6:44 p.m.: Alicia Sacramone:
About Brady Quinn: "Well...little fireworks and all that good stuff." Particulars? Met at a charity even through a mutual friend, etc. "He's really cool. Really nice, really down to earth. He makes me laugh, which is the most important thing. He's really supportive of my comeback."
On Aly Raisman (a.k.a. Alicia II): "Aly has grown up at the gym with me...people actually think she's my sister. They're like, 'how many years apart are you?'"
Will she be at the U.S. Championships? "I definitely think so. I think Visa Championships are the plan for me."
On Kayla Williams: "A little bit of that [competitiveness to see another U.S. vaulter dominate] was going through my head...I was just stoked to see a U.S. person representing."
Upgrades!: "I plan on doing vault and beam and maybe floor later on down the road...pretty much you're going to be seeing the same stuff I did at the Olympics, but I'm trying to upgrade my vaults a bit to a Yurchenko 2.5 and a handspring front double full."
On her Christmas list: "I asked for nothing. And my parents are like, wow, you are zero help right now. I know, I'm going to get, like, socks. Hey, I always lose my socks, so I'm cool with that!"
On returning: She'll be eligible to compete in April, and thinks she'll be going to camp in January. But she can't compete until April because you have to be in the drug testing pool for six months before returning.
Alicia confirms she's back in Boston and training!
6:30 p.m.: Roethlisberger and Jones dissect the upcoming NCAA season. For the men, they believe Stanford and Oklahoma are the teams to beat, though Stanford might have a slight edge.
For the women, Jones picks Alabama over Georgia ("If anyone's going to take them down, it's going to be a team that sees a lot of them and isn't going to be intimidated by those five NCAA Championships." Roethlisberger predicts that Florida's Randy Stageberg will win the NCAA floor title, and Vanessa Zamarripa of UCLA will take vault.
On the new code: "You watch gymnastics right now, and Barnum and Bailey would cover their eyes, it's so crazy." -- Roethlisberger. He's nostalgic for the 80s, gymnasts that focused on details, did unique skills just to do them, and performed things like back tosses on parallel bars that were clean and simple but flew four feet in the air...
"You stand next to the equipment, you say a little prayer you don't die..." -- Roethlisberger on today's men's gymnastics
6:10 p.m.: Shannon Miller (boy, she sounds happy!):
Top of her Christmas list: "Sleep! I hope to get a full night's sleep before the end of the year."
She also hopes to get back into gymnastics commentary, but she doesn't think she wants to coach full time. "I'm OK with clinics and whatnot, but as far as coaching on a daily basis, that would be hard work-wise because I travel so much...[commentating is] a way for me to stay involved."
On the National Team camps: Noting that she had to attend a couple while making her comeback in 2000 -- "When it first started, I had a really hard time with it. It was really difficult for me, because I was used to training on my own...it can be difficult for some athletes...but at the same time I watch these girls communicate with each other and become a team when they're out on the floor...Not only do the coaches learn from each other, the gymnasts do too."
On Dancing with the Stars: "Yeah, we're gymnasts, but that doesn't mean we're great dancers in the ballroom sense.". Would she make an appearance? "Actually, I thought I could never do that!" she said. "You should see me in high heels. I like to trip."
On life and baby: She giggles. "Life is definitely changed. I have a new baby and he's about 5.5 weeks old. And he's the cutest baby ever!"
Rocco is after his paternal great grandfather. He's the fifth generation Rocco Falconetti. Very mafia, Roethlisberger and Jones note. ("I feel like I owe the guy money already," Jones said.)
Miller has been working out again, lightly, basically trying to get her arms in shape enough to lift her stroller (which weighs about 300 pounds, she said) into her car.
Is gymnastics in Rocco's future?: "I always said girl or boy, I'd start them out with the mommy and me classes...I think Rocco will make up his own mind about what sport he wants to go into..." But gymnastics, as she's always said, will help with coordination and flexibility no matter what her son chooses to do.
5:50 p.m.: Jonathan Horton, mid-workout from Cypress Academy:
Horton confirms that he'll be at Winter Cup.
Best wedding gift: "I got this massive fridge, and it is huge. It holds so much stuff." (Bet that's not the gift Haley cherishes most.) Also: "I got some nice bedsheets. I'm pretty happy with those." He notes that he also has Superman and Batman bedsheets.
On his Christmas list: "Jonathan Horton needs a grill." He wants to build a deck and do some landscaping, and do some cooking. "I'm the opposite of handyman. But I'm about to become one. I'm going to learn. It's going to be ugly, but I'm going to learn."
Funny story: On their first night in their new house, Horton and Haley were hanging pictures and Horton managed to make a two-by-two hole in the wall. He learned to patch it rather quickly. "Haley wasn't happy," he said.
Snow in Texas!: "I've never seen that here in my life," Horton said. About four inches has fallen at his home.
Mid-workout: "I'm in the middle of a busy gym," he said when asked if he could hear Roethlisberger and Jones. Update on his wife and former Oklahoma gymnast Haley Horton (nee DeProspero): She's doing well, although medical school is taxing on her. But overall, he said, she's well.
On what he's doing right now: "I actually just got done with an intrasquad. Some good spots, some bad spots."
