Random Thoughts on Men’s Gymnastics 09/29/09
Posted on 29 September 2009 by admin
The big buzz this week is the upcoming decision as to which city will host the 2016 Olympics. Seems like everybody and their brothers and sisters are descending on Copenhagen in a bit of eleventh-hour lobbying, which should make K Street blush. Representing the gymnastics world are Nastia Liukin, Nadia Comaneci and Bart Conner. The four finalists are Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. Being that President Obama spent a lot of time in Chicago as a community organizer and politician, he and the First Lady are high-tailing it to Copenhagen to add some presidential heft to the bid. Who can blame them? Universal Sports will be streaming each host city’s presentation bid on Friday, October 2, with the big decision coming at 12:30pm EDT. It sure would be nice for U.S. gymnastics fans to be able to make a short jaunt to Chicago in 2016, but don’t be surprised if Rio gets the nod.
Speaking of Universal Sports, DirecTV just announced they are pulling the plug on Wednesday (Sept. 30), after less than a month of carrying the venerable Olympic sports channel. The implications for gymnastics fans with DirecTV is that unless their local cable operator offers Universal Sports, they won’t be to watch the World Championships on television. Nevertheless, the fallback position will be Universal’s live streaming coverage on their website.
The World Championships are now just two weeks away, and Andy Thornton posted an interesting scores analysis of the supposed top three favorites for the the all-around title. Thornton compiled the year’s highest scores on each event for Kohei Uchimura, Fabian Hambuchen and Jonathan Horton. What he uncovered was just how close all three gymnasts are, with the exception of pommel horse. Uchimura has a full point advantage over Hambuchen on pommel horse, while Horton trails by almost two points. Thornton concluded that all three "are each within one fall of each other." Horton could greatly help his cause by hitting his pommel routine in London, and by adding a few tenths of difficulty on vault and parallel bars.
