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Gymnastics master post
Aug. 12th, 2016 02:52 pmI am a former gymnast, so I've been watching the current women's gymnastics events in Rio with excitement and interest. Simone Biles, the US gymnast who has so far helped her team to win the gold team medal and last night won the individual all-around competition, is simply incredible to watch, and just because she's streets ahead of all her competitors it doesn't mean I don't enjoy watching them too! I've been gathering a bunch of links over the lead-up to the Olympics, as well as over the course of the competitions (about half of which were sent to me by my mum), and rather than simply throwing them out into the void on Twitter, I thought it might be best to keep them all in one place. This is more for my reference than anything else, although if anyone here shares my love of gymnastics, feel free to jump into the comments, especially if you have links I haven't included.
Why No One Can Understand What Gymnastics Scores Mean. Includes lots of clips of routines old and new, including Nadia Comaneci's iconic perfect 10 bar routine. This makes a nice pair with the following link.
A Comprehensive Video on Everything You Need to Know about Gymnastics Scoring.
How the U.S. Crushed the Competition in the Women's Gymnastics Team Final (spoiler: their difficulty scores are higher than everyone else's, and they normally score high on execution too). Frame-by-frame analysis of team members on different apparatus.
Frame by Frame, the Moves that Made Simone Biles Unbeatable. She's just amazing.
America's Painful Journey from Prejudice to Greatness in Women's Gymnastics. Three of the five-woman US team are women of colour, but their incredible success has been hard won in a sport that has traditionally been unwelcoming, especially to black women.
The New Yorker has had some of the best gymnastics coverage. Here are several articles from that magazine:
Women's Gymnastics Deserves Better TV Coverage. This is about the US coverage, which I obviously haven't watched, but the BBC coverage here isn't much better. It's got inane commentary, and tends to cut to irrelevant stuff like footage of gymnasts putting on hand-grips between apparatus, or struggling not to cry after getting bad scores, instead of actual routines. (For example, I still haven't seen Eythora Thorsdottir's incredible, melodramatic floor routine in a single BBC stream.)
The Mind-Blowing Athleticism of Simone Biles.
A final New Yorker link, a Simone Biles profile.
Gymnastics Hair: A Retrospective got a laugh out of me. I remember wearing at least three of these styles during my own years as a gymnast. My favourite was the era of french braids and helmets of glitter hairspray. Good times.
I follow a lot of gymnastics Tumblrs, and highly recommend the following:
![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
gymternet
thegymnasticsnerd
marksmcmorris
I will add to this as I discover more links.
Why No One Can Understand What Gymnastics Scores Mean. Includes lots of clips of routines old and new, including Nadia Comaneci's iconic perfect 10 bar routine. This makes a nice pair with the following link.
A Comprehensive Video on Everything You Need to Know about Gymnastics Scoring.
How the U.S. Crushed the Competition in the Women's Gymnastics Team Final (spoiler: their difficulty scores are higher than everyone else's, and they normally score high on execution too). Frame-by-frame analysis of team members on different apparatus.
Frame by Frame, the Moves that Made Simone Biles Unbeatable. She's just amazing.
America's Painful Journey from Prejudice to Greatness in Women's Gymnastics. Three of the five-woman US team are women of colour, but their incredible success has been hard won in a sport that has traditionally been unwelcoming, especially to black women.
The New Yorker has had some of the best gymnastics coverage. Here are several articles from that magazine:
Women's Gymnastics Deserves Better TV Coverage. This is about the US coverage, which I obviously haven't watched, but the BBC coverage here isn't much better. It's got inane commentary, and tends to cut to irrelevant stuff like footage of gymnasts putting on hand-grips between apparatus, or struggling not to cry after getting bad scores, instead of actual routines. (For example, I still haven't seen Eythora Thorsdottir's incredible, melodramatic floor routine in a single BBC stream.)
The Mind-Blowing Athleticism of Simone Biles.
A final New Yorker link, a Simone Biles profile.
Gymnastics Hair: A Retrospective got a laugh out of me. I remember wearing at least three of these styles during my own years as a gymnast. My favourite was the era of french braids and helmets of glitter hairspray. Good times.
I follow a lot of gymnastics Tumblrs, and highly recommend the following:
I will add to this as I discover more links.