Zanetti 4th at the Still Rings, Sasaki 19th at the all-around

Great news for gymnast Arthur Zanetti. He finished fourth at the Still Rings, tied with renowned Stanescu from Romania. Way to go, Arthur! Sergio Sasaki also had a great meet and finished 19th at the all-around, the best position a brazilian male gymnast has achieved at the Worlds.

In sad news, at the women's competition, gymnast Jessica Gil from fellow neighbor country Colombia fell on her head and shocked the whole world. I started to cry when I saw her laying on the ground holding her head with her hands... very, very sad. Hopefuly she is ok now. I was really rooting for her, wishing that she could win Colombia's first medal at the Worlds. Hope she gets better and manages to win a medal at next year's World Championships. I will not link to the video of her fall because I think it is very shocking and, besides, if I see the video one more time I will weep again. Life can be unfair sometimes.

Zanetti and Sasaki make it to the finals!

What a great surprise! After seeing Diego miss the floor finals by 0.025, it was great to see that Arthur Zanetti and Sérgio Sasaki Junior made it to the rings and individual all-around finals respectively. Good luck, boys!

Diego misses the floor finals at the Worlds 2009

What a shock! I can not even say how much I am disappointed by that. Diego is the reigning World Champion and would attempt to defend his title had he made it to the finals. That is too bad. Nevertheless, I am very proud of Diego because he is still recovering from a shoulder injury. I hope that he can fully recover and regain the title next year.

Rio wins the right to stage the Olympic Games in 2016

President Lula crying after the announcement of Rio as the host city for the 2016 Olympics*

Yay! The image above translates exactly what I was feeling during the votation. I could not stop crying before, during and after the moment Rio was announced as the host city for the 2016 Olympics. I am a native of Rio and I am extremely happy with the fact that we will be able to witness the world's biggest sports competition here in South America! It will be seven years of hard work, but in the end I am sure that Rio will stage the most exciting Olympics ever! Congratulations to the city and THANK YOU president Lula! You are AMAZING! Truly an inspiration for us brazilians!

*Credits of the image: http://www.chippewa.com/content/articles/2009/10/03/ap/sports/oly_2016_bids_rio.jpg

And the all-arounders for the Worlds are...

Bruna Leal and Ethiene Franco! What a surprise that Khiuane Dias, the all-around champion at the recent Troféu Brasil (the closest to a "Nationals" we have had this year) will not compete in the all-around! Khiuane will perform on the Uneven Bars and Balance Beam events and Priscila Cobello will perform on the Balance Beam Vault and Floor. Good luck to the girls (and the boys as well)!

EDIT (on Oct. 3rd): Priscila Cobbelo will perform on the Vault and Floor. This is intriguing since Priscila is far from being one of Brazil's best vaulters. Rumors are that her most difficult vault will be a Front Twisting Yurchenko.

The men who are going to London...

CBG has decided which boys will represent Brazil at the World Championships. The chosen are:

Diego Hypólito
Mosiah Rodrigues
Victor Rosa
Arthur Zanetti
Caio Américo Costa
Sérgio Sasaki

I am surprised to see Victor Rosa back (last time I heard about him, he had a terrible accident and injured both biceps). I hope he is still able to perform his amazing floor routine. I am also surprised not to see Sergio Eras or Petrix Barbosa on the team.

It will be interesting to see what strategy CBG will adopt regarding the vaulters. Sergio, Arthur and Diego are great vaulters and they can fight for a place in the finals. I am taking a wild guess here, but I think that the best route would be making Sergio and Arthur the all-arounders, while Diego only competes on Floor and Vault.

Mosiah will probably compete at Pommels and High Bar. I have absolutely no clue about who Caio and Sergio are (yeah, shame on me).

Who is going to London? (Part 2)

CBG has decided what girls are going to the Worlds 2009. The list is:

Ethiene Franco
Khiuane Dias
Bruna Leal
Priscila Cobello

It is a surprising list, considering that two of the girls have never been to a World Championships or Olympic Games (Bruna Leal and Priscila Cobello). I wish all the luck to them and I expect the girls to give their best and represent Brazil well (and I am sure they will).

