MCSMaria's Artistic Gymnastics Blog

Victoria Moors debuted her double double layout this week, but she's already been beaten to the punch. However, it's still a race to see whom the skill will be named after. USA Senior, MyKayla Skinner, a senior elite gymnast from Gilbert, Arizona debuted the same skill at the Fiesta Bowl this February. Her mom, Cris, posted this video on YouTube of her double double layout. MyKayla just turned senior in 2012. She missed sharing a birthday with me by a whole day. She just missed out on making the Olympic Team to London as she wasn't selected for the trials. According to the Wikipedia entry I pulled up, she placed third on the vault at Nationals in St. Louis last year. She's already committed to the University of Utah for 2015. Will she make the Worlds team this year and have that skill named the Skinner or will Victoria Moors beat her to it? We shall see.

In the interest of finding things that are related to gymnastics in movies, television and the internet, I am putting a section of this blog called Gymnastics and Pop Culture. For this entry, I am posting this clip of Family Guy's patriarch, Peter and his Yurchenko 1 1/2. For anyone who is not familiar with the show, the show, the are many cut-away vignettes segmented throughout the show that don't really have anything to do with the plot of the episode. This particular clip features Peter performing at the Olympics. He is on the vault and he performs a Yurchenko, 1 1/2. He sticks the landing. This clip is spliced with a clip of Chellsie Memmel performing the same vault.

The inaugural Pro-Gymnastics Challenge concluded with some high flying skills...and a rope climb. Yes, the third night started with the rope climb challenge.

This week at the Canadian Championship, Victoria Moors unveiled her much speculated about secret weapon. The street, and by street I mean the internet, has been all a twitter over this skill. I'm sure you might know what it is. There have been rumblings about on the street/internet and like a good strategic soldier, Victoria waits until just the right moment. That moment is at the Canadian Championships, Victoria showed the world her...wait for it...

Night Two Pro Gymnastics Challenge started off on the vault. I was honestly shocked I did not see more Amanars, since in the past year, it's become the most ubiquitous vault in history. We did get to see Chuso in action.

A little fun on this Tuesday evening. On an episode of Family Guy , Stewie Griffin, voiced by Seth McFarlane tries his hand at gymnastics. On his vault attempt he throws himself into a class cabinet and gets a shard of glass in his forehead. Brian, the family dog told him not to vault in the living room, but he didn't listen. Here is the hilarious clip: Not sure the judges would credit the full start value of that vault, haha.

The much hyped debut of the Pro Gymnastics Challenge has finally arrived. All this talk about "gymnastics as you've never seen it" piqued my attention for sure.  This is the deal. It's a skill for skill challenge, literally like the promos said. It's supposed to be in the spirit of X-Games and things like that. The format is two teams, seven rotations. Team USA vs Team World, which is exactly what NBC wants to make every televised international competition seem like, but I digress. Besides, this is ESPN and ESPN is actually owned by Buena Vista or ABC. That's beside the point. How it works: each team selects the gymnasts they want to compete on each event. It's not scored with the CoP you'd see at an FIG event. Each athlete performs a skill and the athlete from the defensive team must match the skill. The team that completes the skill the best, gets a point. The first team to get to six points, wins the rotation and a handsome $16,000. First ev...

Like the rest of us, Gabby Douglas returned to work this Monday after the weekend. For Gabby and coach Liang Chow work means Gabby has returned to the gym to resume training and for Gabby the "weekend" has been a several month hiatus while she has been touring, walking red carpets. making guest appearances on   The Vampire Diaries  among other things.

Lauren Mitchell's 2010 floor exercise routine at the World Championships was a landmark one. It was Lauren's first gold medal at the world championships and it was the first Australian female gymnast to win a gold medal at the world championships. At first, Lauren herself couldn't believe it.

For this Gymnast Profiles edition, I am featuring European Championships Silver Medalist, Larisa Iordache. Vital Statistics Date of Birth: June 19, 1996 Age: 16 going on 17 Height:1.50 meters, 4'11" Hometown: Bucharest, Romania Club: CSS Dinamo Coaches: Octavian Belu and Mariana Bitang Best Events: Balance beam and Floor Exercise Nickname: Pici Larisa Iordache has been called the next Nadia. It's easy to see why. In her first year as a senior, Larisa was a part of the gold medal winning Romanian team at the 2012 European Championships and helped the Romanians bring home the bronze medal at the London Olympics in July.

ESPN released several promos for the up coming Pro Gymnastics Challenge, which will air on ESPN March 20, 21 & 22. This specific promo highlights Team World versus Team USA.

Sandra Izbasa has won gold medals at two Olympic games.Won multiple World and European medals and now, she's achieved yet another honor. The Romanian Ministry of Defence announced via their Facebook page, today that Sandra was promoted to lieutenant ranking.

This week, I'm paying a little love to Viktoria Komova. I'm featuring her world championship winning uneven bars routine. At the 2011 Vika won the silver medal in the all around,

 Hollywood has the Barrymores, the Arquettes and the Estevez/Sheens. Music has the Jacksons, the Judds and the Dylans. Reality TV has the Kardashians. Gymnastics has the Liukins, the Caquattos, Moceanus, the Kupets, the Memmels, the Komovas and the Mustafinas. The sport of gymnastics is full of legendary families with gymnastics stars. In this niche, the family business involves winning gold medals and thankfully, not making sex tapes, drinking tiger blood or going to rehab.

Former Olympian and current team NCAA champion for the Florida Gators, Marissa King and her teammate, Ashanee Dickerson are going to be showing their skills next weekend in a "Pro Gymnastics Challenge." Ashanee and Marissa will be competing with 9 other gymnasts in a "skill on skill" challenge that will be held May 10 & 11th. Per Forbes.com, this is the first event of it's kind and if it is a success ratings-wise, it could parlay into future events and possibility city by city tours.

This edition of Favorite routines is featuring the best and the brightest routines of the 2013 European Championships. I'm featuring routines from the all-around and event finals. I was able to get some suggestions and I am filling in the rest with my own favorites, some old and some new.