Changes in his routines: He's taken out the 1.5 to double front that troubled him at the World Championships, and now does something from a double full. Upgraded rings with new skills and a double twisting double back dismount. Working a double front with a half on vault. "I'll tell you what -- vault is scaring me these days," he said. "But it's fun to try something new."
On Worlds: "A lot of people kind of came up to me after Worlds and said 'Oh, I'm so sorry...I'm not upset. I'm not mad at all. It was definitely some motivation to know that I was far behind, especially with the best all-arounders in the world...my life hadn't really settled down...I always wanted to go out there and do my best and push for the win. But at the same time, it felt so good just to be out on the World stage...I've had an up and down season so far, but...I'm happy where I am right now. I feel like I'm trying to get back on track right now..."
Nastia Liukin:
5:44 p.m.: Nastia hints at a "big event" coming up that isn't the Nastia Liukin Cup, which will be held in March. And she talks about going skiing.
Apparently Nastia used to ski every year until she made the National Team, and then she stopped because she was afraid of being injured. Nastia confirms that her father and Bela Karolyi go hunting together "every free weekend he gets."
"It's really funny," she said. Her medals are in a safe in the Liukin household, along with Valeri's hunting guns. Once when Nastia went to get her medals for an appearance, one or more of Valeri's guns fell on her. She screamed.
"He said he would like the heads in the house...she [my mom] won't let him do that," she said. Valeri apparently also doesn't waste the animals he kills: "He makes his own sausage."
On the celebrity boyfriend question: "I'm definitely a Team Jacob. I would definitely like to meet Taylor Lautner."
5:40 p.m.: Nastia Liukin says: She just got home from Cancun, Mexico for her first meeting as Athlete Rep with the FIG. "You're on the dark side right now," Roethlisberger says.
On being an FIG Representative: "It was a lot of fun," Liukin said, noting that Nellie Kim and her father Valeri Liukin are from the same city. "A lot of people were skeptical and wondering if this would limit me on the Olympic side...it's not going to mess with me being able to compete at the Worlds or Olympics."
Liukin said that Svetlana Khorkina was also on the FIG committee when she was still competing internationally. Roethlisberger, an athlete rep at the same time, said that Khorkina never made an appearance at a meeting in the eight years she had the position.
On Worlds: "It was definitely a new experience for me, and I wasn't quite sure I liked being on the sidelines so much...I knew that it wasn't the time for me to compete," Liukin said. "I wasn't able to be in the gym as much as I normally was because I was traveling so much."
"She's always had that mentality of not being nervous or scared," Liukin said of Rebecca Bross. "I hope it's going to want to make her work harder for the next time around." -- re: Bross's all-around "mishap" on floor at the 2009 World Championships.
Ivana Hong and Nastia pal around quite a bit, going to movies and shopping, Liukin said. "I have her over at the house quite a bit."
"I liked it better than the first one," Liukin said of the Twilight movie "New Moon," which she saw with Hong.
"I'm not quite sure what my plans are...in terms of competing, I don't know. 2012 is in the back of my mind and it would be absolutely amazing to go to an Olympic Games after 2008...[with the gold] I already have that in my hands and nobody can take that away from me. Now going forward is just about my passion for the sport."
And now the big question: When do you picture yourself back on the international stage? "I wish I could really answer that and give you a determined date...there's something coming up. I've been working on it for the past few months and I'm really excited about it...I've been back in the gym doing a lot of running and a lot of conditioning."
One listener speculates that Nastia might be launching her own fragrance. Good guess! We'll see.
5:10 p.m.: Steve Butcher, Men's FIG Technical Committee member, hosted the Men's Techniocal committee in Knoxville for Thanksgiving. "That's like having the mafia come to your house for Thanksgiving," Roethlisberger said. "Is there enough vodka in Knoxville for that Thanksgiving dinner?"
"This is what he does besides killing wild animals now -- he becomes a professional chairman." -- Roethlisberger on Bela Karolyi
"I don't think I want to see Bela Karolyi in a speedo." -- Roethlisberger on Bela again
"I've never been invited. Don't expect to be." -- Roethlisberger on the Karolyi Ranch
Evidently Bela has gotten Valeri Liukin hooked on hunting. If you want to go hunting with Bela, he'll take you. "I see him walking out like the Clint Eastwood from the Soviet Union." Apparently they went hunting and Liukin had a run-in with a boar. Which leads to the joke that as Liukin was facing down this boar, Bela was standing off to the side, yelling "Come on! You can do it!" in that instantly recognizable Romanian accent
"I wonder if he's ever done anything that he's not good at." -- Roethlisberger on Valeri Liukin
Sasha Artemev was supposed to go to Japan for the Toyota Cup this weekend, but apparently is not going to make the trip, not being recovered from his injury enough to compete.
The World Championships rundown: "He barely won by 75 points." -- Roethlisberger on Kohei Uchimura's win at the 2009 World Championships.
5 p.m. EST: Inside Gymnastics Magazine's radio show, hosted by three-time Olympian John Roethlisberger and Brian Jones, head men's coach at Flipfest. Today's show is especially interesting since it features interviews with Nastia Liukin, Jonathan Horton, Alicia Sacramone and Shannon Miller.
Follow Gymnastics Examiner Blythe Lawrence on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GymExaminer.
Comments
Thank you so much for posting this. Why is IG2 so lame and can't podcast this after the live show? Idiots. Thankfully, we have you. :)
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