Failure, Total Failure

Some of you may already know that I supported Brazil in the World Cup and their loss yesterday made me feel very sad. It also made me take another walk in memory lane, this time to 1992, the worst year in history for the Bulgarian rhythmic group.

This is a disastrous routine from the European Championship, where they drop one ball out of carpet at the very end, after making several other errors. The team placed 7th out of 16 teams:




Just several months later, at the World Championship, it got worse just when we thought it could not. One of their ribbon handles broke completely and they had to run for the extra apparatus.This time they are 15th out 21 teams, which I believe is the worst of all times for a group from Bulgaria:




I know some of my readers are not old enough to remember 1992 and I know some don't care about these results even if they do remember it. So why I am a writing about it. Well, I just want to say that I still very much love these two routines and the girls who performed them and that I was not surprised when the Bulgarian rhythmic group went on to become absolute world champion in 1995 and 1996, just a couple of years later. Of course, it could have been 20 years later, but, to a fan, the passage of time is all relative. Relative to the beautiful memories and the great hopes we have, which feel larger than time.

So, I congratulate all the Brazilian fans out there: at least you didn't break the ball during the game, or try to play without the ball. From here, it could only get better. It always has.

First World Cup for 2013: Amazing!

I watched Marc's livestream of the Tartu, Estonia, World Cup event and I am wowed, just wowed. First of all, the elegant Ukranian Ganna Rizatdinova deserved to win. I really enjoyed her hoop routine:




Ganna's clubs are also wonderful but I think she can work on her apparatus technique. Melitina Staniouta from Belarus, who is one of my favorite gymnasts of this century, made a big error with ball and still finished second.

But to me this tournament had three new stars with just amazing potential: Marina Durunda, Lala Yusifova (both from Azerbaijan) and the new Israeli gymnast, Nataly Mendelson. Mendelson has a lot of control in her pivots and she did a joyful, confident, and dynamic ribbon routine. Marina Durunda is very elegant and clean and shows some nice risks. Lala Yusifova is an old favorite of mine, an abolute treasure. I wrote about her here and here. I am awaiting videos from this event and will share them.

In the meantime, you can watch the apparatus finals on this livestream: http://www.gymnasticsdvd.de/live/ tomorrow at 15:00 Estionan time, which is 8 a.m. for me on the U.S. East Coast :-)