Australian Nationals - tickets now available!

[emmade]

Public tickets now available! At this stage I’m only going to one session and dragging my Mum along. She can drive and listen to me babble about gymnastics.

Anyone else attending?

Edit to add that if anyone needs transport from Brissie, PM me and perhaps I can help. The only conditions would be listening me sing, being polite to my Mum and the Gymnaverse Royalty (Denn, Doug, Arnold, JaJa etc) would know you are with me. Seriously though, public transport sucks and happy to support other gym nerds.

 

[mnesiptolema]

I’d thought about it, but I don’t fancy dragging my poor 1.3L car all the way up across NSW for the weekend. I think she’d mutiny. And I don’t want to deal with flying at the moment. Have fun, everyone who’s going!

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I wish! Have fun, and please supply us with a full report.

 

[rlayt]

Reports, photos, video are always welcome!

 

[emmade]

So, last night was fun. They were running the WAG and MAG in the same arena, so it was cool to see some MAG live. I didn’t take much notice of scores or anything like that for the men, so sorry I can’t provide much of a report. It as the first time I saw MAG live and actually really liked the parallel bars. The tumbling on floor was fairly weak, I thought. The US girls are performing much harder stuff than any of the men I saw (I didn’t watch many men, cause I was there for WAG).

WAG side of things - the biggest thing was the absence of NZ to compete for the last oceanic spot. Despite no NZ, 4 girls (Georgia Rose Brown, Emily Whitehead, Breanna Scott and Macy Pegoli) comprised team Australia. I assume that the top ranked gymnast automatically got that spot in which case Emily Whitehead nudged ahead of GR Brown (53.158 vs 52.108)! Waverly has it confirmed on their facebook page.

Emily has definitely cleaned up since her last performance that can be found online and I was actually quite impressed with her. If she keeps her nerves in check and can clean things up a little, she should be a good representative for Australia! Unfortunately none of the results are up yet, so I can’t give you precise numbers.

Our other Olympian, Georga Godwin, was definitely the best gymnast competing. She was calm, took things at her own pace with an air of confidence. From memory, all of her scores were in the mid 13s, but need to confirm. Her floor stood out. Great choreography that really suited her and I think she wound up with a 13.8. Very impressed.

Georgia Rose Brown was good, but not as good as I expected her to be. Her difficulty hasn’t really kept pace and so she is struggling to get the scores that she could if she were able to up the difficulty. Her bars were laboured and she came to a complete dead hang after her geinger, so not great. But still, she has the best lines in the sport and has a commanding presence. Hopefully she sticks it out for Worlds.

Macy had a tough night. Everything was a bit off. Had multiple falls on beam and got a 10.7. She had good fx music, but shit choreo. I don’t really know much about her, but she has a lot of polishing to do if she wants to hang with the elite crowd.

Georgia Godwin is looking really good and solid on all events. Her AA for the night was 55.399. Very good to see her ongoing development and poise. I’m very happy she is representing Australia.

Vault is clearly a massive issue for Australia. The hardest vault was a yurchenko 1.5. The easiest were yurchenko timers. The majority of girls performed a FTY. I don’t think Australia is going to be able to crack back in to the top 12 without dramatically improving vault.

Now, ethical conundrum - should gym owners be allowed to judge? I saw this happening last night and I definitely raised my eyebrows about it. I don’t know if she judged any of her kids, but should gym owners even be judging? Australia does not have a huge number of clubs, or judges or coaches, so there is bound to be conflicts of interest, but it still rubbed me the wrong way. In other news, Allanah Slater was judging in her navy skirt suit.

All in all, a great night. I liked the set up of MAG and WAG. Was a little disappointed by the small field. Very happy that Australia, more specifically Emily, will have another gymnast in Tokyo. Was amused by the relaxed COVID restrictions compared to USA. Not a face mask in sight. Lots of high fives, but also some hugs. Chalk was individual containers for each team rather than gymnast. No empty seats in the arena just because of social distancing - there were lots of empty seats because it was Australia! Having both MAG and WAG crowds meant that the arena felt a little more alive.

Anyway, sorry for the lack of gymnastics details and the length of this. Hopefully some videos emerge and offical results are released.

 

[rlayt]

Now, ethical conundrum - should gym owners be allowed to judge? I saw this happening last night and I definitely raised my eyebrows about it. I don’t know if she judged any of her kids, but should gym owners even be judging? Australia does not have a huge number of clubs, or judges or coaches, so there is bound to be conflicts of interest, but it still rubbed me the wrong way.

I feel like USA has had that problem. I think we’ve had that issue with Silvia Brestyan judging when Aly competed or maybe it was Tatiana Perskaia when one of her athletes was. I wish we had all our old historical stuff.

 

[RedBirdie]

I definitely remember Sylvia judging many times when Aly and Alicia were competing.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Thanks for the report. Still can’t believe there was no livestream or anything!

 

[emmade]

It was difficult to even work out who was competing. They only introduced the girls by first name, but used surnames for the score board. No programs or start lists. Really difficult to work out how a particular gymnast was going. Would see someone fall and have no idea who it was. Given that it was a premium session, I had higher expectations.

 

[irichluck21]

Lucky no Covid restrictions! In the US we still have a long way to go!