LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

 Let the show begins, and the best team will be on the Podium.
 Olympic Records are made to be broken, not Olympic Dreams !



(  WAG Russia - Komova, Mustafina, Paseka )


The Games of the XXX Olympiad will be held in London from July 27th – August 12th,. 2012 will be represented in London at this Olympic Games. Info about  Artistic gymnastics  are as follows

• Artistic Gymnastics ( MAG & WAG : July 28th – August 7th

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• Saturday July 28th: Men’s Qualification (11am, 3.30pm, 8pm)
• Sunday July 29th: Women’s Qualification (9.30am, 11.15am, 2.45pm, 4.40pm, 8.00pm)
• Monday July 30th: Men’s Team Final (4.30pm)
• Tuesday July 31st: Women’s Team Final (4.30pm)
• Wednesday August 1st: Men’s All Around Final  (4.30pm)
• Thursday August 2nd: Women’s All Around Final (4.30pm)
• Sunday August 5th: MAG Floor & Pommel Final & Women’s Vault Final (2pm)
• Monday August 6th:  MAG Rings & Vault Final & Women’s Uneven Bars Final (2pm)
• Tuesday August 7th: MAG Parallel Bars & High Bar Final & Women’s Beam & Floor Final (2pm)

MAG  - These teams are still subject to change due to injury or withdrawal.

• China: Zou Kai, Chen Yibing, Zhang Chenglong, Teng Haibin, Feng Zei
• France: Gael Da Silva, Cyril Tommasone, Hamilton Sabot, Yann Cucherat, Pierre-Yves Beny
• Germany: Philipp Boy, Fabian Hambüchen, Marcel Nguyen, Sebastian Krimmer, Andreas Toba
• Great Britain: Daniel Purvis, Max Whitlock, Sam Oldham, Louis Smith, Kristian Thomas
• Italy: Alberto Busnari, Matteo Morandi,  Enrico Pozzo, Paolo Ottavi, Matteo Angioletti
• Japan: Kohei Uchimura, Kazuhito Tanaka, Koji Yamamoro, Ryohei Kato, Yusuke Tanaka
• Korea: Jihoon Kim, Seungil Kim, Soo Myun Kim, Hee Hoon Kim, Hak Seon Yang
• Romania: Flavius Koczi, Ovidiu Buidoso, Marius Daniel Berbecar, Cristian Ioan Bataga, Vlad Bogdan Cotuna
• Russia: Denis Ablyazin, Alexander Balandin, David Belyavskiy, Emin Garibov, Igor Pakhomenko
• Spain: Isaac Botella Perez, Javier  Gomez Fuertes, Fabian Gonzalez, Ruben Lopez, Sergio Munoz
• Ukraine: Igor Radivilov, Mykola Kuksenkov, Vitalii Nakonechnyi, Oleg Stepko, Oleg Verniaiev
• USA: Danell Leyva, Jonathon Horton, Sam Mikulak, John Orozco, Jake Dalton

WAG - These teams are still subject to change due to injury or withdrawal.

• Australia: Georgia Bonora, Ashleigh Brennan, Emily Little, Larrissa Miller, Lauren Mitchell
• Brazil: Adrian Gomes, Bruna Yamamoto Leal, Daiane dos Santos, Daniele Hypolito, Laís Souza 
• Canada: Victoria Moors, Kristina Vaculik, Brittany Rogers, Ellie Black, Dominique Pegg 
• China: Yao Jinnan, Sui Lu, Huang Qiushuang, Deng Linlin, He Kexin
• France:  Youna Dofournet, Anne Kuhm, Sophia Serseri, Aurelie Malaussena
• Germany: Elisabeth Seitz, Kim Bui, Nadine Jarosch, Oksana Chusovitina, Janine Berger Alternate: Lisa-Katharina Hill
• Great Britain: Beth Tweddle, Hannah Whelan, Jennifer Pinches, Rebecca Tunney, Imogen Cairns
• Italy: Erica Fasana, Carlotta Ferlito, Vanessa Ferrari, Francesca De Agostini, Elisabetta Preziosa 
• Japan: Rie Tanaka, Yuko Shintake, Yu Minobe, Asuka Teramoto, Koko Tsurumi
• Romania: Sandra Raluca Izbasa, Catalina Ponor, Diana Laura Bulimar, Larisa Andreea Iordache, Diana Chelaru
• Russia: Ksenia Afanasyeva, Anastasia Grishina, Viktoria Komova, Aliya Mustafina, Maria Paseka
• USA: Gabby Douglas, Jordyn Wieber, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross

6 Perkataan membawa Barakah

PASSPORTS FOR LONDON

 

The grace, strength and skill of Olympic gymnasts have been astonishing audiences since the Games in Ancient Greece, where Gymnastics was regarded as the perfect symmetry between mind and body. 

