MCSMaria's Artistic Gymnastics Blog

The Rio Olympics aren't for another 2 1/2 years, but the gymnasts are taking part in the Olympic spirit in support of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

In an interview, translated by Rewriting Russian Gymnastics, Svetlana Boguinskaya admits to having a difficult character back in her days as a young athlete.

For this installment of Favorite Routines I'm featuring Ekaterina Kramerenko of Russia on floor exercise.

On the heels of the World Championships end, the gymnasts selected to compete at Elite Masilia in Marseilles, France November 15-17 has been announced. Anna Rodionova will be representing Russia and gaining some valuable international experience after her debut at the World Championships in Antwerp. Joining her is  Ekaterina Kramerenko who won the bronze medal on the uneven bars in Stuttgart in 2007.

In 2011,  night two of the VISA National Championships, Jordyn Wieber was only one event away from securing her first all-around National title. Jordyn had been quietly drawing attention for years, winning the American Cup twice, once as a junior in 2009 and just earlier that year, beating world champion, Aliya Mustafina.

Rheagan Courville is one of many standout athletes competing in the NCAA. Rheagan is a senior at Louisiana State University and one of their many standouts. Tumblr showed me these GIFs of her training a standing Arabian and a forward aerial walk over on beam.  While the NCAA gymnastics program has been criticized for not having a high level of difficulty, it's a place to see beautifully executed skills.

At the Tournoi International de Schiltigheim, Paul  Ruggeri debuted his upgraded uneven bars routine.

Anna Pavlova may not be competing at World Championships or Olympic Games anymore, but she's still in the sport and still fabulous. Earlier this year, 26-year-old Anna represented "Team World" at the inaugural  Pro-Gymnastics Challenge, put on by ESPN. Just a few months ago, she added a couple of Russian Cup medals, an all-around bronze and a beam silver to her medal collection. This weekend, Anna was in Schilitgeim, France for a gymnastics invitational.

The gymternet anxiously awaits Peng Peng Lee's return to competition with the UCLA Bruins this winter. Until then, we're anxiously counting down the days until the debut of the NCAA season.

Today, the FIG officially announced the skills that have been added to the 2013-16 Code of Points. There are a total of seven new elements ranging from an A to an I rating. For the skill to be named for them, the athlete would have needed to perform the element successfully in competition (without a fall) and the element would need a "C" or higher rating. Imagine my delight when upon checking my email during my lunch break, I find a glorious announcement from the FIG about the new elements in the code of points. Oh happy day. Here are the elements submitted that have been approved:

Before Viktoria Komova became an Olympic and World medalist, she was an outstanding junior gymnast. Her highlight is her all-around win at the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.

Something is rotten in the state of Russia and it's Andrei Rodionenko's mouth. In an article posted on Oct. 21, Rodionenko, head of the Russian Gymnastics federation stuck his foot in his mouth by saying some very terrible things to say the least. I'm disgusted at this behavior.

Oh the gymternet never ceases to entertain me. Just when I discovered Baby Aliya Mustafina on the floor exercise, I discover more baby Musty! Oh happy day! She's too cute. This is her on the balance beam and I am assuming it's the same meet as the previous post with her on the floor exercise.

Aly Raisman recently sat down with Blythe at the Gymnastics Examiner to discuss her comeback and her whirlwind life since the Olympic Games. Since winning two golds and a bronze in London, Aly has been enjoying the perks that come with her newfound celebrity. She's taken a year off, done the Gymnastics Tour of Champions, done Dancing With the Stars and made multiple appearances at talk shows and events.

In 2004 before she was the Queen of the Russian elite gymnastics scene, Aliya Mustafina was a baby gymnast like everyone else.

Get your grips on ladies and gentlemen. The BBC announced today that they are officially launching a new gymnastics reality competition show.