No comments yet about the Men's team, though Diego Hypólito was officially confirmed by CBG. Initially, Diego threatened not to take part in the competition if his coach was not named head coach for the Men's team. His presence in the competition was only confirmed after CBG named Renato the head coach. It will not be a surprise if the alternate for the Women's team is Daniele Hypólito, for obvious reasons.

In other news, while Jade Barbosa will not take part at the Worlds 2009, she is going to compete in an international event in Italy later this year. I am really looking forward to see her new routines!

Jade Barbosa is back to the permanent team!

Jade Barbosa is back! Jade took the 12th and last spot in the permanent national team! Congratulations to her! It is still uncertain if she will be able to compete at the Worlds next month, but even if she manages to compete there, she will not perform in the All-Around competition. Her floor routine has not changed much -- Tsukahara pike, double tuck, 1.5 twist + 1.0 front twist and double pike. She didn't perform using her new music, though.

In other awesome news, gymnast Janaína Santos took home FIVE gold medals (out of six) in the Junior National Championships. Janaína won every event but the Balance Beam. Here are the full results of the Women's Artistic competition.

Brazilian Junior National Championships

Team competition
1 - APCEF
2 - Serc
3 - Yashi

Women's All-Around - 14/15 years old
1 - Janaina da Silva - 53,800
2 - Harumi Freitas - 51,133
3 - Anna Carolina Cardoso - 50,000

Women's Vault
1 - Janaina da Silva (APCEF)– 14,525
2 - Letícia da Costa (Flamengo)– 14,475
3 - Harumi de Freitas (APCEF) – 13,300

Uneven Bars
1 - Janaina da Silva (APCEF) – 12,600
2 - Harumi de Freitas (APCEF) – 12,250
3 - Renata Pinheiros (GNU) – 10,850

Balance Beam
1 - Letícia da Costa (Flamengo) – 13,400
2 - Nadhine Ourives (APCEF) – 12,800
3 - Clarissa Maria de Almeida 0 (Yashi) – 12,700

Floor
1 - Janaina da Silva (APCEF) – 13,250
2 - Anna Caroline Cardoso (APCEF) – 12,850
3 - Harumi de Freitas (APCEF) – 12,800
3 - Renata Pinheiro (GNU) – 12,800

Congratulations, Janaína!

Jade Barbosa back to the permanent team?

Exciting news. This Friday, September 3, Jade will present her routines to CBG and they will decide if she joins the permanent team or not. If she makes it to the team, which seems a no brainer, she can actually be chosen to represent Brazil at the World Championships in October. I am not betting my money on that yet, but it is good to see that there is a slim possibility of Jade making it to the Worlds.

Also, it looks like the Nationals will take place in November, like the rumours suggested.

A new date for the Nationals?

It is really sad that the Nationals had to be postoponed thanks to the outbreak of H1N1 in sister country Argentina (and consequently in Brazil as well). As if the outbreak had not caused enough harm to the competition, Jade Barbosa is uncertain if she will compete or not and both Laís Souza and Daiane dos Santos stated that they are not going to take part in this competition... or any other competition this year.

At least CBG now has a much easier time in choosing what girls are going to the World Championships in London. Barring injury, the selected girls will probably be Ana Claudia Silva, Ehtiene Franco, Khiuane Dias and Bruna Leal. Priscila Cobello has a very slight chance of taking one spot, but I doubt so. Maybe she will be an alternate.

Too bad Janaína Silva, Nadhine Ourives, Letícia Costa and Nicole Beltrame are not old enough to compete this year. Speaking about Letícia Costa, newspaper O Globo (one of the most important newspapers in Brazil) featured a front page article about her. Letícia is being called a "diamond in need of lapidation", which is quite surprising. Her coach said that he is going to ask her to do her best and then some. She is only 14 years old and she is probably going to be the chosen Brazilian girl to take part in the Youth Olympics next year.

Also, there are some rumors that the Nationals have been rescheduled to November 27-29. CBG has made no official announcements so far, so it is safer to take these rumours with a grain of salt.

As a final note, the Brazilian Group in Rhythmics placed 19th at the Kiev World Cup Series. A very, very disappointing (and alarming) result for the group. I hope the girls can pull themselves together and achieve better results in future competitions.

Things are going slowly lately...

