems crazy and a little frustrating.

Mez said...

Click on the "Uploads" tab to see all her videos so far.

If Australian gymnasts aren't on there, she just hasn't put them up yet. I am quite sure some got filmed.

Anonymous said...

Okay thanks Mez

Anonymous said...

Well done to our Aussie girls, the experience would have been fantastic for the girls . It does however showcase that we do have a lot of work to do to get back up in the to 8. Soooo what do we do, sack one of the countries best bar coaches. Just looking at the Chinese on bars shows how far we have got to go. Yes, the Chinese have always been on top with bars so why aren't we teaching skills to match. At least Peter Abbott recognized this and wanted to teach a whole range of different skills.
Good luck to the girls on Sunday, hope you can improve from day 1 . A few less nerves maybe now that they dusted of the cobwebs.

Anonymous said...

I'm really excited about this bunch of girls. They're so talented. I only hope they are given the opportunity to reach their full potential, but with the way gymnastics in this country seems to be going, this seems unlikely. :(

Good luck girls for the rest of the meet! Proud of you so far.

Anonymous said...

Chinese routines are up here.
http://i.youku.com/u/UMjExMzQ2ODg4/videos

Plus Ozym has put up one Aussie routine - not sure who it is, maybe Paige James?

Anonymous said...

Does eden tarvit have a sister in diving? If so she was sitting in second for over half the comp .. Had a horrible splat and ended up in about 7th but beautiful diver!

Anonymous said...

Yes, Eden's older sister is competing at the AYOF in diving.

ozgymnast said...

Hello there,

First of all, I chose to focus on China and GB when filming... 1. they are awesome, 2. we don't get to see them very often here in Australia. The Aussies should all (or most) compete at Nationals in a few months time, so we'll get to see them again then.

I did get a few Aussie routines though, and I'm putting some up now. Please be patient, they are extremely slow to upload (at least an hour each). I had to work today, so haven't had a chance until now.

Anonymous said...

Thank you ozgymnast! Appreciate *anything* you're able to put up.

Anonymous said...

Results:
Tyesha MATTIS Great Britain 1 (54.832)
Teal GRINDLE Great Britain 2 (54.065)
JIE MEI China 3 (53.765)
4 SIYI CHEN China 4 (53.665)
5 Alexandra EADE Australia 5 (52.999)
6 ZHILIN LIU China 6 (52.833)
7 Amy TINKLER Great Britain 7 (52.733)
8 HUAN LUO China 8 (51.433)
9 Catherine LYONS Great Britain 9 (50.732)
10 Eliza FREEMAN Australia 10 (50.165)
11 Courtney MCGREGOR New Zealand 11 (49.133)
12 Millie WILLIAMSON New Zealand 12 (48.899)
13 Rhianna MIZZEN Australia 13 (48.098)
14 Eden TARVIT Australia 14 (47.798)
15 Hanna MALLOCH New Zealand 15 (47.699)
16 Franceska FUCHSIA Australia 16 (47.698)
17 Gillian CHAN Australia 17 (47.399)
18 Darcy NORMAN Australia 18 (46.498)
19 Paige JAMES Australia 19 (45.333)
20 Charlotte SULLIVAN New Zealand 20 (36.266)

Can someone please tell me what level our girls are usually in? were most of them IDP 10 last year? I want to know as much as I can so I don't have an uneducated judgement

Anonymous said...

How did 12 and 13 yr olds from GB (for eg)suddenly become heaps better than our 15 yr olds?

Anonymous said...

Only some of the Aus girls will be 15 this year so they have to compete junior.

Katherine said...

I went to watch today, although I was unfamiliar with the athletes and didn't take any notes, but here are some thoughts...

Great Britain - I think we are quick to forget that this is a country on the rise. These juniors will have indirectly benefited from the home-Olympics magic that lifted and spurred their seniors on. In general, GB also tends to have a great showing of talent in their younger categories (Novice? Espiors?). Catherine Lyons floor was elegant, beautiful and FLOWED. No jerky choreography, no posing, no 3 second pause in the corner (then add one arm movement) before her tumbling. Amazing. I think it was her (although it could have been Amy Tinkler?) who took a nasty fall on a double turn on beam, but then STUCK her standing full twist back. Mattias was also strong on bars - she reminded me of Tasha Schwikert's gymnastics. Huge tumbling, albeit a little messy. GB overall had great skill level and performed well - good on them!

