News

Corpus Acrobatics presents “Evolution”

A multimedia circus show about the history of the Earth and the art of five elements.
Corpus Acrobatics since 1991 has been presenting avant-gard circus shows performing all over the world. The company combines high-skilled acrobatics with theater, dance and video projections in a theatrical theme.
In this season, Corpus brings to the international theaters the new show “Evolution”. The show is a homage to Charles Darwin, the naturalist and founder of the evolution theory. In February 2009 Darwin would have completed his 200th birthday.

“Evolution” is a journey through the history of our planet, showing the beauty of the Earth, the mystery of the universe and the impact of humanity in this fragile and complex system.
The acrobats will guide the audience to galaxies, planets, oceans and caves in an setting of video projections.

Come on board in this time machine and experience the powers of nature from the beginning of the times to the present in a spectacular acrobatics show. An impressive and unique experience!

Playlist The Netherlands 2009-2010

Schouwburg De Tamboer
Hoogeveen 12th of September PREMIÈRE

Agora Theatre
Lelystad 18th of September

Schouwburg Almere
19th and 20th of September

Schouwburg de Maagd, Bergen op Zoom
9th of October

Schouwburg Sittard
14th of November

Lucent Dans Theater
19th of November

Rabotheater Hengel,
25th of November

Schouwburg Orpheus Apeldoorn
11th of December

Podium Twente, Enschede
2nd of January

Schouwburg Cuijk
9th of January

See above the banner and information of the Corpus theater tour 'Evolution' that is due to start within a month!! We've been very (very!) busy rehearsing over the summer, 30 hours a week in general. I'm also busy with a research internship plus a literature review to finish university, so you will imagine that it was (and is, for that matter) pretty stressful. However, the show is getting great :) All kinds of acrobatic disciplines are involved: contortion, tissue, aerial ring, chinese pole, straps and more. If you can, come and watch it :) I also do hoop, ball and some ribbon in the show :D I still managed to get some gymnastics training from time to time (was necessary to keep my energy levels high :p), also due to the fact that the Corpus studio is now situated in Bussum, only like a 5 minutes drive from the gym. Probably ment to be :) Sometimes we stayed in the gym until past midnight, which resulted in me now having a great new ball routine to beautiful music :) By the way, for those interested follows a small update on my activities before the summer: June 1st: Acrobatics Festival I performed at the Acrobatics Festival in Bemmel (close to the German border) with an act I do together with Li Ling. Li Ling is an incredibly flexible 11 years old gymnast who trains at my club SV Pax.

We had been training this together for a while, and the act is a mix between acrobatics and contortion. Li Ling is like half my size and about 1/3 of my weight (:p) so very easy for me to lift and hold, even without having any experience in the field of partner acrobatics. We did this act already before at the annual show of SV Pax, but unfortunately we couldn't finish it then due to time problems. There is a video available of that occasion in youtube however (made by Bert, Li Ling's father). The show in Bemmel went very good, and the audience was very enthousiastic.

June 6th: Helen Dawning charity event
I performed together with Danielle at a charity event for the Helen Downing insitute. We did contortion in two big balloons in the air, while a live singer was performing. The idea was that we would come up in the balloons from behind a screen, which was very nice in theory but unfortunately the space behind this screen was so small that we couldn't make the balloons very large.. This of course has consequences for the movements you can make inside, and I was happy when we could snap the balloon and had space to move as big as we wanted :)
The original act was already very short, and at the last moment the singer also decided that she wanted to shorten the song a bit. So when we where done I didn't really feel like we performed yet. One big difference between gymnastics competition and theater/acrobatic performance is definitely the necessary ability to adjust to the situation. I wish I had had this kind of experiences before competing for example in Corbeil ;) Advantage was that we were home early ;)

June 8th: opening Scherin-Plough fabric
I performed my solo contortion act at the opening of a medicine fabric in Oss. Except from getting lost on the way there, so we didn't have time left for a repetition on location, everything went very good. I was followed by the 'water choreography' by Renkse, Tobit and Vincent. This is one of the most beautiful acts of Corpus in my opinion, and I could watch it from behind the curtains this time, so I was totally happy :p. This event was visited by two ministers of the Dutch government by the way :p.
There's a report by the local tv station on youtube, but you can only see fragments of my act in the first five seconds and then some flashes of the water choreography at the end.

June 20th & 21st: Dutch National Championships
I went to the Dutch nationals as a coach this time.. The competition was in Ahoy, and the decoration of the hall and the whole atmosphere was great.. It reminded me a bit of Thiais actually. I so craved to go out on the floor and perform... Not only because it was in Ahoy though, I fear I would've wanted even more had it been in Aalsmeer, where I have so many memories.
However, as long as I was busy I was fine, and all the girls did great. My major trouble was during Fleurine's hoop routine, I could see her enjoying herself on the carpet so much, I really had to bite my lip there. I had expected to find it difficult to hear someone else being announced as the dutch champion, but in fact I hardly noticed; I had taken the opportunity of an empty carpet + high ceiling to practice my new rope routine and I had just catched my most difficult throw for the third time ever :p

June 27th: Amsterdam Masters

Naomi, Rachel, Monique, Annemiek, Annelotte and I went to watch the Amsterdam Masters competition on Saterday. It was the first time this competition in organised, so there where not so many participants yet (7 juniors and 6 seniors or smth), but Filipa Siderova and especially Anastasia Kisse made the day anyway. Especially Kisse's ball routine.. wow. Amazing. I'm completely in love now with the glittery blue sasaki ball, but it's a bit expensive for me seeing I don't exactly need a new ball... Barny and Manfred stayed at our place for the weekend, and Saterday evening we had a small party in the garden also with Annemiek and Estella. Barny and Manfred took some photos as well. July 5th: Clubcompetition Keizer Otto On july 5th we held a small competition to finish the season. Everybody showed two routines, including Annemiek and Lianne :) I did my hoop and ball routines. (don't be too harsh, I only train once or twice a week now and very seldomly in a hall that is more than 4 meters high..) Afterwards we had a small party and some more training, and then we headed for holiday (that we never take anyway :D).

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AT THE MOMENT
August 16th, 2009

Favourite ..

..color ..food ..drink ..website ..number ..song ..movie ..book ..tv-show ..you-tube clip ..place ..move ..gymnast ..apparatus ..routine ..quote

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

blue spaghetti salad diet coke www.rsg.net/forum 1 Who we are by Ryan Calhoun Stick it Twilight Make it or Break it Anna Bessonova ribbon at the World Games 2009 Gele gymzaal (if only it had a higher ceiling..) backscale pivot starting from the floor :D Anna Bessonova ball Bessonova ribbon 2009 "I don't care if this is nuts, and I don't care if it hurts. I'm doing it. I'm gonna climb this insanely high mountain. Watch me."

Latest..

..activity ..movie seen ..book red ..place travelled ..achievement ..blunder ..purchase

: : : : : : :

gymnastics training She's the man Twilight Naarden catching new ball PR almost killing my hoop by rolling it in front of a röhnrad :o white sneakers

On my mind

object of desire move of desire obsession frustration worry busy with mood : : : : : : : glittery blue sasaki ball newest ball PR gymnastics lack of time research internship theater tour rehearsals exhausted

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24-05-09: One year...
Or almost at least... yes, it is nearly 12 months ago that I won my last national title. It seems like it was last week sometimes.
So why now this update? Well, I went to visit the No Limits Open competition yesterday, and as the speaker there mentioned my website, I wanted to make a small update. Also, I realize that Rhythmic Gymnastics is still a very big part of my life, and worth to keep recorded, even if I would be the only one who will read it occasionally :p

So, for those who are interested, a small update to what I've been up to last year. (If you're not interested, feel free to stop reading now :p)
To start, I have never left gymnastics completely. I've started coaching the C-level girls in my club and I enjoy this a lot. Three of our girls made it to the national final and got good results there, especially considering that they all were first-years in their age category. I'm also coaching the A- and B-level girls once a week, but that I find more difficult. I don't really feel like a coach yet, even now after almost a year. I mostly resort to giving tips :p
Besides coaching, I'm also a judge now. Or well... for 50% that is. I've followed the judging course for execution and I also passed the exam for D1 so I'm only allowed to judge these. I love to do D1, it's very easy as it's just yes or no and you can be very sure of what the mark should be. Execution I find more difficult, I know all the deductions but I feel much more insecure.

Apart from gymnastics, I started to work with Corpus Acrobatic Theatre. At the studio of Corpus I learn aerial acrobatics (tissu and ring) and solo/duo/trio contortion. They already asked me to do an audition in March 2008, when I was still in gymnastics but things flowed over very nicely. I also perform in their shows, and in September we will start with a tour visiting a lot of Dutch theatres. Although pretty intensive physically, the training at Corpus doesn't prevend me from missing gymnastics... When I look back at the previous year, I can see that I gradually builded up my RG training, sneaking in a few extra minutes every time, untill I'm now mostly training twice a week. Just for fun, although I did make myself a hoop, ball and rope routine to the new cop. I must say that I really enjoy the new rules. I didn't really like them in the beginning, I was always saying that I retired just in time, but in the end I found it challenging and a lot of fun to work and puzzle with them, and I really believe that they lead to nicer choreographies.

