Jefferis and Pichler's Journey to London

Josh Jefferis and Thomas Pichler are putting together a series of videos showing their journey to London. Of course, only Josh will compete, but Thomas is also going along as reserve and is Josh's training partner over the next few weeks. These guys are great fun and the videos are quite entertaining. You can watch the videos below or on YouTube. Keep checking Thomas' YouTube channel over the next few weeks to catch new videos as they appear.

Lauren Mitchell VISA Videos

Some more Lauren Mitchell videos are appearing on the VISA YouTube page. The latest ones are shown below:

Getting into Cirque Du Soleil

A show called 16x9 had a really interested episode that follows a few gymnasts as they audition and train to become part of a Cirque Du Soleil show.

Click Play or Watch it on YouTube

Devyatovskiy Retires

Known for being the brat of Russian gymnastics. Maxim Devyatovskiy has announced his retirement after he failed to make the training squad for the 2012 Olympics. Veteran Golotsutskov has also missed the Olympic squad after withdrawing from the Russian Cup due to injury. The Russian Olympic squad was announced as: Denis Ablyazin, Aleksandr Balandin, David Belyavskiy, Emin Garibov, Konstantin Pluzhnikov, Nikita Ignatyev, Sergey Khorokhordin, Igor Pakhomenko. This squad will be narrowed down to 5 for the final team in the next couple of weeks.

Jefferis on a roll

Josh Jefferis is putting up a great case for Olympic selection. He came second at the Kyle Shewfelt invitational with 84.55 ahead of Thomas Pichler in 3rd. He also came 1st on Rings and P Bars. Apparently China was also supposed to attend, but missed the comp due to a flight delay.

View the results here

Lauren Mitchell Updates

There have been a couple of (slightly conflicting) news articles on Lauren Mitchell today:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/sport/a/-/other/13248377/mitchell-reduces-olympic-workload/

Former world gymnastics champion Lauren Mitchell will not be contesting the all-around competition at the London Olympics.

The WAIS scholarship holder has been nursing a shoulder injury and has decided to abandon her campaign to compete on all four apparatus focussing instead on the floor, beam and vault where she can make her greatest contribution to the overall team score where Australian finished sixth in Beijing four years ago.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/london-olympics/lauren-mitchell-not-yet-focusing-on-london/story-fn9dheyx-1226308501174

AUSTRALIA'S leading gymnast Lauren Mitchell refuses to focus on London, knowing that the burden of a nation rests on her shoulders.

Although, people are increasingly turning to blogs for their news as blogs seem to produce higher quality coverage for sports like gymnastics, it is still good to get some coverage in the old media.

Rizzo Retires

The Sydney Morning Herald had an article on Sunday announcing that Phillipe Rizzo has decided to retire from gymnastics. Unfortunately the article is not on their online version, however, it did say that he cited a lack of motivation as a primary reason for his retirement. Since, the AIS residential program was closed and the AIS was changed to a camps-based program he hasn't had a good environment to train in which contributed to his loss of motivation.

Conagratulation to Rizzo on an incredible career, but it is sad that it ended how it did, and hopefully Gymnastics Australia will realise how bad their decision to cut the AIS program has turned out to be.

Interview with Australian Team

Channel Nine did a short interview with some of the Australian team, which was shown on Wide World of Sports yesterday. You can view it here:

http://wwos.ninemsn.com.au/london-olympics/video?videoid=5e077e35-06f5-423f-a7da-331f33528fa6

However, I suspect you will probably need to be in Australia to be able to watch it.

2012 American Cup

There has been some suggestions that Universal Sports would cover the 2012 American Cup, although there doesn't appear to be anything on their website. However, the USA Gymnastics website does have a link which looks promising:

http://usagym.org/pages/events/ac/live.html

Lauren Mitchell News

Lauren Mitchell is not only working hard to prepare for the upcoming Olympics, she is also getting out to clubs to help younger gymnasts.

MEMBERS of the Castle Hill RSL Gymnastics Club last month had the opportunity to meet their idol, Australian artistic gymnast Lauren Mitchell, who is only the second Australian woman gymnast to win medals at a world championships and the first to win gold. Mitchell is one of VISA’s ambassadors for the London 2012 Olympic Games. During her visit, she shared tips with the local gymnasts and signed autographs.

Read on Hills News