The best known of the three Gymnastics disciplines, (MAG, WAG, RG ) Artistic Gymnastics is always among the most popular competitions at the Games. A perfect fusion of athletics and aesthetics, mixing strength and agility with style and grace, the high-flying acrobats have provided many of the most breathtaking Olympic spectacles of the past quarter-century

Nadia Comeneci's perfect 10 score at the 1976 Montreal Games, the first ever awarded, remains the high-water mark for most gymnastics fans. The 14-year-old Romanian achieved the seemingly impossible seven times in Montreal, a feat so unexpected that the scoring technology was set up for only three digits. Her 10.00s were displayed as 1.00.

Gymnastics has a long, proud history. The sport can be traced back to ancient Greece, where such skills featured in the ancient Olympic Games. Ancient Rome, Persia, India and China practised similar disciplines, mostly aimed at preparing young men for battle. The word itself derives from the Greek word gymnos, meaning naked - dress requirements for athletes in those days were minimal, to say the least.

For the record, Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina has 18 Olympic medals, the most ever won by a single athlete in any sport.

The London Olympic Games will begin on the 27 July – 12 August 2012.
Artistic  Gymnastics  competition will be held on the 30^th  July – 7^th  August at North Greenwich Arena, London.

As has been the case on the past, the  Olympics always showcase the latest trend in gymnastics, and London should prove to be the best gymnastics competition ever. Just think of the drama that will be unfold during the long week event. Will the Chinese women. and men be able to defend their Olympic title ? Or perhaps a new team will emerge. And there will other talented gymnasts from other nations. Who knows ? But there will be plenty to see, in the gymnasium and around the beautiful city of London

Until  then, Have a Gluecklich Handstand….

GET CLOSER TO RUSSIAN MAG TEAM

Andrei Rodionenko MAG Coach has made his announcement of the final five men to travel to London on the 21st July 2012.


1. David Sagitovitch Belyavskiy
born 23rd February 1992
Ekaterinburg
V N Lomayev, P A Kitaiski
Graceful David Belyavaskiy is one of two all arounders on this Russian men's team.  A poor performance at the European Championships this year was caused by a painful shoulder injury, but Belyavski showed his class by coming back a few weeks later and taking the all around title at the Russian Cup, a key milestone in the Russian gymnasts' preparation for the Olympics, ahead of team mates Sergei Khorokhodin and Igor Pakhomenko. 

2. Alexander Sergeivich Balandin
born 10th June 1989
Dynamo Petrozavodsk, Karelian Republic
V N Bubnovski, S G Zagorski

 European rings champion Alexander Balandin is expected to contribute high scores on his specialist apparatus as well as qualify to the event final there.  He also contributes good quality routines on parallel bars, and may well be called upon to contribute to the team's efforts on pommel horse.

3. Denis Mikhailovich Ablyazin
 born 3rd August 1992
Trains at - Penza, Moscow Dynamo
Coach - Sergei Starkin

Triple European bronze medallist Denis Ablyazin is the firecracker of the Russian team.  He has the world's highest difficulty level on floor and could well compete for gold there and on vault. 

Detractors complain that Ablyazin's floor routine packs in fast-paced acrobatics at the expense of grace and elegance - but the Code requires difficulty and explosiveness, and Ablyazin delivers both in abundance.

4. Emin Nadirovich Garibov
born 8th September 1992
Moscow Dynamo
A I Sabyelin

At 19, Garibov is the youngest member of this team, yet in competition shows a self confidence beyond his years.  He is perhaps the Russians' most likely chance of an all around medal and, as European Champion on the high bar, bears responsibility for delivering a good score on the event.

5. Igor Alexeivich Pakhomenko
born 10th June 1992
Leninsk-Kuznetsk
D D Chunasov, T V Popova, E R Saifulin

Pakhomenko, a solid all arounder who came third in this year's Russian Cup, is important to the Russian team for contribution to pommel horse, a real weakness otherwise.  

