USA Gymnastics National Team Starts Four-year Training Cycle

Due to a scheduling error at the USA Gymnastics National Team’s normal training site at Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas, the team ended up practicing and holding their first post-Olympic camp at Midwest Training and Ice Center over the weekend.

The national team’s quadrennial began last Thursday. Quadrennial is a four-year training cycle done in preparation for the 2020 Olympic Games. The members from the Trampoline and Tumbling Senior National Team, Senior National Development Team, and Junior National Team were all training together, and among them were 2016 Olympic trampolinists Logan Dooley and Nicole Ahsinger.

Before they were Olympians, the two trampolinists went through hard times like everyone else. Ahsinger was beaten by teammate Shalyee Dunavin in the USA Gymnastics Championships and she was afraid that she wouldn’t make it into the 2016 Olympics team. As luck would have it, Ahsinger garnered two Olympic selection points from the 2016 Elite Challenge and this helped push her score over Dunavin’s to claim a spot on the Olympic team.

Ahsinger was recorded to be saying that she watched the scores go up and thought to herself that she might have just done it, and when she told her mother, the older woman started crying. This selection into the 2016 Olympics made her the only female US Olympic trampoline athlete, and together with teammate Dooley they are the only two US Olympic trampoline athletes in Rio.

Logan Dooley also came from behind. He used to be an alternate for the 2008 and 2012 Olympic teams before he was the only male US trampoline athlete in Rio. Unluckily, he placed 11th in the qualification round and did not reach the finals. However, Dooley had the best Olympic finish in Team USA’s history for a male trampoline athlete. This motivates him to return to the 2020 Olympics by training harder.

Last Thursday’s camp is the beginning of a four-day program including newcomers and elitists. According to Catherine Cabral-Marotta, High Performance Director of the USA Gymnastics Trampoline and Tumbling Program, the theme of the four-day camp was foundations because wherever an athlete’s skillset lies, the basics still have to be studied.

“The idea that we want to achieve at this camp is a lot of mental performance and goal setting,” Cabral-Marotta said.

In a performance sport like gymnastics, athletes learn to only compete with themselves and are taught to train their hardest and outdo themselves every year. These are some of the first lessons taught at camp.

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Ashirbayeva Outpaces Other Olympic Qualifiers at the Rio Test Event

The competition for the final Olympic spots for Gymnastics continued Thursday as the Rhythmic Gymnastics discipline took place in the Rio Olympic Arena following the Artistic and Trampoline gymnastics that took place earlier this week. With 15 of the 26 available Olympic berths already handed out at the 2015 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany last September, the remaining qualification spots were to be distributed at this second and last Olympic qualifying competition.

Staniouta puts on a show

Three-time world all-around bronze medalist Melitina Staniouta took the opportunity of being invited to the test event to defend her title as the reigning World All-around bronze medalist. She still competed at the test event, despite being already qualified for the Summer Games, a qualification she won at the 2015 World Championships.

The Belarusian gymnast took advantage of the absence of the two Russian stars, Yana Kudryavtseva and Margarita Mamun, to get a feel for the real Olympic competition. The competition seemed to have turned on her side, she has excelled on all of the apparatus, and acquired a total score of 72.215 points, a score in league with her Russian counterparts.

Ashirbayeva wins the match of the Olympic seekers

Uzbekistan gymnast Elizaveta Nazarenkova failed to grab a qualification spot for her country at the 2015 World Championships last September, after landing on the 16th spot on the competition. But Nazarenkova let the errors pile up in the Aquece Rio Test Event, successively dropping the Ball, a Club and the Ribbon to dash her Olympic hopes.

Kazakhstan rhythmic gymnast Sabrina Ashirbayeva, one of the favorites going into the Test Event, did not waste the second chance she got at the Test Event. She displayed an astonishing performance at the Rio Olympic Arena to win the competition against other Olympic hopefuls, finishing with a total score of 69.500 points.

Aside from her, Austrian rhythmic gymnast Nicol Ruprecht, Finland’s Ekaterina Volkova, Italian gymnast Veronica Bertolini, Uzbekistan’s Anastasia Serdyukova, Romanian gymnast Ana Luiza Filioranu, Chinese Shang Rong and German gymnast Jana Berezko-Marggrander all acquired the right to advance to the Rio Olympic Games this August.

Brazil, Oceania and Africa take advantage of continental cards

Since Brazil was the host country of the Olympic Games this year, the country is guaranteed to have a spot for the Olympic Games no matter how the Test Event turns out. Even though Natalia Gaudio landed on the lower spot of the scoreboard, she was still granted the right to advance to the Olympic Games this August, meaning Austrlia’s Danielle Prince has also earned a qualification, while the athlete who will represent Africa is yet to be announced.

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