China has something great going on. Their juniors may not have placed high, but the work they showed was impeccable. (Often on bars, they would do a great sequence, but miss a HS, so re kip, or miss going over in a front giant, hence the low scores). Big dismounts - double lays and a full in double lay. Excellent body line - no bent hips in sight. Beam was big-ish skills (e.g. 2 foot layout) and kudos to them for doing real mounts (a Korbuting cartwheel from the side of the beam). Floor/vault was typical - meh - but some well set up double tucks thanks to good RO FF technique.

NZ girls - wow, they were MUCH better than anything we've seen from NZ in the past. They had good skills (flip LO SO, LO SO on beam, and an Onodi) and they competed strongly. Congrats to their coaches - it was nice to see. We normally get "level 8 standard" + "suffering from nerves" but not this time round! Bars was a little weak in technique, and tumbling skills are still a little lacking.

Australian juniors - I think people will stress about "we've got nothing going on!", but I think just take a chill pill. Firstly, we need these girls to still be doing gymnastics in 3 years time, and so they need as much support as we can offer. Secondly, as long as they learn from this competition and grow from the experience, we the fans have little right to tear them to pieces. I can't even recall who did or didn't have a great competition (although I was sitting near Alex Eade's parents, and they were happy she was performing better today than Friday). Vault needs work. Bars needs work (I quickly gathered that it is not Eden Tarvit's premier event! She struggled a little). One girl had a beautiful layout gienger, lovely. The scary factor in the full in tuck dismounts for EVERYONE needs to be improved. Beam - great to see some big RO double tuck dismounts (one or two girls dug their heels under, took a few steps back, then fell). In general, Australians perform too many skills in isolation, which culiminatively collect too many landing deductions. It would be great to encourage the 3-or-4 skill acro passes (yes, they are harder and riskier) - because these girls need to anticipate what the COP will reward in the 2017 - 2020 cycle. Floor - lots of girls did double tucks or double pikes, but stumbled and fell (mostly got their feet stuck and a fell back after a few steps).

One last note - great to see so many skilled mounts being used on beam. One front tuck; a Chinese did a front aerial to sit; a Brit did jump to splits with no hand support (C skill); Chinese did Korbuting cartwheels; a FWO from an Aussie; and a few press HS FWO out variations. Death to the leap on!

(Mez, I apologise that this is so long).

Unknown said...

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Anonymous said...

I think primarily for our girls its about experience and exposure to the international arena. Apart from Alex and Eden, most of them had only completed International 10 last year. One of the girls,Paige James I think, has only just turned 12 years old.

Anonymous said...

I was there yesterday, and our girls seemed younger and less experienced than the other countries' gymnasts. No doubt it was the first time for most of the Aussie girls representing their country. They must have been so proud to be doing so! I hope they had a wonderful time of learning. It was great to see so many had the chance to compete, and will be exciting to see where they go. Well done girls!

Mez said...

Katherine - no need to apologise. Very insightful.
:)

Anonymous said...

I think the girls did great. Alex 5th and just missed out on a medal in vault. Eliza did great. I am sure you will see upgrades at Nationals.

Anonymous said...

What is so different about our program that we are so far behind other countries eg great britain, usa. I realise they have more girls to choose from, and that gb just had olympics so will be benefitting from that, but compare the girls from these different countries and the skills they are able to do. If they can already pull 1.5s and dtys, 2-3 releases on bars etc .. What are those programs doing that were not?

Anonymous said...

I just watched Catherine Lyons on beam - great routine with so much originality. Great mount where she jumps onto the beam to land in splits. Only issue I had was her flexed back foot on her leaps, but she has time to fix that.

Nice to see a routine where I was going "wow" for a change.

Anonymous said...

The Aussie girls competed idp 8, 10 and junior international at nationals last year

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

I too was bugged by Catherines Lyons back foot as the rest is so creatively beautiful but Watch the routine in event finals it seems to have gone! I could watch that routine all day long as it seems so perfectly effortless!
The Chinese were amazing on bars! and although not my preferred style of gymnastics Tyesha Mattis (gbr) sheer power was impressive.
How old we're the Chinese gymnasts?

Anonymous said...

According to the AYOF website, 1 Chinese gymnast was 12 yrs old, 2 were 13, and 1 was 14.

I could also watch Catherine Lyons on beam all day. She's absolutely exquisite, and it's so refreshing to have a break from the cookie cutter routines we see everywhere these days!