Thursday, June 17, 2010

WOGA Update



The WOGA girls are training in Italy and France this week and being the Plano princesses that they truly are. Queen Nastia is accompanying Lizzy Leduc, Katelyn Ohashi, Grace McLaughlin, Sophia Lee, Briley Casanova, McKenzie Wofford and Madison Kocian on the trip. The WOGA girls are training at one of Laurent Landi's former training sites and are helping to raise money for the opening of a new gym.

Back in Plano, Nastia is in the gym stretching, doing some basic skills and conditioning. She is not training per se and her plans continue to change almost weekly. Nastia is said to be going through her rebellious phase and she and Valeri continue to have arguments over giving 100% or not training at all. Nastia is not currently doing anything on Uneven Bars. Time is running out on her comeback.

Rebecca Bross stayed home from the Italy-France trip to train, but is sporting an air cast when not on the equipment.

Ivana Hong is working on getting her fierce body back, but no significant progress has been made in training at this time. Briley continues to work on getting in tip top shape.

Katelyn Ohashi is back up to speed and is said to be jaw-droppingly amazing on balance beam.

Grace McLaughlin is said to be making slow and steady progress.

Miki Uemura will be spending a year at WOGA observing the Plano coaches. She plans on embarking on a top coaching career in Japan. It is unclear whether she'll be doing any actual training herself.

Valeri is said to be rather cranky with Grace and Lizzy lately, which means that they are doing rather well. Valeri is the toughest on those he believes are making progress and going places. Nastia and Valeri fought constantly and went days without speaking leading up to the 2008 Olympic Games. Being ignored by Valeri is the kiss of death.

Queen Nastia recently appeared at an LA Dodgers game and has been working with JC Penny. The Nastia-Miss Val love affair/asskissfest will continue July 15-18 in Westwood.

11 comments:

  1. This ACL tear is really not good for Ivana. Hopefully she can work on bars. She should get herself a good scholarship while she has the chance. Her best elite days are behind her. Really interested to see how Wofford is doing. She has tons of potential on bars which is what the US needs most right now.

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  2. it will be interesting to see what ivana looks like after rehab. I doubt that she will look fat, because her whole family is tiny but she should be gaining some weight after not training

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  3. I have all but lost faith in Nastia, which is a HUGE thing. When all of the commentators were talking about how her body was breaking down, she was getting older, blahblahblah during their Shawn Johnson asskissfest, I was one of those people who thought they were full of shit. When they seemed so shocked to see Nastia looking so good at the 08 SCAM and Pac Rim competitions, I wasn't surprised at all. I called her winning the all around in Beijing.

    When my sister was bitching about how Nastia wasn't as good as Shawn Johnson, I fired back that Nastia was actually serious about the sport and had continued training, rather than using her "fame" for reality tv.

    It seems to me that I was pretty wrong. At this point, I have money on Nastia never getting off of her ass and getting rid of those chipmunk cheeks again. It's not like she'd come close to being able to compete with the Chinese, much less the Russians, at this point anyway.

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  4. Nastia was all set on coming back until she had had several months off and met Evan Lysacek, who became a giant distraction. It gives us yet another reason to dislike him.

    And don't worry, Ivana was asking a teammate how to get rid of thigh fat. She will be fine.

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  5. Are there any updates on Wofford? I can't wait to see what 6 months at WOGA will do for her already promising bars/beam routines.

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  6. I'm now really interested in Ohashi. There needs to be an amazing beam worker again.

    Hopefully somebody out of WOGA can swing some bars and get a high DV. Nobody is coming out of Hill's that comes close to Kupets, CGA breaks gymnasts, and no other gym really teaches excellent UB. AOGC is close, but their gymnasts are fragile as bone china.

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  7. Okay so are their parents just tossing out money for WOGA training tuition and sending them to Italy also?! If so, goodness these Plano people really are loaded!

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  8. Nastia tweeted it's a "beginning of a long journey." So I'm assuming she's done with her "giant distraction" (maybe she finally came to her senses about Evan - thank god and I hope that IS the case) and start training seriously again. BUT your blog says she's just doing stretching and conditioning. Ok, I'm traumatized again. I'm sure she got a lot of free time aside from her JPenny/Supergirl stuff. I would think free time meant some gym training. No?

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  9. All the way to Italy just to train? lmao, rich.

    I figured Evan may actually be able to motivate Nastia because she would have seen a guy, you know, actually training hard. But now that's all out the window with his DWTS crap. It's her life, but it's sad to see Nastia throw away an opportunity like this... She really could have broken some records and cemented herself as legendary. And having her help the team on bars would have been nice. Oh well.

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  10. "but it's sad to see Nastia throw away an opportunity like this." I doubt she regretted taking time off last year. To me her big distraction was not that skater guy but all her obligations to her sponsors. The bigger menace was the other Evan - her agent. She pursued every opportunities offered to her and damn enjoyed it. It is her life and I think she's done competing. She already said she'll be in London one way or another. She won't be in London as an athlete but in some function tied to the Olympic movement, either as a member of FIG/USAG delegation or as a rep of one of her sponsors just like she did in Vancouver.

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