Our Favorite Gymnasts_ Jordyn, Beth, Catalina, et al

Yes, Bob Costas fatigue has set in here at the offices of "The Daily Vampire" in Hartford, Connecticut*, USA (*-not the American city we're actually blogging from), but rather than watching the closing ceremonies with George Michael and pop/rock stars, we thought we'd blog about some of our favourite** gymnasts at the 2012 London Olympics (**-British spelling):

1) Jordyn Wieber, 17, USA, (pictured center) London: Won gold in team competition. Missed out on all-around due to controversial rule that only allows two gymnasts per country in the finals. Finished seventh seventh in the floor final with a 14.500 score. In total, Wieber has 14 career medals, 11 of which are gold.

2) Beth Tweedle, 27, Great Britain/England, London: To the delight of the home crowd, Tweedle won individual bronze on uneven bars, which is considered to be her specialty. Aliya Mustafina (Russia) and He Kexin (China) won gold and silver respectively on the apparatus. Prior to the 2012 Olympics, Tweedle had won three golds at individual events at two separate world championships. In 2006, she was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

3) Catalina Ponor, 24, Romania, (pictured below): London: Won team bronze and silver on floor at the Olympics, but she was denied another bronze when judges overturned an earlier decision that had her place third ahead of American gymnast Aly Raisman, who ended up with the bronze for the balance beam instead. Prior to London: Ponor arrived at the Olympics as one of the most-decorated gymnast in competition. She helped Romania win team gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where she won a total of five medals, three of them gold. Ponor retired in 2007, but she came back in 2011. She has reportedly told various media outlets that she will retire for a second time after London.

4) Victoria Komova, 17, Russia. London: Komova won all-around and team silver, but she told the press she was very discouraged with her Olympic experience because mistakes in the team and all-around cost her and her teammates potential gold. Prior to London: Komova won gold on bars and silver in all-around at the 2011 Tokyo World Championships.

5) Gabby Douglas, 16, USA. London: Douglas, who is known as the Flying Squirrel in reference to Rocky the Flying Squirrel who was Bullwinkle the Moose's sidekick in a 1960s American cartoon, won both team and all-around gold at the Olympics. She is on the cover of the current issue of "People" magazine, and she will be on Corn Flakes boxes this fall.

6) Brittany Rogers, 19, Canada. London: Rogers helped Team Canada finish fifth, the country's all-time highest result in team competition. Rogers scored a 14.666 on vault and 14.500 on balance beam; she finished eighth on the beam in event competition. After London: Rogers will compete for the University of Georgia, a traditional college powerhouse which has won 10 NCAA titles. Ironically, an American athlete with her name played softball several years ago for the University of Alabama, which is UGA's main rival in gymnastics.

http://www.jordynwieber.com

http://www.bethtweedle.com

http://www.romanian-gymnastics.com

http://www.victoriakomova.com.ru/english

http://www.rewritingrussiangymnastics.blogspot.com

http://www.gabrielledouglas.com

http://www.gymcan.org

http://www.georgiadogs.com

Reports from the Olympic Village Via Twitter

 

We have seen various tweets tonight about the Olympics: From folks watching the games on tv in Providence, Rhode Island, to some of the actual competitors at the 2012 London Olympics.

Here are eight tweets we have collected from Saturday night; Saturday was the first official day of Olympic competition:

1) Michael Ian Black @michaelianblack: Every gymnast who doesn't break their neck deserves a gold medal.

2) Hayva @havruss: Yes! Nurden Karagox cleared 85 kg!*

3) Jason Davis @davisjsn: NBC pays billions of dollars to give us coverage about the Olympics instead of actually showing, you know, the Olympics.

4) Meghan Kathleen @mbk51: "Dude doing gymnastics for us looks like Carlton from Fresh Prince. Awesome floor routine bro.

5) Miguel Ponce @migsy312: "gymnasts and swimmers have to be some of the most pristine category of athletes on the planet."

6) Joseph Birdsong: "Every time someone younger than me wins a gold medal, I look in the mirror and whisper to myself, "I hate you."

7) Adam Fogle @adam_fogle: "McDonald's sponsoring the Olympics is like Marlboro sponsoring the Olympics" **

8) Susan Francia @zfrancia: "So awesome waking up to all the messages of support! Thank You!"***

*-The Turkish women's weightlifter Nurdan Karagoz (pictured on top) lifted 83 kilograms in the snatch and 104 kilograms in the clutch in her division for a fifth place finish. Karagoz was the only non-Asian athlete in the top six. Wang Minguan of China won gold in the event.

