Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

London cab wearing a team Russia design!! I visited Russia in London yesterday though I'm not sure how authentic the experience was.  Did you see the advertisements?  Come and visit Russia Park and Sochi Park, and enjoy our four dimensional cable car ride.  Watch some folk dancing, taste some of our traditional food and listen to some Russian music.  We had hoped there might even be free vodka.  We paid £18 for our tickets and happily travelled on quiet Tube trains to an unusually serene Kensington Park. We had been warned to be on time (our tickets were valid between 10 am and 1 pm) and I expected to be carried to the location by the weight of people attending, if not by signs, but on arrival the Park was pretty much as quiet as it would normally be at 6 am on a January Sunday.  By dint of following my friend's internal compass ("I'm sure it will be somewhere near the Embassy") we eventually found Russia Park, only to discover that entrance was now f...

This has, so far, been the most political Olympic gymnastics competition that I have witnessed in more than 40 years of following the Games.  Some are characterising this as the FIG having chosen in favour of difficulty over execution.  I tend to think of it as something less strategic, more contrived and more misled.  It is almost as though a teen generation of gymnastics judges, let me call them the Make It Or Break It Cheerleaders, have taken over.  Belligerence and venom have been mistaken for reason.  A legion of teenage experts lead the opinion of professional adults who should know significantly better.  The desire for measurement and assumed objectivity - the desire to satisfy the needs of those 'stattos' amongst us who want to be able to predict and justify scores - has led the sport to degrade to the lowest common denominator.  If you don't believe me, just watch the floor final on Sunday - I'll eat my hat if the best wins (it's a felt beret,...

I know that many of the stattos out there are just dying to play around with some full results from the team and all around competitions.  Sadly, no judges breakdown.  Well, here we are : the gymnastics results site has published them.  Thank you!!  You can find team results here and all around results here .  See screen grabs below for ease of reference.  And discuss, please!! Let's not forget the qualification results: Enjoy! 

Ksenia Afanasyeva, watched by Maria Paseka I had a bit of a moment yesterday.  Sat on the shuttle bus on my way to the North Greenwich Arena, I looked around me, and everything was so pink and shiney and clean and sweet scented, the volunteers all so helpful and smiley.  The sun was even shining.  I was really moved by that bus, and began to weep quietly in my corner, hoping my fellow travellers wouldn't notice. Perhaps LOCOG had arranged it that way in order to enhance the emotional experience of event goers.  The experience of buying my tickets at the last minute and the relief I felt at being able to attend the world's leading sporting event in my home town was certainly beyond overwhelming.  I probably wouldn't have had that feeling if I had been able to book in advance successfully on any one of the dozen previous occasions I had tried, and been told that tickets were sold out.  Never mind.  Who cares.  A lifelong ambition to attend th...

UK based readers, don't miss tonight's BBC2 documentary, Faster, Higher, Stronger , which will document the history of gymnastics at the Olympics.  I saw the first episode last night - on the 100m - and it was mesmerising. You can find a webpage on the series here - follow the link there for online clips. Faster, Higher, Stronger - BBC2 7pm