And now, almost a year after my last competition, I again found myself on the competition carpet. This time not individually but in a trio routine..

A Dutch club organised a friendly tournament where, as a try-out, a competition for trio's was included. It all started as a joke for me, Annelotte, and Esmé, but in the end we decided that we were really going to compete with an especially made trio routine (3 hoops). It was a bit though to train, as we only train in very low gyms (and with very low I mean very low; hardly 4 metres high...). But with a bit of help we were more or less ready to compete last Friday (meaning we completed a routine without drops once in training). We participated together with two duo's of our club Keizer Otto. The duo Anna & Rachel were the first after the opening ceremony and as Annemiek was judging, I decided not to walk in the opening and to stay with them. (Also partly because I'm a bit self-conscious in a leotard nowadays..:p). During the opening, the speaker shortly explained the idea behind the trio competition and finished with telling that one participating trio contained the National Champion Lisa Vos... and I wasn't even there... Well, still nice to be remembered :)

Our routine went pretty good, with three small mistakes but above expectations. Afterwards I got complimented on my expression, which happened to me only once before in my entire life :)
Anna and Nicole won the competition in their category, and Anna and Rachel came in 2nd! Unfortunately there were not so many trio's competing, and it was a bit unclear who were in our category, but our 14.300 was distinctively the highest score of the competiton (2nd highest was 12.8 or something). I believe by the way that Artistry was not judged, so that the maximum score was 20. Perspective :)

So that was day 1 of my gymnastics weekend, as on Saterday Annemiek, Annelotte and I went to Belgium to visit the No Limits Open Competition. I've competed in this competition multiple times and also I trained several times with the club. Jana and Lena are fantastic coaches and the competition always was one of my favourites. I wouldn't want to miss it, even if I'm not competing myself.
The competion was held in another complex than usual, and this hall was really beautiful. Very high ceiling, stands to watch all around, carefully decorated.. perfectly organised as usual. Highlights for me: Lieselotte Diels, Alexandra Piscupescu, Maria Kochetkova, Kristina Ilieva's ball routine, the Bulgarian senior and Niels, the speaker, officially announcing my presence at the tournament :p I also really enjoyed the No Limits girls' gymnastics parody to 'The boy does nothing'.

Last day of my gymnastics weekend, I went to the 2nd qualification competition of the A-level girls. The first qualification I had judged, but now I had no distraction and sometimes I really wished I could go out on the carpet and perform as well... The girls did good, we had the gold in category 3A and 2A, silver in 1A and bronze in 2A as well. To complete my 'being famous' this weekend, I was asked for my autograph by two girls when I was about to start judging the final of category 4B and 3B that was held in the afternoon. I was doing execution so I still had some troubles (I was more nervous for this than I was for my own competition on Friday) but it was fine more or less.

In the future, I think I will update every now and then about my gymnastics- and gymnastics related activities. So come back once in a while if you like :) I'll try to post a video of our trio routine soon!

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17-06-08

Last weekend we had the Dutch National Championships. On Saterdaymorning Li Ling and Christel competed in category 4A and did great: Li Ling ended 4th and Christel won the silver medal. They also competed with their two duo-routines (2 ropes and 2 balls) and won this competition! Nicole and Eline had their competition in category 2B (juniors). Nicole did a very good competition and ended first! Eline had a very good ball routine (1st place) but had some bad luck with a knot in ribbon, which costed her the bronze medal. She ended 6th. I went to see the competition in the afternoon. Roxanne and Martine competed in category 1B and they both started very good with two great hoop routines. Roxanne immediately gained over a point on the rest of the field and also had the highest score on all other routines. This made her the national champion for the 2nd time in row. Martine ended 5th. The junior group competed today as well, but unfortunately they made a lot of mistakes in their routine with 10 clubs. They still ended first, as they were the only participant in their category.

On Sunday morning Demi, Chelsey and Tayla competed in the junior competition. Demi scored a bit low with hoop but recovered well on the other routines, ending on a comfortable 2nd place (4 points ahead of nr 3). Daniëlle Bubberman won the competition and also 4 additional golds for each apparatus. Chelsey ended 5th and Tayla 8th.
In category 3A Verena had been 1st the whole year, but this time Nina Tuinenburg performed better so she ended 2nd. Denise won the bronze and Sanne got 7th. In the duo competition (2 ribbons) the first two places went to Pax: Verena and Denise got 1st and Verena and Sanne came in 2nd.
For me, this competition was gonna be my very last ever, and it was a great goodbye! When I entered the hall, everywhere I looked there were photos of me.. (my father who was responsible for this is very proud that his posters even made the newspaper :p). I felt great when I started with rope but I made two very unneccesairy mistakes that really interupted the flow of the routine :( After rope I got very nervous, because I realised that I could mess up even if I felt so good. But my hoop was great! I started with a small mistake (first throw was a little bit too much back) but after that everything went so good, I don't think I've ever done a better hoop in my life! This routine really made my day if not my season :D Clubs and ribbon I could've done better though. With clubs most of my difficulties went fine but I dropped a club twice and with ribbon I had a knot (again.. don't know what's this thing with knots this year - 3rd time allready :s).
Already during the competition I had seen all the girls that I train with at Keizer Otto walking around with their hair tied up so I got a bit suspicious and after the competition they performed a beautifull demo for me :) I had no clue though that 3 girls of Pax where involved too :) The girls performed parts of my routines to the song Listen. It was really the most beautiful demo I've ever seen and no doubt the sweetest thing someone has ever done for me..

I want to say thank you to everyone who came to watch the competition and supported me, the audience was fantastic! Also thanks a lot for all the sweet messages and flowers I received (my living room closely resembles a flower shop at the moment :p).

Videos of the competition

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31-05-08
Just to inform you all that Daniëlle won the final of Holland's got Talent yesterday night! Her act was obviously the best in my opinion and definitely the most suited for a circus performance.
Videos of Danielle's performances are available on youtube: audition, semi-final, final. Enjoy!

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25-05-08

Next Friday, May 30th, will be the final of the tv-show Holland's got Talent, and one of the finalists is the best Dutch junior rhythmic gymnast Daniëlle Bubberman! Daniëlle already showed a beautifull act with tissue (audition) and aerial hoop (semi-final) and at the moment she's working hard on her newest act for the final. Daniëlle trains at Corpus Acrobatic Theatre and her dream is joining Cirque du Soleil. If Daniëlle wins, she can perform in the Christmas Circus show in theatre Carré. Everybody who can see Dutch television: vote for Daniëlle!!

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23-05-08
Last weekend we had the 2nd and last qualification for natioals. The best 10 gymnasts in each category over the 2 qualifications are allowed to compete in the finals.
In category 3A Verena won the competition with a very good ball routine. Denise won the bronze while Sanne had to settle for 5th place. All three girls qualified for the final.
In junior category Demi couldn't participate due to a back injury, but as she had been 2nd last time, she still qualified for the final. Our other three juniors did well: Chelsey won silver and Tayla showed huge improvement and ended 6th. Vera also ended a lot higher than last time (10th) but unfortunately this wasn't enough to qualify for nationals.
The senior competition was even smaller than last time with only five participants, one of which only did two routines. Christel, who has been very busy with the preparations for the group ECh coming up in June, still did great and ended third despite very limited hours of individual training. For me this competition didn't go too well, I had a very messy rope and lots of mistakes in ribbon. My last routine with clubs went pretty good though. I won the competition with quite some difference, which is a nice boost for my confidence, but I know I will have to do better at nationals, not in the last place to leave gymnastics with a good feeling... :)

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19-05-08

The first weekend of May the No Limits Open was held in Antwerp (BEL). This competition is always fantastic to participate in, and after being really sad not to be able to compete there for the last two years I was really happy that I was given the opportunity to come to Antwerp this year. We went with girls from different clubs: besides me Daniëlle Bubberman competed in junior category and Lisa Boersma participated with the benjamins. Paula (Daniëlle's mother) drove us to Antwerp and after getting our accreditation we left to go to the sports hall for training. We had some tiny problems to find the hall (which I'm not allowed to mention as I need another ride in a few weeks.. :p) but arrived fine eventually. After a while Veneta (coach) and Lisa Boersma also arrived. Training went pretty well, some mistakes but it felt pretty good, carpet was nice and I didn't have problems with the ceiling. After training we left with our host family. Friday was competition day. Lisa allready had to be in the hall at 8 for the Benjamin competition, but luckily Daniëlle and I could sleep a bit longer and arrived in the hall at 11. Daniëlle was in the 2nd junior group and did a good competition with only some small mistakes in her first two routines and a clean ribbon and ball. She ended on the 20th place out of 29 juniors.

For me the competition didn't go so well, I had some problems with Difficulty in my first routine (hoop) and then totally messed up rope. My spirits were pretty low after that, I had waited so long to be at this competition and here I was messing it all up :s Luckily clubs went pretty good besides one small drop. Ribbon started very well, my most difficult pivot is in the beginning of the routine and I did my best attempt so far. At least I was happy for this, as I was having serious doubts if I shouldn't take it out. Unfortunately after that I got a bit tangled up in my ribbon and the rest of the routine didn't really recover. I eventually got 11th out of 16 seniors.

