The gymnastics Olympic Trials for our U.S. athletes take place this weekend. The first round for both men and women is already complete. I “watched the meet” on a text-based forum for three hours last evening — all we got was written reports about the performances and the scores (no video). Nobody on the forum was reporting the standings after each round, so I took it upon myself to set up an Excel spreadsheet to put scores in as they came up, and then sorted the gymnasts by their all-around scores and posted the standings myself. Yes, I am obsessed with gymnastics! And the U.S.’s top three female gymnasts are all former world champions, so this is quite an amazing group of athletes! The competition will be so worth watching.
The round of competition that took place last night will be on TV this evening (NBC, 8 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Central). And the finals will be shown LIVE (eek!) on Sunday evening starting at 7 p.m. Eastern (6 p.m. Central).
If you haven’t watched elite gymnastics for awhile, just be warned that the scoring has changed. A difficulty score is now added to the traditional 10.0. So the gymnasts get scores like 14.9 and 16.3. Anything in the 16s is amazing and world-class. (One of our gymnasts is capable of getting a 17 on uneven bars which is totally mind blowing!) Scores in the 15s are good, and scores below 15 are kind of average for this level of gymnastics. So, watch for the gymnasts who mostly score in the 15s and 16s — those young ladies will be on our Olympic team.
And just FYI… my very favorite gymnasts this year are Nastia Liukin, Shawn Johnson, and Ivana Hong.
Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 9:46 pm |
I’m so glad for the update on Gymnastics as we don’t have cable TV anymore. That is one sport I do miss watching. Sounds like it’s going to be a “suspenseful” Olympic year!