Gymnast Social Media Megathread

[Hatsumomo]

Because those Southern first names are two names in of itself, usually with -Lynn or -Leigh.

 

[RedBirdie]

That, and a lot of Something Margaret. Mary Margaret. Sarah Margaret. Anna Margaret.

 

[rlayt]

what ridiculous names or whatever Russian people think is ridiculous is popular as a baby name?

 

[Doug1233]

Apparently Skinner tried to film a secret reaction video for when she told Jonas, and in the end his reaction was so bad she had to scrap the video

 

[onodian]

I’m sorry but I’m going to need proof of that. Other than your hate of her, that is.

 

[MaryClare]

I don’t understand the question

 

[rlayt]

So we’re talking about names that are ridiculous. There was the trend of naming with crazy names like Moon Unit Zappa. Girls named Tesla. $hawna. When I lived in Texas for a brief period they laughed at a girl from Louisiana whose mother thought Vagina would be a good name. Mormons have preferred names like Brigham or Nevaeh. All the Hutterite colonies have a naming tradition.

I wondered if there were names in Russia that people roll their eyes at. Maybe it’s a cultural thing.

 

[Hatsumomo]

Lilia Podkopayeva makes a plea for the IOC to ban Russia and Belarus from the Olympics:

 

[rlayt]

Whitney Bjerken quitting gymnastics.

 

[irichluck21]

Guess she finally decided to go full time with her musician career.

 

[Hatsumomo]

I had a similar thought. Her YT channel was more about the music than gymnastics the one time I checked it out. Plus, she’s very tall isn’t she? Gymnastics might have gotten a little more difficult for her.

 

[MaryClare]

Ah I see.

In short no, although people are becoming a bit more adventurous with names than they were 20 years ago.

The main reason for this is we have standardised spellings. Whilst there can be many variations of how to translate a name from Russian into English, in Russian there is just one spelling for everything. Parents don’t change random letters that are phonetically the same. The only exception I’m aware of is Angelina and Anzhelina. But these are considered different names

The other reason is in a practical sense, the name needs to be able to work in the Russian alphabet

Where I think we are similar to America and that you can often tell the social background of someone based on their names. The middle class are more adventurous and in a middle class sport like figure skating, you find Adelinas, Serafimas and Apollinarias. In a more working class sport like artistic gymnastics, you’ll find less ostentatious names.

The biggest naming trend in post communist times has been resurgence of names associated with royalty and Christianity. I teach 7-10 year old girls. I have a lot of Marias, Sofias and Alisas. I would be fairly shocked if I had a Natalia, a Tatiana or a Svetlana join my group!

 

[Kittentoes]

She’s 5’10". And so injury prone. But so pretty.

 

[MaryClare]

The muscle mass needed to safely train high level gymnastics at that height is insane and she’s never been the type of gymnast that builds muscle easily.

 

[Puffin]

Sadly Whitney seems to have been really injury prone in recent seasons - I think I am right that she has had multiple elbow surgeries that cost her several seasons. It must be very frustrating to her that these injuries together with her dramatic growth spurt mean she hasn’t really been able to develop/upgrade skills since she was about 14. The idea of hanging on for another 4 years to perhaps get into the Alabama bb/ub line ups must seem too much - especially when she seems to favour going down the music/influencer route these days

 

[MaryClare]

Her height will be a big contributor to the injuries. This is why having regular height and weight checks is actually really important

 

[Hatsumomo]

I wonder how you would compose skills and routines for somebody that’s taller than the average woman, let alone the average gymnast. Considering that the gymnasts aren’t allowed to adjust the bars (from what I understand, feel free to correct me), would you have such a tall gymnast train inbars to avoid doing giants as much as possible?

 

[irichluck21]

Whitney was an Alabama recruit so that frees up a scholarship…unless she was walking on. I don’t know for sure.

 

[MaryClare]

I don’t think she was a scholarship

 

[RedBirdie]

I think USAG allows you to set that bars as high as they will possibly go and further apart that FIG specifications. So that helps a little bit woth being tall.