**-The Big Mac is MacDonald's signature burger (pictured middle) though we are not fast food connoisseurs the  views expressed by Adam Fogle are not ones we share, but one has to doubt that the likes of Jordyn Wieber, a standout American women's gymnast, eats burgers and fries on a daily basis.

***-This is an official tweet from Susan Francia, an American rower who has had a remarkable career. But, she is perhaps best known for her risque quasi-nude photos which nay 14-year-old boy can find on the web; we chose not to post them here so we can remain popular in Dubai.

http://www.susanfrancia.com

http://www.michaelianblack.net

Teaser- Here Come the Olympics

The 2012 London Olympics get underway with the opening ceremonies on Friday. Those of us in the United States will once again be relying on the voice of Bob Costas, the NBC sports announcer who broke through as a baseball announcer, to help guide up through an event with 10,500 athletes from 204 countries.

Jordyn Wieber, 17, (pictured above) will likely be one of the American athletes which Costas and company will focus on the most as she is the 2011 all-around champion in women's gymnastics.. Since Mary Lou Retton, 44, gave a break-through performance at the 1984 Olympics, the sport has been among the most popular ones for tv spectators in this country on a continuous basis.

Guor Marial, 28, an Iowa State alum who is a marathon runner, will be one of the very few athletes not representing one of the 204 countries at the summer games as his country South Sudan which broke away from Sudan is not yet recognized in the international sports community. Similary, Marial has not lived in the United States long enough to qualify for citizenship. So, he will be walking in the opening ceremonies under the Olympic flag.

For those of us of Turkish heritage, there is also excitement because for the first time since 1960 Turkey will have teams competing in The Olympics. There are actually two teams from Turkey that will be at the games in both women's basketball and women's volleyball.

Nevriye Yilmaz, 32, the first Turkish woman to play in the WNBA, with her last stint being with the San Antonio Silver Stars in 2004, is one of the most-recognized members of the squad. Yilmaz was actually born in Bulgaria, but her family of Turkish ethnicity emigrated to Turkey when she was nine.

Amazingly enough, one of Yilmaz's teammates for Team Turkey is an African-American basketball player Quanita Hollingsworth, 23, a Virginia Commonwealth Univeristy alum who now plays for the New York Liberty. She obtained Turkish citizenship to play for Turkey's national team.

Hollingsworth said she will have mixed emotions when Turkey plays the United States in group play; the two countries also face each other in women's volleyball (see earlier entries about Turkey and the Olympics..

http://www.aroundthehorns.wordpress.com

http://www.cyclones.com

http://www.jordynwieber.com

http://www.olympic.org

Sports Desk- Former UCLA Gymnast is Alternate for Team USA

On Sunday, in San Jose, Calif., the United States Olympic women's gymnastics team was formally decided after the result of team trials. Among the pleasant surprises of the night was that former UCLA gymnast Anna Li, 23, (pictured top) the daughter of Chinese Olympic gymnasts from Las Vegas, qualified as an alternate to the team.

Li was a stand-out at UCLA, where she helped the Bruins win a NCAA title in 2010.

The other alternates are Sarah Finnegan and Elizabeth Price.

Since the Magnificent Seven, which included Dominque Dawes won the team gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, women's gymnastics now apparently only consists of five gymnasts.

Among those who are on the scheduled competing team are McKayla Maroney (pictured), Jordyn Wieber,  Gabby Douglas, Kyla Ross and  Alexandra Raisman, who at 18 is the oldest of the five regular team gymnasts.

Douglas, 16, from Virginia Beach, Va., edged out Wieber, who is considered to be America's strongest gymnast.

There was some controversy as some analysts believe Price, who came in fourth at the trials, should have been on the main team instead of Ross, who is strong on bars and beam.

Alas, the night of competition in San Jose brought an end to two great gymnastics careers as both Alicia Sacramone, 24, the oldest competitor who was also the captain of the 2008 Olympic team and a stand-out gymnast at Brown University, and Nastia Liukin, 22, the 2008 Olympic all-around champion failed to qualify for the team.

www.usagym.com

www.uclabruins.com