Lisa left with her parents but Daniëlle and I returned to our host family to watch the finals the next day. Silviya Miteva was just great, she just has total control over her routines. Especially her pirouettes are beautiful.. I think she improved a lot since I last saw her in Calais (March). Another of my favourite is definitely Alexandra Piscupescu, too bad she had only one final as she's a great pleasure to watch. So although I wasn't really happy with my own performance, I still had a very good weekend and it was especially nice to see all my Belgium friends again. (By the way, I was really pleased to hear that my site is so well known and often visited by the people involved with No Limits Gymnastics - more than once I was greeted with 'aren't you the girl who does that website?' Thank you all for visiting!) This has been my last participation, but I will definitely do anything I can to come to watch No Limits Open next year, wouldn't want to miss it! :)

Photos part 1, part 2
Videos


The weekend after No Limits Open, we traveled to Belgium again, this time to Mol where Demi and I participated in the 10th International Rhythmic Cup organised by SRG Mol. Poor Lisette had to judge in the morning so she left at 6:30 AM but Demi, I and Annemieke could sleep a bit longer and left around 11. After a little bit of traffic jam but without once taking the wrong direction, we arrived in Mol around 13:30.

Demi was the very first gymnast in the first group of juniors so she started warming up soon after. The weather outside was very warm, and even sitting and watching the competition made you sweat. Still Demi did a good competition. Only ribbon was a bit less, but especially rope and ball looked very good. The junior competition was won by Hristiana Todorova from Bulgaria, who profited from the fact that Amber and Lieselotte both only did the two routines that they will perform in a few weeks at the EC. Besides the No Limits girls I really liked Dorottya Vancso from Hungary. Unfortunately she had some problems with hoop, which costed her a few places. Demi ended 13th out of 20 juniors. This was gonna be a bit special competition for me. Ages ago I had my first international experience here (10 years old giving an demonstration of my ball routine), and now this would be my last international competition as a gymnast. Amber learned of my retirement just now and tried to change my mind with those cute puppydog eyes of hers but I've made up my mind long time ago.. My competition went pretty good this time :) I started without major mistakes in rope and hoop also went fine until I threw my last throw out of bounds and behind the advertention borders... I was also happy with clubs, despite one drop I could perform pretty much to the max of my abilities. Ribbon was normal, without too big mistakes.

I had seen my name on top of the results list a few times halfway the competition but hadn't payed much attention to it. During the award ceremony I saw that I was still on top and that I had won the competition :) Very nice, especially as I had never won an international competition before. I got a cup as well, which has a pink base (so cool!). Demi and I stayed at the home of Marie-Madeleine de Ridder, a junior gymnast of SRG Mol, and her very nice and friendly family. I qualified for all finals. Today rope went a bit less than yesterday but still without major mistakes (had some problems with my pirouettes mostly). Also in hoop I had some more difficulties. Then my clubs routine went so good! That is, untill I dropped the last throw and ended with only one club. I was still happy though, I really loved the flow of the routine. Unfortunately with ribbon I did a bad routine, with a drop, a knot and several mistakes in the pirouettes. Too bad, as it costed me my 4th gold medal. I won rope, hoop and clubs but came in 4th in ribbon. Still I'm very happy with the result of the weekend, and I could hardly have wished for a better finish of my international carreer (or maybe just 0.50 higher in ribbon... :P).

photos

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15-04-08
A lot has happened in the past few weeks...
First things first: two weeks ago I participated in the grand prix of Thiais (France) together with Demi who competed in her first grand prix in the junior competition. Annemiek came with us to coach.

We left Friday morning for the long drive to Thiais (took us like 6 hours because we were allready stuck in traffic jam 30 minutes after departure..) We found the hotel without ever taking the wrong way though, which I think was the first time this year :p We arrived around 4 and as we had gotten pretty stiff Demi and I were relieved to learn that we wouldn't have training until 7 that evening. We were given a very nice shirt with the name of the tournament on it in strass stones. When we were finished unpacking we decided to go to the hall a bit earlier so that we could watch a bit of the training of other countries. At first we accidently got on the bus going to the shopping mall (:p) but when we got on the right bus we arrived at the sports hall al right. We really loved the competition hall, everything is dark and only the carpet is very brightly lit so that the gymnast performing is literally in the spot lights. From now on this hall ties with the one in Kiev for my favourite sports hall :). We watched the training of Israel and Belarus. I became a fan of Melitina Staniouta, her leaps are amazing! She looks really cute on the carpet but her difficulties are very mature. The Belarussian group was very nice to watch as well, even for me as I'm never a big fan of group exercises. Finally we had to start our own training. I always find these pre-competitions trainings pretty difficult as everything is rushed and a bit more tense than usual but we both did more or less fine.

We had been a bit worried about the bright lights but found out soon that it didn't bother us at all. I did have to adjust to the spring floor a bit but I easily got used to it. We were the very last country to train so the hall was almost empty when we left.

We decided not to have training on Saterday morning, as it ment for me that I would have to stay in the hall from 9 AM till my competition started at 16 PM. Instead we took our time to get up and have breakfast en paid a little visit to the shopping mall nearby the hotel (and got lost on the way back :p). We went to the hall at 1 o'clock and after watching half an hour of the competition (really liked Kanaeva rope) I had to start my warming up. It's still pretty impressive to be training next to some of the world's best gymnasts (I accidently threw my hoop on Inna Zhukova.. oops). Unfortunately my competion didn't go too well. I started with hoop where I had a few mistakes in dificulty. Clubs was my worst routine this competition with two drops. Hoop and clubs are normally the most easy routines for me so you can imagine that I didn't have much faith left for the rest of the competition. Luckily I could do rope and ribbon without too much disasters but especially rope I can perform much better. Kanaeva won the competition, with Zhukova getting silver and Yussupova bronze. I was pretty amazed by my scores, I got 14.6 for hoop with a 7.6 in difficulty, I don't think I ever had such a D score before. With ribbon I even got 6.9 in difficulty where I have only 7.5 starting value. In the end I came in 22nd place out of 24 participants. The junior competition started after the seniors were finished (I love this format! This way I could watch the juniors without still having to worry about my own comp).

Demi did a good competition, she started with ball where she showed a nice routine only unfortunately lost her ball on the last throw and ended without apparatus. Ribbon had a bit more mistakes but rope and hoop were very nice again. I really liked Staniouta, I would have prefered her to win the gold over Lukonina. Gabriela Kirova from Bulgaria was very nice to watch as well. Another favourite of mine was Roxane Barbaste from France, she has very nice routines with lots of expression. Especially her rope is a must-see. On Sunday the organisation planned an excursion to Paris so we took the bus at 8 (!) in the morning. The trip took us past several famous spots in Paris and we stopped at the Eiffel Tower and also at the Sacré Coeur (where we risked our lifes to cross the streets to get to the basilique before we realised that there was a tunnel to cross the road :p) The trip was very nice but driving back to the hotel Demi and I had serious troubles to keep our eyes open :p At two o'clock the finals started which we of course went to see. We really enjoyed the performances of the toplevel gymnasts and all the galas afterwards looked very cool as well with different colors of light and moving spots and everything. I really advise anyone with the opportunity to go watch the competition in Thiais cause it's a great experience!

Photos Friday, Saterday part 1, part 2, Sunday


The weekend after there were two national competitions taking place. On Saterday April 5th the semi-final for the categories 4 and 3B was organised, and my club did great by winning the individual gold in category 4 (Christel Vinkhuyzen), where Li-Ling Kassing came in 5th and both girls qualified for the A-level final. Li-Ling and Christel together also won a gold medal with their two duo-routines.

On Sunday we had the first qualification for nationals. The competition started with the juniors of category 2A. A very large number of gymnasts (at least for Dutch measures) had subscribed here so it promised to get pretty exciting to decide who, based on this competition and the next, could get a top ten place and qualify for nationals. Tayla and Vera are first years juniors. Tayla works really hard in training and it payed off as she managed to place tenth. Vera unfortunately had some bad luck today, but with a 14th place she's definitely still in the running for a qualficiation. Chelsey did a very good competition to surprisingly win the bronze! Demi was the bronze medalist at last years nationals and she did a good competition especially with ribbon. She's still coming short to beat gold medalist Daniëlle Bubberman, but she won a very nice silver medal.

The afternoon started with the competition for category 3A (11-12 year olds). Verena Janga won the gold medal in this category and Denise Leyerzapf won bronze. Sanne Faber came in 4th. The duo-routine rended two more medals, as the duo Verena-Denise won bronze and the duo Verena-Sanne was the very best at this competition and got the gold medal.

The situation in senior category in Holland is a bit sad at the moment, as we have only 8 gymnasts in the entire country competing in the highest level. Today, two were injured so there were only six competitors (= very quick rotations). Christel did a very good competition and even was in 3rd position after three rotations. Unfortunately her last routine with ribbon didn't totally go the way she wanted, but 4th place is still a very good result. I was pretty happy with my competition as well. Rope went very good and clubs and ribbon were ok as well beside some stupid mistakes. With hoop I didn't do so well (how exactly the judges arrived at a score of 14.5 is advanced maths for me... :p) but I was still satisfied with my competition, which was a relief for it has been quite a while since I could be happy with a competition. I ended first, which was also nice :).
All in all a very succesful weekend for SV Pax with 5 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals.

