Since my cable provider stopped showing the TV Guide Channel, I miss everything. Rats! It sounds pretty exciting. But after an Olympics, I'm once again completely ignorant about any of the competitors. Female gymnasts don't seem to hang around very long, and I don't follow the sport closely enough to keep track. That's why every time someone says that a successful ladies' figure skater needs to be sprite-sized, my blood runs cold. I can't bear the thought of skaters with a shelf life of three years in Seniors. Thank goodness that hasn't happened (knock wood) yet.
Well, they announced that the whole Fab Five planned to come back for 2016. We'll see how they feel about it two years from now.
One thing I noticed at this U.S. championship is that you can tell at a glance the difference between the girls with serious World and Olympic aspirations and the those who are just in it for fun at the national level. The latter look like normal teenaged girls. If they are old enough they have a normal girl's body, breasts, female shape, etc. The prospective Olympians have that testosterone driven barrel chest, no breasts, narrow hips, and strong core that overtraining imposes. (There are some exceptions, like Nastia Liukin, who commentated last bight.) I would think twice before encouraging my daughter to take up this sport obsessively.
The guys' apparatus mostly requires them to hold on while they're moving around. The girls have to do double flips backward in midair, with nothing to hold on to.
Yes, but the guys hold on to the high bar and the parallel bars though most of the tricks ...
If I had a son and a daughter who both were gymnasts, I believe that I would be as concerned for his safety as for hers. YMMV.
Don't think you're being quite fair to the guys.
Females have uneven bars; males have high bar (equally perilous, to my eyes) and parallel bars.
Both genders have vault and floor.
The one difference in terms of riskiness, IMHO, is that the skills for beam seem more daring than for rings and pommel horse.
where is Gabby? didn't she say she was heading for another Olympics? So Kyla is the only gal still competing?
Well, they announced that the whole Fab Five planned to come back for 2016. We'll see how they feel about it two years from now.
One thing I noticed at this U.S. championship is that you can tell at a glance the difference between the girls with serious World and Olympic aspirations and the those who are just in it for fun at the national level. The latter look like normal teenaged girls. If they are old enough they have a normal girl's body, breasts, female shape, etc. The prospective Olympians have that testosterone driven barrel chest, no breasts, narrow hips, and strong core that overtraining imposes. (There are some exceptions, like Nastia Liukin, who commentated last bight.) I would think twice before encouraging my daughter to take up this sport obsessively.
So Kyla is the only gal still competing?
where is Gabby? didn't she say she was heading for another Olympics? ...