Skip to main content

Bruno Grandi: Potential and personality

A brief report here from the FIG on the recent symposium held to discuss changes to the Code of Points.

Oh dear.  Why do I always have to be so horrible to Bruno Grandi?  This says absolutely nothing.  Is it at all possible that Jani Taskannen got to report the results of his research here?  If so, the timeframe didn't allow him awfully long to collect and analyse the data - perhaps the FIG needs to do a course in research methods.  And in writing announcements.

Grandi is as wooly as my neighbour's Persian cat, but less cute and about a hundred times more annoying.  He speaks of transparency, then produces an announcement that is about as transparent as the Queen's underwear. What's all this about athletes needing to learn to 'wield the potential and personality of each piece of apparatus'?  Of the need to 'reinvent' and 'simplify' the sport of gymnastics?

No, Professor, it's not the sport that needs to be reinvented and simplified - it's the Code.  Athletes have been 'wielding the potential and personality' of the apparatus for years - but THE CODE doesn't appreciate it.

I hope there's a reality beneath this that reveals a little more thought and action.  Otherwise, I despair.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tatyana Nabiyeva on work and love in China

Some highlights from a long interview with 2010 World champion Tatyana Nabiyeva.  Source: Russian team page on VK.com.  Translation - Google translate A big interview with Tatyana Nabieva about the peculiarities of work and life in China, the bright years of her sports career, a little about modern gymnastics and about love. On the Nabiyeva flight — At the same championship, you presented a new element on the bars, which was later added to the rules with your last name (flying over the top bar with a straight body, difficulty group F. — Sport24). How did you come up with the idea to try something new? — Actually, it happened spontaneously, I think. We worked with Vera Iosifovna [Kiryashova] on the purity of the elements on the bars, sometimes I didn’t fly all the way to the Shaposhnikova element. Once I didn’t fly all the way to the bars either and stood on my feet between the bars, bending my legs in flight for safety. Then Vera Iosifovna said that this was a different eleme...

Men's team results : Russian national championships

Full results are available here . In summary, 1    Moscow    (Olennikov, Garibov, Gogotov, Bondar, Stolyarov, Ablyazin)    261.55 2    Siberia       (Devyatovski, Pakhomenko, Ignatiev, Cherkasov, Golutsotskov  259.85 3   Central       (Barkalov, Nyudakin, Markelov, Perevoznikov, Bondar, Ignatenkov   255.00 Interesting - Mikhail Bondar appears to have competed for two teams simultaneously here - Moscow and Central - not sure how this works but quite pleased with myself for noticing it ;-)  Only his high bar score counted for the Central team.  One of the wonderful mysteries of Russian gymnastics.  Hopefully we'll have the women's team results later.  And perhaps I'll discover something even more wondrously mysterious there.  Who knows. 

The State of Gymnastics - 'Soviet' or 'American' style?

Lioudmilla Tourischeva, 1972 Olympic All Around champion in artistic gymnastics, was held up as an example of the ideal Soviet citizen.  Here she coaches one of the Soviet Union's leading gymnasts from the 1980 Olympics, Natalia Shaposhnikova The Soviet Union had a genius for lifting sport beyond the textbook, injecting the aesthetic where previously only goals had been in plain view.   This was not only manifest in gymnastics.  Do you remember the ‘Russian Five’, the players who elevated ice hockey to a creative sporting display, mesmerising their opponents and spectators with intricate patterns of play, so rhythmic and entertaining that they could have been set to music?   In gymnastics, a sport where the aesthetic counted as much as the outcome, it was this ability to create spectacle out of competition that resulted in the most extraordinary athletic performances.  The ‘Golden Era’, most commonly understood to cover the years from 1952-1...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more