Remembering Maria Filatova

My first memory of Maria Filatova is a little girl with huge, white ribbons in her hair, so tiny she seemed to have to stand on tiptoe to be able to see over the balance beam.  At 4’ 6” tall, she was the smallest competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, yet she was already part of the Soviet senior team, competing alongside such established stars as Ludmilla Tourischeva, Nelli Kim, Elvira Saadi and Olga Korbut.  The ‘Siberian Sparrow’, trained in Leninsk-Kuznetsk by Innokenty Mametyev since a very early age, celebrated her 15^th birthday on the 19^th July 1976, the day of the team final.  That night, she slept with her first – not her last - Olympic gold medal beneath her pillow.( Born 19^th July 1961 )

For all her cuteness, Maria Filatova was a fearsome gymnast and competitor.  If the crowd were awed by the pyrotechnics of Romanian technician Nadia Comaneci, they were wooed by the charm and antics of showgirl Filatova.  Her slinky, graceful, yet humorous rendition of a schoolgirl femme fatale almost stole the show during podium training.  Her gritty and alluring performances there persuaded the Soviet national coaches to prefer her to Lidia Gorbik during the team competition, and Filatova’s Olympic career had begun.

Remember, in 1976 gymnasts performed to the accompaniment of a single musical instrument – usually a piano.  Maria could not rely on volume or monobeat to give emphasis and expression to her floor routine – it had to come from her movements.  The following video has, sadly, been overdubbed with instrumental music – but you only have to watch Filatova.  Mute the sound, and you can still appreciate the musicality that was a feature of all her performances.

Did you see that? As well as performing a routine that may comfortably have been seen in Paris’s Folies Bergeres, Maria Filatova, barely 15 years old, completed a double tuck somersault. She danced her way out of a twinkling double twisting somersault. Hardly the work of a cheeky schoolgirl. Filatova – a Master of Sport – was at the very top of her chosen profession at the age of 15, performing acrobatic skills of unprecedented difficulty. And not just on floor. Throughout her career, Filatova was amongst the first on the Soviet team to introduce new, super difficult elements to her work, at a time when the sport was taking consistent strides forward in technique and power.

Maria Filatova’s innovations

Vault Tsukuhara with full twist (1976 USSR Nationals EF)
Uneven Bars  From giant circle, cross hands half turn into straddle forward salto to hang on high bar.

Beam Flic-flac layout/two layouts in a row
Beam dismount Flic-flac x 2 (2 feet) – double twist/double back/
double pike
Floor Round off-flic flac – double back/double pike/full
in back out (the first on the Soviet team)

Source : Maria Filatova Kourbatova

Speak to Maria today, and she will tell you that finding her way onto the Soviet team was her greatest achievement. Look at the names of the gymnasts with whom she competed throughout her career – names like Tourischeva, Kim, Korbut, Davydova. Filatova, a young gymnast from a distant part of Russia, broke the mould when she joined the Soviet team, combining the lyrical tradition of the past with the developing acrobatic trend of the future. She came not from one of the established powerhouses of Soviet gymnastics, but from Siberia, an area with a developing reputation for excellence. Alongside her coach, Innokenty Mametyev, whom she still remembers fondly today and with whom she lived as family from the age of 11, she presented a style of gymnastics that was to set a new standard in World gymnastics.

Maria Filatova did not stand still after her meteoric rise to fame at the 1976 Olympics. During the years that followed she won no fewer than ten gold medals in all around competitions. In 1977 she became Soviet national champion, and in 1978 won the World Cup. Four times she won a gold medal as part of the winning Soviet team at World Championships or the Olympics. Her  beam routines  was consistently amongst the best in the world, and still shines for its balance and smoothness. But it was on floor that Filatova shone brightest. Her transformation from the baby diva of 1976 to the graceful artiste of 1980 was marked by a limpid, emotive performance that still stops me in my tracks each time I see it. It must be one of the most memorable, moving routines ever.

Maria Filatova – bibliography
Golubev, V (1978) ‘Champion in Pigtails’ Soviet Life April 1978.
Moscow News (1976) ‘A Gymnastics Gala in Moscow’ Moscow News, No 15, 1976.
Moscow News (1977) ‘Grand Gymnastics Review’ Moscow News, No 15, 1977.
Sovietsky Sport (1979) ‘The Passion of Maria Filatova’ Sovietsky Sport, 6 April 1979