Today, I was supposed to be writing about the Nationals, but things did not go as planned by CBG. The delay of the competition was a cold news. To make things worse, there is still not a new date for the Nationals. The gymnasts who will compete at the World Championship in October are to be selected during the Nationals. The deadline for the submission of the names of the gymnasts is September 9. CBG does not have much time left and, at this rate, they should either transfer the location where the Nationals will take place or just pick the gymnasts they are planning to send to the Worlds anyway and pray they make the right decisions.

In other news, according to this article, Laís Souza and Daiane dos Santos decided not to take part in the 2009 World Championships. Not only that, but they are are not planning to compete at any other competition this year. They say in the article that their priorities are set at the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 Olympics, so they will take the time off to recover from injuries and tighten their routines.

It is good to hear that Laís is not exactly planning to retire as of yet. I just hope they can keep going until the next Olympics.

Difficulty or execution?

Since 2006 the Code of Points in Artistic Gymnastics abolished the perfect 10 score in favor of a more open-ended evaluation system. This change is highly debatable; many people dislike the current scoring system and claim desperately for the return of the perfect 10. I, for one, like the new scoring system better. It is just fair in my book to think that a more difficult routine should, in theory, be rewarded with a significantly higher score. But, of course, difficulty is not everything. If the execution is not good enough, a difficult routine is more likely to go to waste.

Or is it?

During the last quad, a lot of difficult-yet-not-so-well-executed routines found their way to the finals, while clean-yet-not-so-difficult routines were left out. And even if a superbly clean gymnast made it to the finals without an uber-difficult routine, his/her efforts were usually not well-rewarded.

My point is that, although it is a good decision to separate difficulty from execution, there is still not a solid balance between these aspects. It was a pain for me to see clean, artistic gymnasts with difficult routines like Anastasia Koval and Ksenia Semenova being left out of the podium at the Olympic Games last year.

So, while I can see the benefits of the current Code of Points, I admit it is not perfect. While I believe gymnastics is all about challenging one's limits, there should be a limit for one's limit. Every time I watch He Kexin's new Uneven Bars routine I am truly amazed at how perfect she is, but I am also scared to death that she might just slip and fall and God knows what could happen then.

Defying one's limits is not to be taken as defying death. What scares me is that gymnastics is not about execution anymore; it is all about difficulty. I believe, for the safety of the gymnasts, that there should be a cap. FIG should not allow routines over, say, 6.0 or 6.5 in difficulty. Those are still very high difficulty scores under the current Code of Points.

Why am I ranting about all this? Because Brazilian gymnasts seem to be taking the "clean-yet-not-so-difficult" route this quad. I believe this is the safest way to go, but, more likely than not, they are bound not to be rewarded by the current Code of Points for a clean routine. When we think "let the best gymnast win", what do we understand as best? Is the best routine always the most difficult one? I beg to differ. Let the cleanest-yet-still-difficult-but-not-life-threatening routine win. That is much, much better.

CBG decides to postpone the Nationals

Sad news. CGB has decided that there is no guarantee of safety for the athletes in Porto Alegre thanks to the massive outbreak of swine flu in Argentina. Since Porto Alegre is geographically close to Argentina, CBG has decided to delay the Nationals to an indefinite date, or at least "as soon as the environment becomes safe for gathering the Big Brazilian Gymnastics Family" (corny, but that is how CBG is).

At least the delay gives more time to Daiane and Jade to recover. While Jade is slowly recovering from her hand injury, Daiane is recovering from a recent surgery on her knee. She is currently in the process of choosing a new music for her floor routine. Rumors are that Daiane is currently considering the Indian music Chori Chori Hum Gori Se for the routine. Also, in a recent interview for a TV show, she said that she is also considering including the Dos Santos I (double arabian pike) in her routine.

Nicole Beltrame: promising gymnast

I am really getting excited about the National Championships as the competition comes close. I was browsing YouTube looking for videos of last year's competition and I found a video of a very promising gymnast: Nicole Beltrame.



The audio quality is not so great, but the video is worth watching. She is only 12 years old and can perform two D skills: double pike and 2.5 twist. I guess we can expect her to include a double tuck in her routine and probably connect the 1.5 twist with the front layout full. It looks like we will have a new gymnast to watch for the 2016 games (and hopefully they will be staged in Brazil).

Who is going to London this year?

With the Brazilian National Championships taking place later this month, we can begin to speculate who is going to make it to the World Championships in October. After the Nationals, one "new" athlete will join the permanent team and CBG will be able to finally choose four girls to represent Brazil at the World Championships.

