Gymnastics Reality TV Competition Shows in the Works

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 Olympics showed us people really like gymnastics and there are some decent stars in the sport. Plus there are so many different gymnastics disciplines out there, it would be a show with a lot of variety.

“Imagine watching a soap star giving the pommel horse a go, or someone from Downton Abbey trying the asymmetric bars.” via Yahoo UK

The folks in the United States are on the BBC's tail. According to Deadline London,  John Macready, 1996 Olympic Team Member and now USA Gymnastics official emcee is working with CORE media group to develop the exact same show to be titled "Celebrity Champions". According to this article, he's managed to wrangle up Paul Hamm, Shannon Miller and Mary Lou Retton to be coaches. The apparatuses featured will be bars, rings, floor and vault.

How is this a good idea? I like the idea of trying to being the sport of gymnastics to a new audience, but this seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. For one thing, this has been done with that show "Splash" about diving where a celebrity seemed to be injured every other week and their only way of advertising the show was to show a trailer of former Girl Next Door, Kendra Wilkinson, standing at the edge of the  diving board in tears.

The solution is to get people who are physically capable of the skills?

 "Of Celebrity Champions, CORE head of U.S. TV, Jen O’Connell, says it will be critical that participants are 'physically up for the task.' The plan is to be 'smart about casting and put in the proper training time to ensure success, a great performance and lower the potential for injury.'”

Ok... what do they mean by, "physically up for the task?" The only people whom I could see doing well in this show would be dancers and athletes. You can't take someone who has never had a lick of gymnastics training ever in their life and turn them into an elite level athlete in a matter of weeks. These are skills that take years to develop, this isn't football. 

via GymnasticsCoaching.com