Sunday, October 24, 2010

Women's Vault EFs - Catty Comments


What a great weekend but a little-sleep one for us left-coast sports fans - with live event coverage spanning the globe (Rotterdam, Tokyo, Philadelphia). All we have to say here in San Frangaysco is Giants Win the Pennant! Giants Win the Pennant!




Women's vault & bars finals were waaaaaaaaaay too early here. I watched the replay while sipping hipster microroasted beans bursting with the fruity notes of mountain cherry & hype marketing.


Vault finals





The sentimental favorite, 22 1/2 year-old Alicia Sacramone, drew 1st for vault finals and hit both her usual vaults (handspring rudi, dty) with her usual monster height and usual step on both landings. 





And rocked periwinkle - periwinkle! - with an interesting kimono-like neck cut. I would link a photo to the leo, but all of the photos so far have a medal blocking the neck cut. Whoops, spoiler alert. Whatevs.


Brand new world AA champion/HBIC Mustafina was the next major condenter to vault, stealing a hiddy (my new favorite word, thanks Tom & Lorenzo!) shiny green leo with neck/boob glitter seaweed decoration from a drag queen named SinĂ©ad O'Con-her. Aliya also refuses to sing the USA national anthem.




She hit both her Amanar & Khorkintosh but was downgraded .2 for a piked instead of layout Khorkintosh. Russia protested, but do you see a stretched layout position anywhere between the vault table & the mat? Yeah... no. There's tons of slo-mo goodness 2:12 & beyond.





Next, Nabieva. After her first vault, a miracle occurred - the judges correctly credited her 2.25 Yurchenko as a dty instead of an Amanar. The missing 1/4 twist lowered her start value from 6.5 to 5.8 - perhaps the costliest 1/4 turn in the current code. Then to keep bff status with Mustafina (aside from wearing her Mustafina's AA leo), she also piked the Khorkintosh. But to name Nabieva's gymnastics alongside Mustafina, one would have to be blinder than Andrea Bocelli to overlook her "form."




Is she pre-flight, post-flight, or trying to squash a bug? You tell me. Baby Jesus would tell me, but he's too busy crying. Whatever, that Nabieva whackadoodle's form is hiddy.


Jade Barbosa is back from carpal necrosis (similar injury to Courtney McCool) and looks on track for a 2012 vault medal. Her dty & layout Pod vaults were both very easy & neat, and one can see her upgrading back to the monster vaults she was rocking in early 2008, an Amanar & Cheng.





Her leo honors the workout leos of Team Iceland:






Final results: 1) Sacramone 2) Mustafina 3) Barbosa


16 comments:

  1. this is what I hate about this code. Gymnasts can do super difficult vaults with poor form and win! Even Mustafina's Amanaur had horrible form - separated legs, bent knees, unpointed toes, yet she still got a high score.

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  2. The men have way better form than the women. Check out any of their vaulting or tumbling.

    Something needs to be done about leg crossing to discourage it further as the women just completely concede it, given the 0.1. Maybe something like cowboying where there are two levels of penalty.

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  3. maybe for every twist in the air they should take .1 LOL so .3 for a triple or .25 for a 2 and half!

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  4. I really hate sleeveless leos in competition. It looks so sloppy and casual.

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  5. "All we have to say here in San Frangaysco is Giants Win the Pennant! Giants Win the Pennant!"

    I was jumping around my apartment screaming for joy! fuck the Phillies! Nothing warms my little black heart like seeing Phillies fans upset.

    And now Lauren is world champ :) So my little black heart is extra warm and fuzzy.

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  6. Lauren might be floor champ this year, but she scored a 14.833. Rebecca Bross scored a 15.233 in the all-around for floor, but wasn't able to do her best work due to her shin injury in prelims.

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  7. Helo Rebecca should have thrown more difficulty in prelims. She had a few extra tenths in the AA and was overscored anyway. She didn't make the finals it was her own fault. Lauren deserved her medal.

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  8. Can they go back and nullify some of the Olympic vault medals for terrible form? Because, yeah, the women have been getting away with the ugly to far too long, especially in the take-off. I thought both hands had to hit the horse and leave the horse at approximately the same time to be proper form. Or do I have that wrong? It looks like Nabieva took vaulting lessons from Steliana Nestor.

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  9. Like Nistor ever got that kind of height. If vaulting were just about straight legs, Deng Linlin would be the world champion.

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  10. Mustafina form was yucky, it's amazing she broke a 9 with leg separation and bent knees for her amanar.

    I am excited someone finally competed the Khorkintosh. With Cheng Fei bypassing that vault to invent the Cheng vault I half expected the khokintosh to be vamporware.

    And I'm really happy for Alicia. She finally got a gold medal on vault. (I almost believe it took Kayla winning gold for her to get outraged enough to mount a comeback to finally get hers, damnit) and hey she's now tied with Nastia for world medals at 9 each.

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  11. I just don't understand the execution score on Mustafina's 1st vault. PUH LEEZ

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  12. Mustafina's execution scores are easier to understand if you bear in mind gymnasts are heavily deducted for going off centre and for lack of dynamics. These are deductions Alicia would have had that Aliya didn't, which explains why Aliya's E score was correctly higher. With that said, Alicia was better overall and deserved her gold.

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  13. Why is it that Shawn Johnson took so much heat in Beijing on her step forward in her 2.5 vault but Tim & Elfi said one too may oohs and ahhs over the 2 we saw in the worlds all around final who had the same step as SJ & not as good form. 2 years later and only a small handful of these vaults are still being completed. Its cool that not everyone performs the vault yet but I was annoyed (as usual) with the commentary.

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  14. So many people have no clue about the code, especially on vault.

    Mustafina's score for her Amanar isn't too high.

    She gets deducted for bent knees and a leg seperation on the preflight and for bent knees/crossed ankles on the post flight. Those aren't ginormous deductions regardless of how fugly you think it is. You can't deduct someone 5 times for the same deduction. It's very high, dynamic, well rotated, and smack dab in the middle of the mat.

    A 9 + isn't all that much of a gift. Nabieva's on the other hand...

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