I would say Ethiene Franco is a lock for the team. Ethiene is not particularly strong in any specific apparatus, but her routines are solid and relatively difficult. This makes her a perfect candidate for being Brazil's best All-Arounder now that Jade Barbosa can not compete on every piece of apparatus anymore. As the team is now, I guess that the other three spots would probably be taken by Ana Claudia Silva, Khiuane Dias and Bruna Leal.

But there is one spot left on the team and both Jade and Daiane are going to compete at Nationals. Probably one of them will take the last spot and also make it to London as well. I bet on Daiane, since she is working hard to return to form. Earlier this year, she stated: "I want to go to London. (...) This is my objective, my dream". Good luck to her. If she makes it to London, Daiane is Brazil's best shot at a medal. The gymnast is a floor specialist and won the world title in 2003 at this apparatus. Can she make history again, six years later? We hope so. But first she has to secure her spot on the team.

At the men's side, Diego Hypólito is also a lock. I guess the other three spots will be taken by Artur Zanetti, Mosiah Rodrigues and Vitor Rosa. Sergio Eras will probably be the alternate. But this is just wild speculation and we still have a long way to go until October.

Jade will compete again... in less than one month!

So, it looks like Jade gave up giving up competing at the Nationals. Yesterday, Jade's coach Ricardo Pereira confirmed that Jade will take part in the Brazilian National Championships. She will not try to beat last year's All-Around champion Ana Claudia Silva, though, since she is only competing at the Balance Beam and Uneven Bars. Guess her floor routine will not be ready yet for the competition, but it is great news to see Jade coming back to competitions after nearly one year away from them. The National Championships will be held August 21-23 in Porto Alegre.

Men's Artistic team training in Rio de Janeiro

A few days ago I posted here about the Women's permanent team in Artistic Gymnastics. I was so puzzled by the possibility of Jade or Daiane (or both) not making it to the team that I forgot to mention that there is also a "permanent team" for Men's Artistic Gymnastics. The selection system works not unlike the Women's team: CBG chooses a handful of gymnasts around the country and make them part of the team. The boys train at their hometowns' clubs with their own coaches. Twice a year they are required to stay together in order to go through a physical evaluation by CBG (Brazilian Gymnastics Confederation). The team is composed by athletes Diego Hypólito, Victor Rosa, Mosiah Rodrigues, Arthur Zanetti, Sérgio Eras, Francisco Barreto, Sergio Sasaki, Petrix Barbosa, Caio Costa, Vitor Camargo and Danilo Nogueira. According to CGB the athletes are staying together from July 27 to July 31 in Rio de Janeiro for training and evaluation.

Brazil's head coach not too happy about the current situation

Ten years ago, Artistic Gymnastics was not a very well known sport in Brazil. The country's best athlete so far, Luísa Parente, had retired in 1995 and future stars Daniele Hypólito and Daiane dos Santos were still too inexperienced to show strong routines. Then, in 2001, Oleg Ostapenko and Irina Ilyaschenko came from Ukraine to Brazil in order to train the Women's national team. Things suddenly changed. Daniele Hypólito won a silver medal at the 2001 World Championships on floor, Daiane dos Santos became the World Champion on the same apparatus in 2003 and Jade Barbosa came close to being the All-Around champion at the 2007 World Championships, but still managed to earn a bronze medal.

Now Oleg Ostapenko is back to Ukraine and Irina Ilyaschenko is the new head coach of the Women's national team. And according to this article, she is not too thrilled about that. Irina's main concern is that the "permanent team" is not together as a team the whole year. From 2001 to 2008 all the girls trained and lived together at the city of Curitiba. This means that the girls had to move away from their home towns, all alone, in order to live with a dozen other girls they had never seen before. Of course this was a big problem for some of the girls: they missed their families, friends and hometown.

So, this year CBG decided to let the girls go back to their hometowns and train with the coach they choose, at the clubs they want to be. While not all the clubs have the best equipments and not all the coaches are as experienced as Irina, it seems like all the girls are happy with this situation. Except Irina. She says she wants the girls together again and does not feel confident enough to keep training the national team if they are not always close to her. The girls, on the other hand, say that being in different towns, in different clubs, help the sport because younger gymnasts have the opportunity to talk to them and train together with them. Also, other coaches get to help them in training and teach a new trick or two.

