CHARLOTTETOWN, PEI -- Here are a few observations from yesterday's women's training session, which took place Wednesday afternoon in a drained hockey rink. It's not surprising that a lot of gymnastics meets in Canada take place in drained hockey rinks, is it?
-- Rogers's return: Brittany Rogers looks better and better. She looked relaxed and happy during training, laughing with Dominique Pegg and high-fiving women's national team director Kyna Fletcher at one point. On bars, her Ricna to immediate bail was well done -- Rogers came a whole lot closer to hitting the handstand on the bail than she did in competition on Tuesday. Beam, where she fell three times on night one (gulp) was more solid in practice.
-- Mihai Brestyan arrived Wednesday morning to look after Talia Chiarelli during finals. He was warmly greeted by everyone. Chiarelli, who is here with the goal of making the Canadian National team and hopes to represent Canada internationally, worked her DTY on vault, focusing on getting good block off the horse. She did a few, but struggled on getting the height she needs to land the twist.
-- Senior women's leader Pegg remained a model of consistency. Consistency is what is going to win this competition, unless absolutely everyone hits absolutely all of their difficulty.
-- Stefanie Merkle continued to do impressive things, with one of her arms heavily taped at the elbow. Likewise Silvia Colussi-Pelaez, who has wonderful lines and form. Canada's loss will be Spain's gain!
-- Several NCAA coaches sat behind the rink's plastic partition and watched practice attentively.
Catching up on other things: The junior men's competition, who competed alongside about eight athletes in the "Tyro" program (a step between "Argo" which is basically Novice for younger boys and the actual Junior level) was impressive. The junior guys had some senior-level skills. Quebec's Matthieu Csukassy was the class of the field, scoring 82.95 to lead the all-around in the junior category, ahead of Simon Porter and Kal Nemier.
Csukassy was in the top three on every event, and had the best scores on parallel bars and high bar. Porter was the top gymnast on floor, rings and vault, and Halifax's Evan Cruz, fourth at this point, was best on pommels.
The Tyro boys were led by Julian Geisler of British Columbia, who finished with the top score on vault (13.7) and an 81.5 in the all-around, ahead of Cory Paterson and Justin Karstadt, who won the Argo division in 2010. Paterson had the best scores on rings and parallel bars, while Karstadt posted the day's high on pommel horse.
Ontario's Samuel Zakutney was the overall leader after the first day of Argo boys competition (for boys about 10-13). Zakutney had the top score on four events (floor, rings, vault, high bar) to take lead over Anthony Tawfik and Kieran Fagan.
National Novices: The tall, elegant Alexandra Yermolchuk topped the National Novice Division during their preliminary competition. Yermolchuk, who is already taller than many of the gymnasts in the junior division, has a good combination of power and an artistic sensibility rarely seen at this age. In competition, I was impressed by how "correctly" she did everything -- if she did a split jump, it was at 180 degrees, her legs were totally straight, toes nicely pointed.
Shallon sweeps: 10-year-old Shallon Olsen of British Columbia, leads the women's High Performance Novice category, as expected (she was the very heavy favorite coming in). Olsen landed a very clean DTY on vault and was deeply impressive on the other events as well. In second is Quebec's Brianna Clark, followed by Heaven Latimer of Ontario (more on her below).
Olsen had the best scores on vault and beam, while Latimer was no. 1 on floor. Aleeza Yu, who only competed on three events, was the best on bars.
A little bit of Heaven: Ontario's Heaven Latimer, someone even the gymblogosphere hasn't really gotten to know yet, rivals Olsen on beam and floor. She has two flight series on beam: bhs to two layout stepouts, and a bhs, bhs to two feet, layout to two feet. On floor, she mounts with an Arabian double front and also does a full in tuck, a triple full as her third pass, then a great double pike to end. The media is going to have a lot of fun making puns with her first name.
The future is here: And it's in the HP Novice division. The top five -- Olsen, Clark, Latimer, Rose-Kalam Woo and Ivy Lu -- will be the faces of the 2012-2016 quad. Watch and see.
Flashback: Who won what at the 2010 Canadian Nationals? Here's a rundown of the results.
Scores: Complete results are up on Gym Score Depot.
Gymnastics Examiner Blythe Lawrence will be at the Canadian Championships this week in Charlottetown, PEI. Stay tuned for notes, quick hits from the competition floor, videos and interviews from the Canadian Championships all week, and/or follow The Gymnastics Examiner on Facebook or Twitter.
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