For recent editions of The News click here. For a master list of all editions, click here.
News of the Week
Laurie Hernandez commits to 2021 Winter Cup (February 27th)
It will mark her return to high level competition after a five year absence.
COVID-19 forces cancelation of Cottbus World Cup
On Monday the FIG announced a series of cancellations across four gymnastics disciplines. Only one cancellation was WAG related, the Cottbus Cup scheduled for February 25th-28th. On a historical footnote, it is a rather significant cancellation as the Cottbus International is a longstanding competition that predates the modern World Cup. It goes all the way back to 1978 and it was at this very meet in 1989 that Oksana Chusovitina made her debut in a high stakes international competition. Few gymnastics competitions are older than Cottbus, and even fewer have been continuously held in the same city.
NCAA Results
In all my wisdom I decided to publish my last edition of The News before the weekend results were completed, this particular meet wasn’t in the scorecard of my last writeup. OU Daily has a nice recap of this meet. Weekly NCAA rankings can be found at Road to Nationals.
 Oklahoma: 197.450 | vs |  Arizona State: 194.725 |
Anastasia Bachynska had COVID-19 prior to Euros
211UKRjump posted a Ukrainian news clip to YouTube which was notable for demonstrating how Ukrainian media covered the program’s success at the 2020 European Championships. But it also presented a new revelation, Anastasia Bachynska contracted COVID-19 shortly before the European Championships.
It further explains the mystery as to why Ukraine’s two most established veterans (Bachynska and Diana Varinska) failed to win individual medals. Both gymnasts contracted COVID-19 shortly before the competition and appears to have impacted their training preparation. It also raises questions that perhaps the Ukrainian gymnastics federation did not do enough to enact proper social distancing inside its training halls.
Furthermore, between Varinska, Bachynska, and Romanian gymnast Larisa Iordache, of the three biggest names who attended the 2020 European Championships, all of them contracted COVID during their training preparations. The 2020 European Championships was a thrilling competition and produced some amazing storylines, but the fact that its three biggest headliners have all been linked to COVID-19 proves just how irresponsible it was to stage this competition in the middle of a Pandemic.
Make sure to subscribe to 211UKRjump on YouTube for all things Ukrainian gymnastics.
Rutgers pulls out of Michigan-Ohio State Tri-meet due to COVID
Blog Update
I have completed “Project Chuso” by adding in Chusovitina’s results from 1988-present on her profile page. Previously her results section was left blank with a “LOL…this is gonna take awhile” disclaimer. Other recently completed profiles include Pam Bileck and Julissa Gomez.
I am working on the final stages of a two-part article highlighting the history of…the wolf turn. It has been in my drafts since September 2019 and I haven’t gotten around to finishing it until now.
What other People Wrote
Pop Sugar wrote a two paragraph article on Georgia Gymdawgs gymnast Soraya Hawthorne. It invokes a Katelyn Ohashi comparison, the first of 2021, and I doubt it will be the last. Spencer over at BBS has an NCAA GIF recap for ya.
What I’m Reading This Week
FIG published a nice mini-profile of the 1988 Olympics on January 8th. I had planned to post the article in a previous edition of The News but forgot to include it. Hannah Whelan and Jennifer Sey completed an Instagram live-chat on Tuesday.
Throwback Article of the Week
One of the first articles I ever wrote, a list of every Perfect-10 ever scored at the World Championships and Olympics.
Picture of the Week
For recent editions of The News click here. For a master list of all editions, click here.
An Old School Gymnastics Blog 