Still, Irina is threatening leaving her position as the head coach. I just hope that this does not become one of those huge problems. There have been already enough scandals concerning gymnastics in Brazil, so we do not need a new one.

Marcela Lopez wins gold at the World Games 2009

Great news! Aerobic gymnast Marcela Lopez won Brazil's first medal in gymnastics at the World Games. Marcela is the new champion of the competition in the Women's Individual event. Congratulations, Ma! In a sad news, it looks like the Brazilian Trio did not manage to compete. Probably one of the girls got injured or something... I just hope it is nothing serious.

As a side note, thank you very much for the comments! I am really happy to see people coming here and posting comments about the blog!

Picture borrowed from http://www.flickr.com/photos/fig-gymnastics/2442486987/. All rights reserved.

Two new gymnasts make it to the "permanent team"... only one spot left

In recent Olympic cycles, the Brazilian Gymnastics Confederation (CBG) decided to adopt a selection process where they test a handful of girls around the country and make some of them part of the "permanent team", that is, a small, restrict group of gymnasts who are going to represent Brazil in official competitions. In theory, the "permanent team" is composed by the best gymnasts of the country.

After the Beijing olympics, CBG decided to dismiss the old team in order to create a new one from scratch. In January this year they started to recruit new girls for the team. Until last week the girls recruited were Ethiene Franco, Bruna Leal, Khiuani Dias, Anna Carolina Cardoso, Janaina Silva, Ana Claudia Silva, Priscila Cobello, Nadhine Ourives and Daniele Hypolito. According to this article, this week CBG has added two more new gymnasts to the team: Harumi de Freitas and Leticia Costa. Since the team is restricted to 12 athletes, there is only one spot left. As you can see, there is no sign of olympians Daiane dos Santos, Jade Barbosa and Laís Souza. That probably means that only one of them will make it to the team.

Laís Souza is rumoured to retire soon thanks to ongoing problems with injuries, and I feel sorry for her because she is one of my favorite gymnasts. But I am seriously shocked by the fact that either Jade or Daiane would probably be left out. Either CBG has gone completely crazy or they are planning to remove one of the selected gymnasts from the team. Daniele Hypólito has been extremely criticized after a disastrous performance at the recent Universiade 2009. Is she also planning to retire? Or is CBG forcing her out of the team? We will find out soon.

Uneven Bars and uneven results for Brazilian girls

Historically in Women's Artistic Gymnastics the worst apparatus for Brazilian girls has been the Uneven Bars. When it comes to World Championships, Brazilian gymnasts managed to at least get a place in the finals for the All-Around, Team, Vault, Balance Beam and Floor events, but never for the Uneven Bars. The only major title on bars for a Brazilian gymnast so far was taken by Luísa Parente, who won the gold medal on the apparatus at the 1991 Pan-American Games.

So, it comes as a surprise that gymnast Ethiene Franco (pictured*) is now focusing her training on the Uneven Bars (and getting good results so far). She is even training an element never attempted before by a Brazilian gymnast: a piked Gienger (check the video here). It sure is still sloppy, but at least she is showing steady improvement. I would even dare say she is a lock for the team at the next World Championships in October.

*Picture borrowed from http://globoesporte.globo.com. All rights reserved.

Marcisnei and Juliana finish seventh at the WG

After an exciting fourth place last year in the World Championships, gymnasts Juliana Antero and Marcisnei Oliveira (pictured) finished in seventh place at the World Games 2009. Winners were French pair Julien Chaninet and Aurelie Joly. In a surpring result, the Romanian pair placed out of the podium. In the Men's Individual competition no Brazilian athlete attempeted qualification. Tomorrow Marcela Lopez will compete in both Women's Individual event and in Trios. Marcela is Brazil's biggest hope for a medal at these games and I am deeply rooting for her.

Marcel Sturmer wins bronze at the World Games

It is not really gymnastics related, but I think it is worth mentioning anyway: Artistic Roller skater Marcel Sturmer won a bronze medal at the World Games 2009. Marcel is a two-time Pan-American champion and in 2007 he charmed the home crowd winning the gold medal at the Pan-American games in Rio de Janeiro. It is a pleasure to see Marcel earning one more well-deserved medal. Congratulations, Marcel.

