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Katelyn Ohashi Wins the American Cup, but Victoria Moors is the Queen

Katelyn Ohashi may have won the American Cup title, but Victoria Moors has overthrown Aliya Mustafina as the queen.


The American Cup pretty much went as predicted. Katelyn Ohashi scored the top spot and Simone Biles came in second. Victoria came in third, but she certainly got the world's attention.
Victoria was dynamic, even with the watered down routines everyone seemed to be performing. NBC for whatever reason did not show Vicky on the vault (timing restrictions perhaps?), we did see her perform on the bars, beam and floor. Tim Daggett kept saying "she's dynamic on floor". That she certainly is. She is the perfect hybrid of power tumbling and floor performance artist. Victoria's routine was one of the best I've seen in a long time. Victoria shines even with watered down beam and floor routines. Even though this was the American Cup, Canada stole the show. If Aliya Mustafina is the Russian princess of gymnastics, Victoria is the Canadian queen (she even shares a name with royalty, just sayin). That is Canadian Queen, not Caribbean Queen, Billy Ocean. Victoria had the highest score on the floor with a 14.6.

Katelyn Ohashi, the next product of Valeri Liukin's WOGA champion factory started her journey to Rio by snatching the top prize at the American Cup. Not really surprised...American's usually win the top spot at the American Cup. Princess Musty sure tried in 2011 though. Katelyn as expected is a very strong bar worker. She scored a 15.433 at the Cup, although she is definitely capable of more. She was off a couple times on a full spin and she took a step on her landing after her full-in-back-out. This prompted the Valeri Liukin death glare that says it all.  Katelyn was steady in second place until  Simone Biles botched her landings on the floor exercise which allowed Katelyn to take the title right out from under Simone's nose.

Speaking of Simone, she is one little firecracker. She's certainly powerful, and she's a very strong vaulter, she's already performing that ubquitous Amanar vault. Tim Daggett and company are already comparing her to McKayla Maroney. She has quite a lot of energy on the floor exercise, so much so that on her last tumbling pass on the floor, she took several large steps backward. She fell off the beam on a tumbling pass. According to NBC's Gymnastics trio, this is really only the second time she's performed on a podium in a huge arena like this. She has time until Nationals and until the World Championships. Nastia, whom I guess was filling in for Elfie, said that the "regimented training" for this event wore Simone down. It's understandable, but all I have to say is that I hope that she isn't planning on any future careers in the US Army.


While that was happening, Danell Leyva was germing up the men's apparatuses with a bout of... something. Throughout the Cup, Tim Daggett kept saying that Danell had been "nauseous" earlier and just wasn't his usual self. He didn't want to pull out, so he kept right on performing. It was painfully obvious he wasn't feeling well. He nearly sat down a vault, he fell of the high bar and fudged his parallel bars routine and couldn't get through his last pass on the floor exercise. I hope for everyone else's sake, he wasn't contagious. Ick. According to my sources, the night before, he had to receive IV treatment to keep his fluids up. Double ick.

No one else was really performing up to snuff either on the men's side. The ladies were certainly performing with watered down routines, but they weren't making the mistakes the boys were making. Since NBC only televised the vault, parallel bars, and high bar, I'm not quite sure about anything else, but on those events, it seemed like the mistakes were contagious. It opened the door wide open for Danell's London teammate, Jake Dalton. Jake was just cruising through the competition. By the time it was his turn on the high bar, he only needed a 12.6 to win and he scored a 14.733. Well done Jake, well done.

What's next? Well, the next major competition for the United States will be the National Championships. After, that will be the World Championships, which will be an individual only event, which means there will be no team competition, just an all-around final and all events finals. The girls and guys who were competing today are probably going to be focusing on sharpening up their routines to make them top notch.

Hopefully by then, the US gymnasts will learn to stop hurting my eyes with that horribly garish hot pink leotard trend.

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