Okay, I'm back with a new junior to watch after taking a break to focus on Worlds. This junior to be watched is Norah Flatley of Chow's. Age: 13 Date of Birth: March 10, 2000 Club: Chow's Gymnastics and Dance Residence: Cummings, Iowa, United States Norah Flatley is the perfect age for Rio. Born in the year 2000, she will be 16 in 2016, the year of the Rio olympics. Norah was recently featured on the Gymnastike series "Beyond the Routine" where Chow's gym was featured. The eight grader was born in sunny San Diego, California but lived in Wisconsin before she moved to Iowa with her family to train with the legendary Liang Chow, who took Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas and molded them into Olympic champions. Before her elite debut, Norah had been quietly making waves as a level 10 in the Junior Olympic program, winning two national titles on balance beam in 2010 & 2011.

Victoria Moors gained recognition world wide for her dynamic floor routines and her historic fifth place finish with the Canadian team at the 2012 London Olympics. Since the Olympics, Victoria took third place at the American Cup in March and recently, her double twisting double layout was added to the code of points bearing the name the "Moors." She's gained quite the following on Twitter and it's easy to see why. Victoria, 17, is a quick witted, clever girl who says whatever is on her mind, even the most random things.

While everyone else deals with their post worlds depression with tears and videos of their favorite worlds routines, MyKayla Skinner was upgrading her skills.

This photo edit shows Kyla Ross's beautifully executed Maloney half on the uneven bars during the event finals at the World Championships in Antwerp. Kyla received the silver medal for the uneven bars, the balance beam and the all around. She and Kohei Uchimura were awarded with the Longienes Prize for Elegance (and along with the beautiful watch and trophy, she received a congratulatory kiss on the cheek from Philip Boy, swoon). This really is poetry in motion.

There was "Strictly Come Dancing" on the BBC, then the Americans copied it and named it "Dancing With The Stars." Now, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) is developing Dancing's gymnastics counterpart. The aptly titled "Strictly Come Gymanstics." According to an article on Yahoo UK, the BBC is working to develop the show to appear in 2014. They're looking at bringing Olympic bronze medalist, Louis Smith on as a coach.

The gymnasts of the Russian federation were seen in Sochi this week for their post-worlds training camp. Looks like fun. Via Russian Gymnastics

At 29, Vasiliki is the ultimate gymnastics unicorn, a beautiful, mythical creature that people talk about in legend but never see. Vasiliki put the woman in women's gymnastics during the World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium.

Catalina Ponor can never seem to really pull herself away from the sport of gymnastics. After the London Olympics, Catalina said she was officially retiring, she was done, end of story, finito, au revoir, sayonara, yeah you get the picture.  In May, Catalina graced us with her presence during the inaugural Pro-Gymnastics Challenge on ESPN.

The World Championships are over (I'm sad). But, with that, it brings us one year closer to the 2016 Rio Games. The USA already has a pool of outstanding juniors who will be turning age eligible over the next couple of years. Bailie Key, my favorite USA junior will not turn senior till 2015 (sigh). Anyways, here are the athletes turning senior in the coming year.

In a World Championship or any gymnastics event, there are any number of stories to be told. Whether it's a gymnasts battle with him or herself, battling an injury, or trying to set themselves apart from the rest of the competition.

On a Russian news website, there is a very nasty photo response to the interview that  Nellie Kim gave with ITAR-ITASS. In it, there is photos of Russians doing skills perfectly and photos of Americans. These are not only completely different skills, but they fail to recognize that the Russians have faults too, just as many as the Americans do. But the Americans with some faults have strong beautiful athletes too that also have beautiful execution. (Here is the link to the original page .) The problem is they compare only a few examples and they aren't even comparing the correct skills (comparing a pike jump on beam to a piked Tkatchev/Jaeger on the uneven bars? Give me a break). Nasty fan behavior is nothing new in sports, but that doesn't excuse deplorable behavior. Catherine of Beautiful Gymnastics says it beautifully.

Nellie Kim... Where to start.... Rewriting Russian Gymnastics posted an interview from Nellie Kim who is head of the women's technical committee. She was instrumental in bringing the new code of points as we see it today. Yet she proves herself to be a complete hypocrite and blasts the code. The code has it's faults. Gym fans are well aware of that.