Also, in a few hours Aerobic gymnasts Marcisnei Oliveira and Juliana Antero will compete at the World Games in the Mixed Pairs event. I hope they can be successful and bring home Brazil's first medal in gymnastics at this competition.

Thank you, Rick!

Fellow blogger Rick, responsible for the excellent blog Gymnastics Coaching, kindly posted about my blog on his own. I can not find a better way to say "thank you" to him other than also dedicating a post to Gymnastics Coaching. It was Rick's blog that actually served as the main inspiration for me to create this blog after all. I am sure Gymnastics Coaching is not only an inspiration for me, but also for other countless fans and professionals in gymnastics. Once again: thank you, Rick!

Bruno Martini at the World Games 2009

Trampolinist Bruno Martini had a great shot at a medal in Kaohsiung, but one mistake in the first routine during the finals prevented the athlete from medaling. Bruno presented two solid and difficult routines during qualifications, but failed to maintain the scores in the finals and finished the competition out of medal contention. According to his official website, Bruno was training at night so he could get used to Taipei's time zone. It must really a disappointment for him, but I am really proud that he made it this far. Congratulations, Bruno!

Jade Barbosa's new floor routine

It is good to know that Jade Barbosa is recovering from her hand injury. The athlete has been training with just one hand not to stress even more her other hand, which is hurt. Until now, there have been rumors about Jade coming back to competition in August, during the Brazilian National Championships. This article (in Portuguese) from Brazilian newspaper O Globo, however, is more specific about her plans. According to the article, Jade is training a new floor routine, but she does not intend to show this routine this year since she is not planning to compete at Nationals anymore. She plans to focus on studying more so she can go to college next year to study Administration. However, she is not retiring yet. On the contrary: she asked DJ Marlboro to create a new music for her floor routine based on Funk carioca, a regional style of music that is very popular in Brazil. Here is a video containing a random work of DJ Malboro, so you can have an idea about what to expect to listen when Jade Barbosa performs her new floor routine next year. Everything else about the routine remains a mystery... until 2010, that is.

Brazilian gymnasts fighting for first World Games medal

Not many people know about the World Games. This is a multi-sport competition where athletes around the world take part in events not contested at the Olympics. When it comes to gymnastics, the competition features Individual Rhythmic Gymnastics, Aerobic, Acrobatic, Trampoline and Tumbling. Brazil has never won a medal in any of the disciplines in Gymnastics in past competitions, but we all hope this changes this year since the two-time world champion Marcela Lopez (pictured) is competing this time. Marcela is natural from the city of São Paulo, Brazil's largest city. Besides two individual titles in World Championships (2006 and 2008), she is also a gold, silver and bronze medalist in the Trio competition (medals won in 2004, 2005 and 2006 respectively).

Besides Marcela, gymnasts Juliana Antero (Aerobics), Leonardo Lins (Aerobics), Marina Lopez (Aerobics), Bruno Martini (Trampoline) and Marcisnei Oliveira (Aerobics) are competing. Promising young Rhythmic Gymnast Eliane Sampaio has already competed, placing 19th (Rope), 20th (Hoop), 19th (Ball) and 21st (Ribbon). I wish luck to Sampaio, since she is a talented gymnast and this was her first major international competition.

You can follow the updated results here, through the World Games 2009 official website.

Welcome to Brazilian Gymnastics

Hello. My name is Thiago and I am a huge fan of Gymnastics. Artistic Gymnastics has become a huge success in Brazil thanks to incredible world class gymnasts like Daiane dos Santos and Diego Hypólito. However, outside of Brazil very few people know about Brazilian gymnasts other than these two athletes. This is the main reason why I decided to create this blog: to make people around the world aware of Brazilian gymnasts and celebrate incoming (and also past) victories of Brazilian athletes. Initially, I plan to publish only news about competitions where Brazilian gymnasts take part in, but I may talk about gymnasts from other countries as well if there is any kind of relevant news about them. I hope you all enjoy the blog and I am open to suggestions. I am also sorry if I commit any mistake, but English is not my native language (it is Portuguese, since I am Brazilian after all). Also, I am not a coach or professional in gymnastics, so bear with me if I make any mistake refering to an element or value of a routine. Thanks for coming here and welcome to Brazilian gymnastics!