The personalities alone in the sport were superb. Alexei Nemov. Elena Produnova. Viktoria Karpenko. Svetlana Khorkina. Leonid Arkayev. Belu and Bitang.
And then there was Alexei Bonarenko. So cute. So lovely. And such a Sasha Cohen. Total sadness.
The CBC actually sent cameras to the event, so I've decided to post their feed. They showed far more routines than the ESPN coverage, which relied on the smoggy world feed. If you've ever seen the ESPN coverage, it looks like downtown Beijing in the arena.
God Bless the Ukrainian Team. Sometimes, I like to imagine that Ling Jie will show up competing in that tangerine leotard.
And because they weren't shown:
Just curious -- is there any era in which you don't think USA Gymnastics was "sorrowful?"
ReplyDeleteyvonne tousek's choreography...hahaha.. i love it!
ReplyDeleteThe bar final was ridiculous for 2 reasons:
ReplyDelete1-Ling Jie did not finish. She was arguably better than Khorkina but clearly better than Huang Mandan WTF.
2- The presence of Maria Olaru.
Alanna Slater should've had Olaru's spot in the bar final...or at least another Ukrainian. That was nuts.
ReplyDeleteI'd say that most of the last twenty years have been good for USAG. '85-'88 was a bit rough when Bela wasn't at competitions (incl 87 Worlds) and that 97-00 was the other major rough patch. '77-84 was quite decent as the US really started to ascend the ranks of international gymnastics. '83 Worlds was rough for the women because Bela kept the top two AAers in the country at home in order to protect their reputations because he didn't feel they were ready to challenge the Soviets and Romanians at full strength.
CBC has great coverage for a newbie gymn fans.
ReplyDeleteNBC should take note
There angle analysis was quite good, even though CA's voice gets extremely grating after a while.
ReplyDelete