Well, the gymnternet has it's way of finding things out. Case in point,  German gymnast, Philip Boy, who just became a father a couple of months ago to a baby girl. No one seemed to know about it until the cat was out of the bag so to speak, when Philip posted a picture of him and his thirteen week old baby girl on his Facebook page.

The World Championships have come and gone and we're all still trying to drown our sorrows about it being all over with chocolate, crying sessions or whatever your vice for curing your post Worlds hangover.

It was announced today that World Cup medalist Elizabeth "Ebee" Price and gymnastics legend/unicorn, Oksana Chusovitina will compete at the Mexican Open. Ebee announced the news via her Facebook page today. The competition is being held November 29-30 in Acapulco, Mexico. The International Youth Cup will also be held the day before.

The Italian Gymanstics Federation offered an official statement in regards to the hot water Carlotta Ferlito put herself and USA Gymnast, Simone Biles in with some nasty and racist comments.

The latest news floating around the gymternet is the betrothal of Russian gymnast, Maria Paseka. The Happy One From Beijing posted this photograph of Maria and her boyfriend (fiancé) on Tumblr. Maria just turned 18 on July 18. She is the bronze medalist from the 2012 Olympics along with a silver medal from the team competition. She is also the European bronze medalist on the uneven bars.

After what Carlotta Ferlito's now infamous rant on Simone Biles and the beam final and some racially charged comments, David Ciarelli, a spokesperson for the Italian Gymnastics Federation, defended Carlotta after her unfortunate foot in mouth incident which has now become the biggest story coming from the Antwerp World Championships. Ciarelli seems to have only made matters worse by inserting his foot even deeper in his mouth.  Ciarelli posted the following comments on the Facebook page of the Italian Gymnastics Federation (the comment does not as of today appear on the page).

The gymternet has been up in arms over some colorful comments from Italian Gymnast, Carlotta Ferlito. Carlotta has been quoted saying some very not nice things about the American gymnasts in her frustration over losing out on a world medal. But is she really as terrible as it's being made out to be?

All the red blooded American girls have a crush on Danell Leyva. Apparently so do the red blooded Russian girls. What straight man wouldn't love to have two beautiful girls on his arm? Especially these lovely ladies. The picture looks to be from about 2010 judging by Tanya's bangs and the length of Aliya's hair.

In Antwerp, Aly Raisman met up with Aliya Mustafina, Anna Rodionova and Tatiana Nabieva. Aly promised her fans she'd get a picture with Aliya.  What better time to get a picture while out on the town with the girls, when one is looking fabulous? Like any good girls night, picture taking must be involved. This provides the opportunity for the occasional photo-bomber. This particular photo bomber happened to be Aimee Boorman, also known as Simone Biles' coach.

The final day of event finals and the final day of the World Championships. There were triumphs and some very surprising results.

After placing tenth in the all-around final and having the Moors officially named for her and breaking the code of points, Victoria Moors took sometime to relax.

The first day of the event finals turned out to be a great continuance from the high of yesterday's women's all around finals. USA put four more athletes on the medal podium with three silvers, a gold and a bronze medal.

After winning the silver medal in the All-around final in Antwerp, Belgium at this year's world championships, Kyla Ross was given the honor of being awarded the Longines Prize for Elegance along with fourth time men's all-around champion, Kohei Uchimura.

The newest world all-around champion has been crowned, after a night of joy, a night of triumphs and perseverance. The night can be focussed on four stories, Kyla Ross, Simone Biles, Larisa Iordache and Aliya Mustafina. It was a four way battle for the podium, and only one could triumph.

The Gymnternet is buzzing with the alleged underscoring of Vasiliki Millousi's beam routine by .2 compared to Aliya Mustafina. The following video begs the question, was the judging fair?

The drama that were the Worlds qualifications are over and it was much like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Judges overscoring, underscoring, falls, you name it! The craziness!

Sam Mikulak is known for his chill, California surfer boy personality. During qualifications Sam kept spirits light around the arena with his charm and easy going spirit by dancing on the competition floor.

The first two days of qualifications are behind us. The men have finished their qualifications and the women have completed the first two subdivisions of qualifications. Here are some brief thoughts on day one: