A few months ago I had a chance to watch Georges St-Pierre competing in an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on TV. At first I was reluctant, but it eventually piqued my interest as GSP displayed a lot more skill than I was expecting. I learned that he relies on gymnastics training to achieve dominance in his sport!

Georges St-Pierre: “I’m doing gymnastics to keep my body healthy, to change my routine, and I love gymnastics as well and it makes me a better athlete.”

Georges St-Pierre, Ultimate Fighting Championship

It got me thinking that gymnastics really is the “ultimate” sport. Take a gymnast and put him in pretty much any other sport, and he’s likely to achieve a moderate degree of success, but taking established stars in other sports and putting them in gymnastics could results in some rather awkward moments. Gymnast Amy Chow, who has an Olympic medal of each colour, has gone on to excel in not just pole vaulting but diving as well. (Oh, and she’s a paediatrician too!)

Amy Chow, Diving

Yelena Isinbayeva won the 2008 Olympic gold in pole vaulting after growing too tall for gymnastics. At 3:31, Isinbayeva is seen training in the gym, doing tucked Tsukaharas on vault, free hips and giants on bars, and even exercises on the rings! She explains: “Gymnastics gives me more coordination, more precision.”

Yelena Isinbayeva, Pole Vaulting

This reminds me of when I saw Alex Wong on So You Think You Can Dance. At the time, I remember thinking that if gymnastics can serve as the basis of sport, then ballet could well be the basis of dance. Here’s a classically trained ballet dancer who was able to learn a complicated hip hop routine in just a few days, and perform seamlessly with All Star Twitch. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

Alex Wong, Ballet

Alex Wong, Hip Hop

For every Boginskaya and Shushunova out there winning World and Olympic medals, there was another talented gymnast toiling away the Soviet Union. With only 6 spots up for grabs each year, many excellent gymnasts never had a chance to display their skills on the world stage as a result of the extreme depth on the Soviet team in the 1980s. If given half a chance they, too, could have earned accolades and changed the history of the sport.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992, many gymnasts who would have formerly been on the bubble were able to compete for their respective republics at the World Championships the following year. Interesting gymnasts such as Lyudmila Stovbchataya (UKR), the Yulia Yurkina (BLR) and Irina Yevdokimova (KAZ) were some of the 18 ex-Soviet female gymnasts competing in Birmingham.

Here are some of the top-notch performers who sadly never wore the Soviet flag at a World Championships or an Olympic Games:

TATIANA GROSHKOVA

1990 USA vs USSR, Balance Beam

The press handstand mount, the full-twisting back, the sideways backhandspring to Yurchenko loop, a full-in dismount, the flower leo and yarn…what more can a gym fan ask for?!

1989 Chunichi Cup, Floor Exercise

Don’t miss the double full-in first pass! She and Alexis Brion remain the only ladies to ever compete this skill.

ALEFTINA PRIAKHINA

1986 Chunichi Cup, Floor Exercise

Although the skill bears the name of Daniela Silivas (ROM) in the Code of Points, Priakhina was in fact the first gymnast to perform the double-double on floor.

1987 USSR Display, Uneven Bars

Check out how close together the bars are set!

OLGA CHUDINA

1988 Chunichi Cup

1988 USSR vs CHN, UNeven Bars

NATALIA FROLOVA

1986 Kraft Invitational, Floor Exercise

My favourite floor routine of all time!

YULIA KUT

1990 Dutch Open, Floor Exercise

1990 Dutch Open, Uneven Bars

ARMINE BARUTYAN

1985 Medico Cup, Floor Exercise

Barutyan, owner of a fantastic planche on beam, was rumoured to be training a double layout dismount of that apparatus!

Which other amazing gymnasts do you think could have won titles and been stars if given a chance to compete at a Worlds or Olympics?

The men’s finals showcased the specialists on each apparatus, and indeed none of the winners even participated in the all-around final. The results didn’t change much from the qualification round to the finals; vault champion Thomas Bouhail of France was the only one who did not enter the final as the leader.

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Four different gymnasts were awarded the gold medals during the women’s apparatus finals of the 2010 World Championships, held in Rotterdam last month. All-around queen Aliya Mustafina didn’t win any gold medals in finals, but she did come away from these World Championships with five medals in all and bragging rights as the only Russian lady to claim a medal after their shared team gold.

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Another World Championships has come and gone, and all is right with the (gymnastics) world! The Russian ladies (Ksenia Afanasyeva, Anna Dementieva, Yekaterina Kurbatova, Aliya Mustafina, Tatiana Nabieva, Ksenia Semyonova) finally won the team gold for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s hard to believe it took them 18 years to stand atop the podium, especially thinking back to the 2000 Olympic team that was jam packed with so many heavy hitters: Svetlana Khorkina, Yelena Produnova, Yelena Zamolodchikova and Yekaterina Lobaznyuk. Mustafina undoubtedly played a huge role in their win, with incredible scores on all four events. The question loomed: could she sweep all six golds?

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Okay, so last time I made a Top 10 list of my favourite floor routines ever (I kinda forgot the fantastic routine Dominique Dawes did in 1992 and 1993, but luckily RJL commented on that!). I promised that my next post would be a list of the worst floor routines ever, so here goes….

After a lot of deliberating, I decided to narrow it down to just three routines. Unfortunately, there seems to be a theme (a lot of Romanian routines from the late 1970s!).

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When I first set out to create a Top 10 list of the best floor routines ever, I had no idea what a task it would become. How could I leave out gymnasts such as Svetlana Boginskaya, Oksana Omelianchik, Maria Filatova, Natalia Ilienko? Believe it or not, I did consider making this a Top 10 Soviet Routines from the 1980s list…well, anyway, here is a compilation of ten of my favourites. Enjoy!

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Having just returned from a vacation in Norway, I thought it would be fitting to write about that country’s most famous gymnast: Espen Jansen. What makes him notable in the sport of gymnastics isn’t so much his skills or results, but his longevity. Jansen has participated in every World Championship since 1991, with the exception of 1992 and 2009…not bad for a gymnast who will turn 42 in December!

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Poor Youna. She has had such bad luck on the uneven bars lately! First she lost a medal at the 2010 European Championships after French National Coach Eric Demay accidentally touched her while spotting her on the Def, incurring a 0.5 deduction. You can catch a clear view of this incident at 1:15.

Youna Dufournet, Uneven Bars, 2010 European Championships

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I was pleased to read that the FIG has decided to allow all three World apparatus medalists in a pre-Olympic year to be automatically guaranteed a spot in the Games. In the most recent Olympic cycle, Krizstian Berki (HUN), Yuri van Gelder (NED), and Aljaz Pegan (SLO) all had the “misfortune” of winning the silver medals on their specialties at the 2007 World Championships. Clearly contenders for Olympic gold, they were denied the opportunity to attend the Games in Beijing simply because they had not won the event and because they were not so fortunate as to represent a Top 12 team that automatically qualified 6 gymnasts.

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