Finally last Saterday the national final for C-level took place in Barendrecht. For Keizer Otto everybody (!) except for 1 girl had qualified for this final. In the morning Nicole and Anna started with their duo-routine with rope. They did quite good, not totally synchronous all the time but without big mistakes. The level in this final was obviously a bit higher than during the qualifications so they ended 7th. Out of the fifteen best C-level duos in the country, still a very good accomplishment. Anna and Nicole both also had qualified for the individual final, where they would present their routine without apparatus. Anna did a very nice and clean routine but unfortunately just missed a medal by placing 4th. Nicole's routine also looked very nice and we were pretty surpised to hear that she ended 19th out of 25 gymnasts. Although I didn't see any of the other girls compete, I still expected her to be a bit higher. In the afternoon Alisha, Suzanne and Angela had their competition. Angela was scheduled to do only ball, but as she was the 1st reserve for rope she could perform because one of the qualified gymnasts didn't compete. Angela did a nice competition but still lacks some power in her routines. Alisha and Suzanne both appeared a bit more nervous than normally but did both a great competition without any big mistakes. The national level is still a bit too high to end in medal positions however.

Annelotte and Esmé competed in senior category (1C). Esmé did ball and she did pretty good. Even though she wasn't totally satisfied herself she placed 3rd and won the bronze medal! Annelotte qualified for both routines (rope and ball) and performed both without big mistakes, even good enough to win 2 gold medals and become National Champion on both routines!! A truly fantastic result. Their medals mean that both Esmé and Annelotte are automatically promoted to B-level next year.

Photos

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28-03-08

The first weekend of March I went to France to participate in the Coupe du Pas (Calais). I've been really busy with school these last weeks (and with some exciting new other stuff as well :D) that's why I'm this late with my news. Even now I should actually be studying for exams coming up in a few days... We left Thursday afternoon. Annemiek went with me to coach and the other half of the Dutch delegation consisted of Anna and her coach Ramona. We met Anna and Ramona on a parking space close to Zwijndrecht where they train, and continued the journey to Calais together. Friday morning we had to get up pretty early as we were one of the first delegations to have training. The time with music was very short, I did hoop twice because it didn't went to good and then I started with rope, which went pretty good but onfortunately I couldn't finish it cause our time ran out halfway the routine.

In the afternoon we watched a little bit of the junior competition and at 7:30 the senior competition started. We did rope and hoop today. I started with hoop, which wasn't really what I would choose for myself but the routine went pretty good apart from the very last 10 seconds where the routine kind of fell apart. With rope I had some more problems but no really big mistakes. For Anna this was the first international competition after her car accident and she made a very good comeback with two nice routines.

The next morning we had training again but a little later now. When entering the hall we could see the results after two rotations and found out that I was in the hoop final! Last year I was first reserve for hoop so I was really happy that I made it this time :) After training Annemiek and I went to the shopping malls but forgot that in France most shops are closed between like 1 and 3 o'clock in the afternoon.. it was still nice to catch a bit of fresh air though. Today we did clubs and ribbon in competition. I started with ribbon, and the beginning of the routine went pretty good (catched my first throw correctly for the first time in competition!) but then I got a big complicated knot that took me like 20 seconds to untangle so I missed a large part of the routine and of course lost lost of points.. I was pretty demotivated before starting clubs but it went quite good and I catched my last throw! I did miss some difficulty elements though, which turned out to be very unfortunate as I missed the clubs final on 0.075... Anna did good routines again although she said that she wasn't totally happy with her clubs. It was realy a pity that she competed out of competition, as her score for ribbon was high enough to enter the final.

The next day I could perform my hoop routine once again. I really liked the experience of being in the final and I walking in the opening cermony with the other finalist was a great feeling. Unfortunately my routine was less than yesterday and I got 6th, but I still liked the experience. I really enjoyed watching the junior finals. I had never seen the Russian junior (Maria Bobrova) before and I really liked her, she is very nice to watch and has original apparatus handling. I had seen Anastasia Kisse at the Happy Cup and I was glad to get a chance to watch her again, she looks so cute and performs very nice and energetic routines. In the training area she was entertaining everyone while she was playing with two or three mini-hoops, inventing new throws and other handling. And as always I really liked the routines of Amber Heijdens from Belgium, she did great to place 3rd in AA and qualified for all four finals. Unfortunately I didn't see her ribbon (I was told it was really good).

I did see rope and hoop where she unfortunately had some mistakes but even when Amber makes mistakes she's still amazing to watch (Good luck to Amber & Lieselotte in EC!).
In the senior competition Miteva's clubs just stood out for me, very beautifull with fantastic control and beautifully performed.

This was my third time in Calais and like the previous years I really enjoyed my time there :)

Videos (finals)

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13-02-08

Last weekend Christel, Demi, Annemiek and I went to Brussel for the Brussels Cup. We left Friday afternoon and after a little bit of searching we arrived in Brussel around 4 o'clock. The competition hall was a brand new stadium which looked very fancy from outside but unfortunately was only 7 meters high. Luckily we train in a hall this height once a week, so it didn't affect us that much. Also there were bars on the ceiling but the spaces in between those bars were higher so with a bit of good measuring we could make sure that the highest throws were in those places. After we arrived, we first had training and afterwards we had dinner in the competition hall. When we were finished Demi, Christel and I were taken to the hotel while Annemiek had to stay in the hall for the judges meeting. Our hotel rooms were really big and we slept great as we had the most comfortable beds ever =). The next morning Annemiek had to leave already at nine to judge the competition for the youngest gymnasts. In training yesterday we saw a small Belarussian girl who can't have been older than like 7-8, but already had an amazing control over her body for such a young girl. She also did things like a walkover under a throw with rope and she looked incredibly cute. Christel, Demi and I went to the hall with the latest possible transport, at 11, as Christel and I wouldn't start our competition until 8 that evening.

Demi was in the 2nd junior group and did a pretty good competition. She started with rope and hoop, which both went good without major mistakes. Unfortunately she had some bad luck with her ball routine, which had been very good in Verviers two weeks ago but now she had a few drops and some mistakes in difficulties as well. She recovered very well though and showed a very nice ribbon.

Anna Riabtseva from Belarus (pic) won the competition and Lieselotte Diels and Amber Heijdens from Beligum won the silver and bronze medal. (I saw Ambers rope routine - so cool!) Demi ended 16th out of the 20th junior gymnasts. Christel started her competition with ribbon, which is still a quite new and pretty difficult routine. She had some problems with the ribbon but still made nice elements. The rest of her competition went very good with a nice rope and almost flawless hoop and clubs routines. For me this competition was kind of a disaster. I started bad with rope with a drop on the first throw and many mistakes afterwards. Hoop was slightly better but I was too busy avoiding mistakes so I missed a lot in Difficulty and Artistry. Clubs is one of my favourite routines so I really wanted to make up for the first two exercises but it went completely wrong, I think I did like 5 elements correctly and everything else I did didn't count or was deducted (and I'm not exaggerating..). I was pretty anxious for ribbon after that, since it's my most difficult routine and after all this misery I wasn't at all confident. Well I didn't do a good routine but at least it was not as bad as the other routines and besides some big mistakes there were also a few good pirouettes there. After all I was really dissapointed with my performance today. In the All Around ranking I ended 9th and Christel got 10th. The competition was won by Filipa Siderova, before Beatris Igba from Russia and Angelina Deigmane from Latvia.

The next day we went to the hall around ten. We were a little late so Annemiek went to the judges table immediately while we went to the dressing room to drop our stuff. When we walked in the hall again we saw Annemiek make all kind of gestures which we finally understood to mean that we had made it into the finals. We went to check and found out that Demi was in the ribbon final, Christel made it with clubs and I was allowed to do hoop and ribbon. We were of course very exited, especially Demi and Christel who made their first international finals. We hadn't expected to be in the finals (didn't realize that only 1 gymnast per country was allowed) so we quickly went back to the car to get our competition stuff.
Demi had to wait quite a while cause ribbon was off course the last rotation. She showed a good routine which earned her a 5th place out of 8 finalists. Christel was a bit nervous for her final and unfortunately her routine didn't went as well as yesterday, ending 7th. I saw these finals as a chance to make up for yesterday and I really wanted to do well but I messed up again with hoop no better than yesterday and ribbon even worse.. I ended 5th on hoop and 6th on ribbon. All in all a competition to forget as quickly as possible...

Photos

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27-01-08

Last weekend Demi, Christel, Chelsey and I went to Verviers together with Anoek (coach) where the Verdi Cup was organised by the Belgian club Les Provinciales. The day started with the competitions for the 'Jeunes' where we didn't have any participants. This competition was won by Diana Komalova. I already liked her a lot previous years, but she made a lot of progression especially in her expression and she seems to have gained in flexibility as well. She's definitely very nice to watch. Unfortunately there were only 4 senior gymnasts participating. The junior and senior competition was combined, so we all had our competition together. For Chelsey this was only her 2nd international experience. She did quite well with rope and ball, but unfortunately messed up a bit with ribbon. Demi had a very good ball routine and hoop went good as well. Despite some problems with rope, she managed to end 6th out of 13 gymnasts. The junior podium held only gymnasts from No Limits Gymnastics: Lieselotte Diels won the gold before her teammates Amber Heijdens and Kelly de Block. The No Limits gymnasts have improved every time I see them again, but this time I was really amazed by their progression. I only saw their ribbon routines in competition, where they had some mistakes, but what I saw behind the scenes really impressed me a lot.

Christel did rope, clubs and ribbon. Rope and ribbon are new routines but rope went pretty good. Clubs and ribbon where a bit weaker unfortunately, with two drops in clubs and a big knot in ribbon. But as we're only in January, Christel will have plenty of time to improve these routines as well. I did rope, hoop and clubs. Rope went fine until the end where I had some low jumps and got a bit messy with the rope. Hoop was my best routine today, I did everything I was supposed to and didn't make big mistakes. Clubs was a bit insecure with wobbles on quite a few balances, but overall I felt to have performed like I do in training at the moment so I was pretty satisfied. The senior competition was won by Catherine Gerontitis, I ended 2nd and Christel got 4th. By surprise we got 2nd in the clubcompetition, we actually had the highest score of the clubs who didn't have a participant in all three categories. For this we got a nice statue of a gymnast with hoop.

Photos
Results

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16-12-07
Last weekend, I traveled to Leipzig (Germany) to participate in the 8th international TuG-pokal. This competition was a quite new experience for me, as it was a combined competition with RG, Womens artistic gymnastics and Acro gym. I went there together with Senna, an artistic gymnast in my club, and her coach Edgar. We were going by car, so we left Thursday afternoon around 4, only to get stuck in a traffic jam almost immediately. It took over three hours just to get to the Dutch-German border (should take no more than 1.5 hours). After we crossed the border it was much better, and when we stopped to have something to eat around 9 o'clock, we were almost back on schedule. Unfortunately we got involved in a car crash close to Hannover; when we changed lanes another car was suddenly standing still right across the road and we couldn't evade it anymore. We hit the other car on the back so we went spinning all over the highway and got hit by yet another car.. Luckily we didn't get hurt at all, apart from a few scratches and bruises, but the car was total loss.. Finally we were taken to a salvage station where we were given a rental car to continue our journey. It was already past 1 AM so we decided to find an hotel to spend the night.

The next morning we left for the rest of the trip and we arrived in Leipzig around noon. We first had training in the training hall, a very nice hall which looked a lot like our own with both artistic equipment and a RG carpet. I just walked through my routines a little bit and didn't do anything with music. I was worrying a bit, as the hall was too low for most of my rope and hoop throws and there was a springy floor under the carpet that had a lot of holes in it which made balances and pirouettes quite difficult. We would have dinner at 18:30 h in the building of the training hall, and we spent the time we had left on the Christmas market that was situated only 5 minutes walking from the hall. It was really huge and very cosy with lots of different stands heavily decorated in Christmas style. After dinner our hostfamily took Senna and me to their home. We stayed with a very nice family who had a little daughter doing Acro gym. We were pretty tired so we went to bed early.

The next morning the competition started at 11 o'clock. Everybody could do three routines, for RG everybody had to do rope and hoop and we could chose between clubs and ribbon. In the RG competition there were gymnasts from Germany, Czech Republic and Ukrain (and Netherlands of course :p). Luckily the competition hall was much higher than the training hall and they had left the springy floor in the training hall. The competition showed alternately RG, AG and Acro gym, and it was nice to see the other disciplines compete. There was no space to train during the competition, but the competition was divided in six parts and before and again halfway each part we were given 5 minutes time to work on the competition carpet so it was not really a problem. Senna did her bars routine in the first rotation, it looked pretty good to me but she told me she made a mistake and because of that missed an important element and a lot of points. I had to do hoop in the second rotation and I was more or less satisfied with it. I made mistakes in two difficulties and I had a small drop in the end, but overall it was pretty stable and I didn't make very big mistakes. At least it was much better than the week before ;) In the third rotation, Senna did her floor routine which went good although she wasn't totally happy with the mark she received. After this rotation there was a break where we could have lunch and afterwards I had to warm up again for the remaining two exercises. I did rope first and I had some messy catches and other handling of the rope that could've been better but technically it went very good, I performed all the difficulties the way I'm able to.

Senna's last performance was on beam, but unfortunately she fell two times. I chose to do clubs instead of ribbon, and I think this was my least routine of today with trouble in some balances and I dropped the last throw so I ended without apparatus.. Still I was pretty satisfied with my competition.
At the award ceremony, there turned out to be a team competition per discipline as well. As Senna and I were both alone, we were both coupled with a gymnast from another country. I was together with a gymnast from Leipzig and together we got the 4th place. Senna got 2nd with her 'team' and received a nice cup. In the individual ranking Senna got 7th out of 9 gymnast and I placed 5th out of 11. Daria Stolbin won the competition as expected, followed by Annika Rejek and Kristina Goukova.

After the competition we went to the Christmas market again together with two friends of Edgar and Senna's who had come all the way from Holland to watch the competition. Of course we had to try German bratwurst and gluhwein (well, Senna and I skipped the gluhwein but the others had :p). After the banquet we went back to our hostfamily to have a nice shower after a long day. The next day the delegations were taken to a museum about ancient Rome. Pretty nice to see, but I had seen and heard most of it at school allready. The last part of the museum was really nice though; in a huge high, round hall the entire wall was covered with a painting that showed a part of Rome. They used several light- and soundeffects to change the image from time to time, so that it first showed a city by night, and then slowly the sun came up, got brighter and brighter until sunset. After the museum we started our way back to Holland, which we luckily completed without accidents this time.

Photos
Results

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04-12-07
Last Saterday our regio Noord-Holland organised the annual koppelwedstrijd. This competition is a little different; girls of all ages, levels and clubs are combined in teams of 6-7 gymnasts and by performing 2 routines each they try to win as much points as possible. In the end there are no individual rankings but the team that scored highest wins. Each year the teams are named in a certain theme, and the gymnasts are expected to walk in the opening and closing ceremony dressed up in the style of their team. Part of the game I guess..
In the morning the teams consisted of the youngest gymnasts of category 4 and 3 (age 11 and under). Annelotte and I were asked to accompany Anna and Nicole (both category 4C) during the competition. I really enjoyed coaching! It was so cool to see them trying to do what I had told them, although I had to keep repeating some things. For example I told Nicole to hold her arms in a certain position during her freehands routine, but during competition she forgot about that so when she returned from the floor I told her that she had done great, but also reminded her of her arms. The next day I saw her doing her routine in training and this time she remembered :) Both Nicole and Anna did a very good competition and ended 3rd and 4th of 4C.
In the afternoon the teams consisted of junior and senior gymnasts and now the audience seats were almost completely empty.. I was doing clubs and hoop and for this competition I wanted to take all the risks in my routines instead of going safe where I had doubts. With clubs this turned out quite well, I had a little drop in the beginning but two other throws I catched for the first time in competition :) I had problems with some of the balances as well but I was pretty happy with the routine as a whole. With hoop I did catch the most difficult throw in the routine but I dropped three others.. I don't know if the judges have actually been watching the routine, as I still scored 14.500 :p
I was in the team of the speedskaters with Susanne (who did a very good clubsroutine) and Vera, among others, and in the beginning of the competition we were on the 2nd place. Unfortunately we lost it somewhere along the competition and dropped to fifth eventually.

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30-11-07
From November 16th - 18th the annual Happy Cup was held in Gent (Belgium). I went there together with Demi and Christel and Annemiek went with us to coach. There were a lot of Dutch delegations attending; from Badhoeve Fleurine and Evelien came to Gent, Lineke Schurink participated for SVOD and GV Vogel and O&O also had sent delegations.
We left Friday morning and arrived in Belgium all fine, but trouble started when we found out that we had the home adress of the chairman of Happy Cup instead of the adress of the hotel. (I just decided not to mention that before this we had allready made a little detour because someone - me - had misinterpreted the signs along the road.. :p) After we'd seen practically the entire city of Gent, including the sports hall of the other club in Gent, Forza Ritmica, Christel finally spotted the Holiday Inn hotel that we thought we were staying. Annemiek went in to ask if we were in the right place, but while we where waiting in the car we already saw one of the minivans with the logo of Happy Cup. Quite a relief, as the junior competition was about to start and we didn't know yet in which group Demi would compete.

Demi was in the 2nd group, so we had time to unpack our stuff and have lunch before heading to the hall for the competition. We arrived there just in time to see Fleurine, who was the very first gymnast in the first junior group, perform her rope routine. There were no less than 72 juniors competing, devided in 3 groups. There were also 33 senior gymnasts, so we also were split in 2 groups. I was in the first group today and Christel in the 2nd group. Demi performed ball and ribbon today. This was the very last time for her to perform this ball routine, as she will do a new one from now on. As she showed a very nice routine, it was a good finish of the routine. The first part of ribbon also went good, but then she missed the end of the ribbon during a boomerang throw and had to rush down the rest of the routine in order to finish on time.

The junior field was pretty strong, especially the Bulgarians. I absolutely adored Anastasia Kisse with ball, the routine is so full of energy and great fun to watch. Nevin Sevinç Deveci was very nice as well, although I have a feeling that she keeps her routines for a very long period (hoop and ribbon at least).

The competition was allready running late at this point, and at ten o'clock my competition finally started. I was doing hoop and clubs today and I wasn't really happy with that, as it ment that I would have to do rope and ribbon, my two most difficult and most tiring routines, on the same day. But as we normally do all 4 routines on the same day, it shouldn't really matter after all. I was the 2nd gymnast in the working order so I started with hoop and the routine went more or less okay, I had to skip some things in artistry but I didn't make big mistakes. With clubs it was a bit different, I had some insecure balances and I kind of fell during my cosack balance, wich is a pretty easy element so a very stupid reason to get yourself 0.5 deduction.. Meanwhile, the competition was running even later and poor Christel had her competition starting at midnight! She started with clubs which went good except for her last throw that went out of the carpet unfortunately. Ribbon is a new routine and this was the first time for Christel to perform it in competition but she did reasonable well, especially in the 2nd half of the routine. Filipa Siderova was in this group as well, her hoop routine is just amazing. True, she still made quite a lot of mistakes but there are so many amazing moments and original moves.. As the last throw she does her originality (with the walkover) but this time it went too far and landed on the judges table. Filipa was very cute, apologizing to the judges when she went to get her hoop :) She didn't qualify for the finals with this routine, but on Sunday she did it again as an exhibition. The last throw was too far again, but this time she did a run for it, crashing into the curtains around the carpet but only after catching the hoop :) Luckily this group wasn't that big and Christel was early in the working order, so we left the hall at one o'clock and were back in the hotel at 01:30 h..

We were glad not to have a hope gymnast competing, because this ment we could sleep late the next morning. Demi was in the last junior group today and we only had to leave for the competition hall at five. Today she was doing rope and hoop. Rope had some insecurities but for a still quite new routine it went more or less fine. Hoop I didn't see.
The senior groups were switched too and Christel was in the first group now. Her rope routine is brand new also but she managed it pretty well. Christel finished the competition with hoop, and she did a great routine! I don't think she made any mistakes at all and it looked very secure as a whole.

For me today was more difficult than yesterday, as I would do my new ribbon for the first time. Ribbon is still very unstable, so I was quite nervous for it. Unfortunately I didn't make a very good exercise, even for a new routine, I messed up some of the pirouettes and I lost the end of my ribbon during a boomerang throw so I had to run across the whole floor to retrieve my ribbon.. Rope wasn't a big disaster, but I did make some mistakes and I didn't show the max of my abilities so I wasn't really happy with this 2nd day. Demi ended 50th and Fleurine 38th in the junior competition. Among the seniors Christel ended 28th, Evelien 24th and I was 21st. The competition was won by Silviya Miteva and Siderova was 2nd! The next day we got out of bed a little bit earlier so that we could still catch breakfast. After we packed our bags, we left to the competition hall to watch the finals. We arrived there early, so Annemiek and I went to the center of Gent, which wasn't far from the hall (and had a delicious belgian waffle :D).

We watched the first part of the finals, very nice to see the hopes competing, some of them allready had really high level. The highlight of the weekend for me was the ball routine of Boyanka Angelova. If such thing as perfection exists, this is what it must look like... she did the most difficult things both in apparatus handling and body difficulties and all very very cleanly executed.. just amazing. I think this girl will be the future of Bulgarian RG for sure.
At 5 o'clock we departed from the sports hall, and as the ride home luckily went a lot smoother than a few days earlier, we were home around 8.

Photos All Around, Finals

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16-11-07
Wow I'm realllly late with my news update this time... but training and school have kept me quite busy last weeks...

I did two competitions the previous month; to start from the beginning, the first weekend of October I went to Italy with Fleurine (junior) and Annemiek (coach) to participate in the tournament of Udine. Our plane left at 13:00 h Friday afternoon and after a short flight we arrived at Treviso airport, where we would be picked up by the organisation.. or so we thought. After waiting for 15 minutes or so, we found out that there had been some sort of miscommunication and the organisation was waiting for us at Marco Polo, the other airport.. In the end we did arrive at our hotel, just a couple of hours later than planned :p After bringing up our suitcases to our rooms (were Fleur and I had quite some trouble turning on the lights, as finding the spot to insert the room key to get electricity in the all-dark room proved pretty difficult :p) we went down again to have dinner. Annemiek had allready gotten the startlists for the competition the following day, and there were a lot of cool names on it, including Kanaeva, Stryuchkova, Cantaluppi and lots of others.

The competition started the next morning with a team competition for little girls, so we didn't have to get up too early. We had hoped to catch some sun in Italy, but when we left the next morning rain was pouring down and we had to run to the van that would take us to the competition hall. Juniors and seniors would all do two routines in the individual competition, and the 8 top-ranked gymnasts in both categories would proceed to do one more routine to decide the final result. Fleurine would do hoop and rope and was in the second group of juniors. She started with hoop, which went quite good besides two small mistakes. Ball was also very good, but as there were really a lot of juniors competing Fleurine couldn't get a place in the final (ribbon for juniors).

I started my competition with ribbon. I had planned to do my new routine today (finished 3 weeds before) but unfortunately I did not manage to get ready in time and as I also would participate in the Berlin Masters grand prix next weekend, we decided to stick with the old routine for two more competitions. I had two small problems with the ribbon pattern and with the last throw, but as a whole the routine wasn't too bad. Unfortunately my 2nd routine with clubs didn't go that good, I really like this routine and I wanted to show what I can do but I have three difficult cathes in the routine but I had to skip every single one of them because I didn't throw accurately enough :S. I also thought a lot of Difficulty elements were doubtful, although afterwards my D-score still was pretty high in comparison with the other gymnasts. Over all I wasn't really satisfied with the competition and naturally I didn't make the final (so I carried my hoop through all the airplane security stuff for nothing.. :p) There was also a team competition, which was nice but took really really long.. In the end the Russian team won the team competition and Eugenia Kanaeva won the individual AA. I had not seen Kanaeva perform live for a while, and I liked her routines a lot, especially ribbon because it's very elegant.

After the competition was finished there was a banquet in the hotel. The next morning we would leave again, but as our flight only left in the afternoon we wanted to pay a quick visit to Venice if possible. Well at 11 pm we found out that it was possible... but then we would have to leave at 3 in the morning so Fleur and I didn't think that was such a good idea.. Annemiek thought it was, however, and we had to hear that a lot the next day while we were waiting for our flight at Treviso :p
We lost track of our hoops for a little while at Schiphol airport, as we had not been allowed to take them in the cabin and had to check them in as oversized luggage, but for the rest we had a good trip home and arrived safely back in Holland after a very nice weekend =)

Photos

Five days later Annemiek and I left very early in the morning (5:30 AM!) to Berlin where I would participate in the Berlin Masters Grand Prix. We went by train and although halfway the journey we heard that there were strikes going on in the German railway system, luckily our train wasn't affected and we arrived on Berlin Haubtbahnhof at the scheduled time. This time we were immediately picked up by the organisation ;) After we had lunch and unpacked our suitcases in the hotel, we went to the Max Schmellinghalle to train. I really like this sportshal, in fact after Kiev it's my favourite because it's set up so large and the decoration of the competition hall is beautiful. I was a bit tired of the long trip but training went reasonably well. When we were done I went back to the hotel and Annemiek stayed in the hall for the drawing of lots. Wow, I discoverd a photo of myself in the program book of the competition, so cool =) The next morning we had training pretty early, officially together with Israel but as they didn't show up I had the whole carpet to myself. After the training there were a few hours left to relax and the competition started at two o'clock. There weren't much participants, probably because of just having had Worlds a month ago, so the competition didn't take very long. In the first part all gymnasts did rope and hoop.

I had to start with hoop and during warming up it felt very good but unfortunately I started my competition routine bad, my first pirouette wasn't complete and I had some problems with handling the hoop correctly. Further in the routine I also had to skip a catch and I made a very stupid mistake where my hoop touched the floor out of bounds. To complete it all I also dropped my last throw so it wasn't really how I'd imagined the start of the competition to be.. :( With rope I did a little better, I didn't make very big mistakes but I did make two small mistakes during valuable difficulty elements so I did loose quite some points. After the first two routines there was a small break before the competition continued with clubs and ribbon. These routines both went more or less fine, although I again skipped my three catches... This time it really was a confidence issue, as except for the last one the throws were okay. I ended on the last place but this was of course more or less expected. As a nice surprise, I found out that I still had won prize money because there were so few participants :p.
In the evening Annemiek and I went to discover a bit of Berlin. We went to the Fernsehturm and also saw Checkpoint Charly and the remainings of the Berlin Wall. The next morning we did some more sightseeing, including the Brandenburger Tör (in the competition hall the gymnasts pass under a replica of the Brandenburger Tör when they enter the competition carpet) and we couldn't resist to have some delicious Apfelstrudel :p.
In Berlin they always organise a lot for the young girls and little gymnasts who watch the competition, and this year I was asked to come to the competition hall before the final started to hand out autographs and answer questions. However, the yourney from the Apfelstrudel back to the hotel took a bit longer than we had expected, so we were to late to be taken to the hall.. Luckily they had someone waiting to bring us along, and it was a really cool experience, I was asked for autographs and photos even more than in Deventer.
In the afternoon we watched the competition which I enjoyed a lot and in the evening we had banquet in the radioturm, which is very high so we had a great view over Berlin.
The next day our train only left at 16:50 and as we had already done all the sightseeing we wanted, we had time left to shop in Berlin. The journey back was a little less smooth, as our train was forced to take an alternative route due to an accident somewhere on the way, which made us miss our transfer and we had to wait half an hour in the middle of the night for the next train.. In the end we were home around 1:30 Tuesday morning, pretty tired but with another great experience =)

Photos

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12-09-07
At the last weekend of the holidays, the Deventer Masters Grand Prix took place on September 1st and 2nd. I had qualified for this competition by winning Nationals in June, and Sanne Kouters and the national group (Evelien van Rheenen, Tessa Herngreen, Eva Herngreen, Sharai Echteld, Christel Grimbergen, Lisanne van de Waal and Fleurine Menijn) also participated.
Before telling how the competition was, I would like to say thank you to my coaches as I had great support during the preparation this year. Training for Deventer is always a bit difficult, as officially there is no training at all during the holidays, but Annemiek went to train/run/fitness with me almost every day and Lisette, being pregnant and everyting, also came to the hall to train with me. This year I never felt like I had the sole responsibility for getting ready in time for the competition, which safed me a lot of worrying :)

We left to Deventer on Thursday morning August 30th, where we had our first training in sportshall De Scheg at twelve with the whole delegation. The training went good, last year I'd had a lot of problems adjusting to the more springy carpet, but today I got used to it in no time. Actually I did my new clubs routine (finished about 2 months ago) without mistakes for the first time! We were lucky, as there was no one scheduled for training on the competition floor after us we could continue a little longer.
After we finished training Sanne and I stayed to watch the training of the Bulgarian team. Their routine with 5 ropes is just amazing! Often group routines with rope tend to get a bit messy but they were perfect, and they've got so many original pieces... really a pleasure to watch.
After the Bulgarians finished we went to our hotel were Sanne and I shared a room. We were in a different hotel from previous years, a little bit closer to the hall which was quite confenient.

The draw Thursdaynight had placed Sanne and me right after each other in the competition order, so we also had training together on Friday morning. The training didn't feel as good as yesterday, but I didn't have major problems so I wasn't worriing about it. After training Annemiek and I did a little bit of running and when we returned it was allready time to go back to the hall for the Senior Cup competition. It was nice to see the gymnasts of Korea and Malaysia, countries we hardly ever get to see. I really enjoyed the performances of Israelian Neta Rivkin, she performs very clean and her toepoint is amazing! She ended 2nd, while the competition was won by Olga Stryuchkova. The bronze medal went to Ketevan Khatiashvili from Georgia.

Saterdaymorning I was supposed to have training together with Sanne and Aliya Yussupova, but Sanne decided not to train to be optimally rested for the competition. Yussupova wasn't there either, so I had the whole floor for myself, which was nicely quiet. I just did all my routines once with music to get the feeling for the competition and then we went back to the hotel quickly as the opening ceremony started already at half past one. Luckily we could use Annemiek's car, otherwise we couldn't have managed it.
The opening was nice, although there was only little audience. There were a few banners for the Dutch delegation, one even with my name on it, which is always very inspirational. After the opening we drove back to the hotel again as I was in group B and my competition started only at six o'clock. Unlike last year, they scheduled the complete A group first, and B started only after group A finished 4 rotations. I like it much better this way, the break of 3 hours in the middle of the competition last year was very disturbing.
I was the fifth gymnast in my group, so I started with rope. I was very very nervous for my first routine, and unfortunately I made two mistakes in the beginning of the routine. The second half went very good however, so I was pretty happy with the routine. I had some problems in hoop, with small mistakes right at the start of the routine and a big drop later on. On the other hand clubs went very good =) I made a small drop in the end and I lost my last throw, but most of the difficulties went good and especially for such a new routine I was very happy. I was awarded 14 points for it, I think this is very promising for the coming year :)
My last routine was ribbon. I had a mistake in a throw (the ribbon got stuck on my foot) but the pirouettes went quite good so I was more or less satisfied.
I ended at the bottom of the classement as expected, but I was happy to be the best Dutch. Sanne and I shared the apparatus finals, Sanne would be doing hoop and ribbon and I could show my rope and clubs routines once more.

On Sunday the competition started already at 11, so we had to go to the hall quite early. I was the 4th to start in the rope final. During warming up my legs already felt pretty tired, but during my actual routine they really started to hurt and I could hardly make my last jumps. I had never experienced something like this before so I was very sad about it. It was really a pity, as the rest of the routine had been quite good without too big mistakes.
I didn't do hoop and as there also was a group final scheduled in between, I had a big break before clubs. My legs felt a bit better after the break and I was looking forward to do the routine again, but unfortunately I made an awfull lot of mistakes today. It just didn't work out, and worst of it, I missed the last throw again...

Although it was dissapointing to end the tournament this way, overall it has been another great experience and I really enjoyed the weekend. I was asked a lot of autographs after the competition on Sunday, and I even signed two gymnastic balls! Imagine that a small gymnast somewhere out there is doing competitions with a ball that has my name on it, so cool =)

Official trainings have finally started again now (having a whole carpet for yourself is great, but still I was getting a bit fed up with training on my own..) We've just finished my new ribbon routine, Annemiek did the choreography and I love it! It's a really different style than I usually have - I'm really gonna have to work with expression now (not my strongest point :p) plus I probably have to perform it in competition in a month... I like the challenge =)

Videos of the competition

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03-07-07
Since yesterday our RG-season is officially finished.. Summer holidays have started now, but not before we had the traditional closings of the season :)

On Thursday all Pax gymnasts and coaches went bowling together. It was very nice and we had a lot of fun. In our lane Martine won the first game with big marks and I had the highest score in the 2nd game :p. After bowling we had dinner, very funny as they figured it was the easiest to give everyone the childrens menu, which ment that we all got our food in a paper car and received a toy with it :P. Anyway, it has been a very succesful year for SV Pax with 4 AA national champions and lots of medals in both national and international competitions.
Unfortunately we were saying goodbye to Valerya, Michelle and Patty who are retiring. We hope to see them from time to time at competitions next year!

On Sunday we had our last training with Keizer Otto and like last year we held a picknick in the sportshal. Everybody had brought some very nice food (unlike last year Annelotte and I did not forget to bring our share :p) Also for Keizer Otto it has been a very good year, with 2 golds and 1 bronze at Regionals and Alannah winning the National Championships. On Monday we had a clubcompetition also with Keizer Otto. Everybody did two routines and the senior group also showed their routines. The girls of the group were judging the competition and they were great - I think I received a 17 something for my ribbon :P (which I did at least better than last competition) Especially getting 8 in Difficulty is a real accomplishment, as my start value is only 6.4 :P. Besides ribbon I did my 3 days old clubs routine - I could not yet do it without some breaks but I'm going to work hard on it to get it ready in time for Deventer Masters... :)

The juniors and seniors were doing their new rope routine for next year which is pretty quick and they still have difficulty to get finished in time, but luckily they got some help of the cdplayer that stopped from time to time in the middle of the routine ;) Anna and Nicole performed the 4C duo rope - very cute =) In the end Alannah won the competition, Annelotte came in 2nd and Elleander won bronze.

Photos

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01-07-07
After nationals only one competition remained before the end of the 2006/2007 season. The National Championships for Clubteams were held on June 23rd (Yes, sorry for the delay... Fleurine told me last Wednesday allready that she was dissapointed by the long time I took to write some news, but I could just not find time until now.. so Fleur this part is especially for you :p) The championships were organised in a separate competition for the first time since.. well since I can remember. Previous years the best club was elected based on the results of its gymnasts in national competitions. For this competition, a club could perform seven individual routines (one with each apparatus and 2 choice) and three group routines. The competing gymnasts could be of any age and level, but all exercises would be judges on senior A-level.

The team of my club consisted of Demi (rope and ball), Christel (rope and clubs), Roxanne (clubs) and I (hoop and ribbon) for individual and the groups of category 2B, 2A and 3B. IMO it might be better to organise this competition a few weeks before Nationals instead of afterwards, as now it was a bit of an anti-climax (at least that's how it felt for me).
My hoop routine was not really bad, I dropped my last throw and I missed a couple of difficulties but not much worse than at nationals. I totally screwed up my ribbon however, I didn't perform anything at all in the first half of the routine :s. Demi did two good routines and Christel did a good clubs after she had some small problems in rope. Roxanne did a great clubs with beautifully executed balances, which resulted in the 4th highest clubs mark. All three the groups performed well, especially the juniors of 2A who did an almost flawless routine.

Our routines resulted in a 2nd place for SV Pax =) GTV de Badhoeve won the competition as expected and SVOD won the bronze.
Funny was that the competition turned out to be very predictable - at home we had tried to guess the final results and we had the entire order right except for the 8th and 9th place, which were swiched. Moreover, we were only a few points off in predicting the total scores for the top three :p.

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17-06-07
Last Friday I was invited for a 'Sports Weekend' which was held in the shopping center of Veenendaal. There would be a meet&greet/interview something and I would also do a fashion show together with Milou and Kya, two young gymnasts of GV Vogel. Quite a new experience for me =)
I first had the interview, which was very nice to do although there was not much of an audience yet. The persons who interviewed me tried to get the audience involved by asking them if they had any questions for me, but I guess they didn't as they kept totally silent :P I did have the impression that they were a bit impressed by my split however :p.
I was a bit nervous for the fashion show, as my only modelling experience comes from watching a few episodes of America's Next Top Model ;) In the end it was cool, but I still felt a bit clumsy..
I had a very nice evening and it was a really different but nice experience :)

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13-06-07
Last weekend we had the Dutch National Championships in sports hall de Scheg in Deventer. Individual gymnasts in the categories 4A, 3A, 2A, 1A, 2B and 1B, groups in all A- and B-level categories and the duo-routines in category 4 and 3B competed, so it was a very busy weekend!

As Deventer is quite far away for us, I didn't went to watch the competition on Saterday. It was a very succesful day for my club SV Pax however, with 1 bronze, 1 silver and 3 gold medals. The junior group had to show their routine with 10 clubs in the morning. Demi, Christel, Patty, Nicole and Michelle made a few mistakes in their performance but the routine was good enough to beat the other competing group (SVOD) and they became National Champion with a large difference. The individual gymnasts of category 1B and 2B also had their competition today. In 2B, Martine did a very good competition and won the gold medal! Chelsey, who is only a first-year junior, did great as well and finished 2nd. Nicole had qualified for this final on the 10th and last spot, but today she climbed to the 6th place, a very good improvement. In 1B only Roxanne participated. The whole year she'd never finished on the first place yet, but with a good competition and especially a beautiful ribbon routine she beated all other competitors and became National Champion!

Vera and Verena had qualified to compete in category 3A, but unfortunately Verena injured herself during the warming-up and had to withdraw from competition. Vera did a stable competition to finish 5th. With rope she even won the bronze medal.

The Sunday was very exciting for me, as I was defending my title of 2006. But in the morning the juniors first had their competition. The battle for gold had been between Daniëlle Bubberman and Fleurine Menijn all year. Danielle had won the first two competitions but Fleurine had ended 1st at the last qualification, so it promised to be a very exciting competition. Unfortunately Daniëlle had bad luck with her first routine (hoop) which gave Fleurine, who did a near flawless routine, a headstart of almost three points. Both Fleurine and Daniëlle did well on the three remaining routines, so Daniëlle ended 2nd and Fleurine became National Champion by winning gold on all 4 routines! Demi did a good competition and ended 3rd AA and on rope, ball and ribbon. On hoop she won the silver medal. The group of Keizer Otto was doing their very last competition, as they had decided to retire after today.. Unfortunately Simone got ill and had to withdraw from the competition and reserve Vera had to compete last minute. They didn't do as well as they're able to, with a lot of small individual mistakes, but it was still good enough to win the bronze medal, only 0.20 behind the 2nd place.

I had my competition in the afternoon, together with Christel who had also qualified for this final. Again I was very happy with Annemiek accompanying me during the competition :). We were all starting with rope, and my rope went very good! I couldn't have wished for a beter start of the competition. I never want to hear my scores during the competition, but while I was working with hoop so many people came to me to ask if I had seen my rope mark, that I couldn't help wondering what I could've gotten. After the competition I turned out to have received a 15! This has only happened once before, on a very small regional competition. I'd never expected to get a 15 on a national competition, let alone the national championships =) I do think, however, that the judging was a bit easy compared to earlier competitions...
With hoop unfortunately I didn't do so well, no drops but I had to skip two throws and I made a lot of mistakes in my difficulties.
My clubs routine I would perform for the very last time. The whole year I've had some problems with clubs on competitions, especially my last throw had caused trouble on much occasions, but today I catched it and the rest of the routine went quite good too. I was very satisfied despite some small mistakes. Ribbon will always be difficult for me, today I made a very very stupid drop and some of the pirouettes weren't complete, but overall I was happy with this routine as well.

After two routines I had been on the second place, with Sanne Kouters leading by 0.20. Although Sanne had made mistakes in clubs, after my ribbon I wasn't sure of the gold yet as Sanne still had to perform. In fact, as my ribbon score was shown I felt my chances to win were very small; I had scored only 11.2 - quite a contrast with my earlier score of 15! I didn't know, however, that all scores had dramatically dropped this last rotation. But besides that, the scoreboard showed a deduction of 0.40, which must mean that I or my ribbon had left the floor twice! When Annemiek told me, my first thought was that I had in fact been quite close to the left border at some time in the routine. But the linejudge at that side of the carpet had not given any penalty, the deduction came from the judge on the right side... I was pretty sure that I didn't left the floor there, especially as Annemiek had been standing in that corner and she would defenitely have noticed if my ribbon came out. After looking back on video, I'm 99% sure that this deduction should not have been given...

Luckily it didn't really matter, as I won the gold anyway with a total score of 54.823! :D Since the beginning of the year one of my goals has been an AA score of 55.300, and I came so close today! Especially if you add that 0.40 (which in my head I do..). Too bad I just didn't make it, but 54.823 still is a new personal best :). I also won gold on rope, clubs and ribbon, while Sanne won the gold on hoop.

I'm very happy for keeping the National title, but just as much for being able to do a good competition, as I never was the kind of person who performs better under pressure. Well, I know who I owe thanks for this!
By winning Nationals I also qualified again for the Deventer Masters in September, which is so cool! I'm allready looking forward to it :)
Now we have the national championships for clubteams in 2 weeks, and then the Dutch season will be over allready...
All I have left to say is Thank you for all the e-mails, guestbook messages, sms and other messages I received since Sunday, very sweet! :)

Photos
Videos
Results

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31-05-07

Last weekend another international tournament took place in Belgium, this time the 9th International Rhythmic Cup organised by SRG Mol. My preparation for this tournament was a little weird: we had been invited a long time ago, but due to a miscommunication we never made our definitive subscription. As there were a lot of clubs who wanted to participate, the organisation had to draw to decide who could enter the competition and unfortunately we lost the draw. Too bad, as this competition, 2 weeks before nationals, had fitted very well in our preparation for the championships. However, Tuesdaynight in the week before the competition my coach was called by the organisation; there had been some clubs who had cancelled and they asked if we were still willing to come. It was all very last minute of course, so a complete delegation wasn't possible anymore from our side. But my coach said I could go on my own, as another Dutch club (GTV de Badhoeve) was also sending a delegation. :D

We drove to Mol on Saterday morning, as my competition started only at 7 PM. We first picked up Fleurine (her parents, hope gymnast Lisa Snijders and coach Kim Evers had left to Mol allready at 6 that morning) and arrived at the sports hall at 12:30. Lisa had just finished her competition, she had done well and felt she had improved her routines since her last competition.
The opening ceremony was at 15:00 h and after that the junior competition started. Juniors were devided into two groups and Fleurine was in the 1st group. (Funny: Lisa, Fleur and I were all the 2nd gymnast in the starting order :p) Fleurine did a good competition. She started with hoop, which she did well without mistakes. Rope was her least good routine, she had to hurry up in the end so her jumps suffered a bit. But after that she did a very good ball (love that music!) and ribbon again. Fleur ended 10th in the All Around ranking and with ribbon she even qualified for the apparatus finals tomorrow.

There were only 8 seniors participating, besides the Netherlands they came from Belgium, Spain and Bulgaria. From Bulgaria, like last year, Silviya Miteva was there, she is absolutely amazing! Especially her pirouettes are beautiful, she's in total control. I had to start with hoop, which was at once my worst routine today. It wasn't a big disaster, but I felt a little shaky in the beginning and I couldn't fix all my difficulties. The 2nd half was better already and apart from a small drop I didn't make any more mistakes. Next routine was rope, which went good until almost at the end I made a mistake in the rope pattern and as a consequence I missed a lot in artistry and difficulty in the next seconds, which costed me a lot of points. After rope it was time for me to show a very good clubs routine after I messed up at the last competition. And I did :) I was very happy with this routine; although it was a little carefull I didn't make any mistakes. In fact on this apparatus I scored only 0.05 point lower than Miteva! (who did mess up, but still :p) Ribbon was good as well, two pirouettes that could've been better but no big mistakes. So in general, I was very happy with the competition, even more because I won the bronze medal :) Although I know the level of the senior competition wasn't extraordinary high, it still gave me a boost to be on the podium next to the two bulgarians.

The delegation of De Badhoeve had planned to leave this evening, but as Fleurine made the ribbon final they decided to stay in Belgium. Fleurine moved to the host family where I stayed, so that was very cosy. We were at the same family as I was last year. Unfortunately, as we were with them only such a short time this year, the 2 little girls kept very shy. They both do gymnastics now, and the older one, Klara, will be in her first competition next month! They both did an exhibition with their group during the tournament, very cute.

We first watched the hopes finals Sunday morning, it's really amazing how advanced some of those little girls allready are. Stela Georgieva from Bulgaria stood out for me, her jumps are fantastic! It was nice to see cute Nyamekye Dupont competing, unfortunately she made mistakes in ball but she's still very impressive.
Fleurine made no mistakes in her final and showed a very good routine. After the junior competition, when all the scores had been announced, it turned out she'd won the ribbon final! A very good result, as there were some very nice juniors competing. Well done Fleur!

As there where only so few seniors, the organisation decided that everyone could compete in every final. Rope went good for me today, the first part was a bit unclean and I messed up my cossack pirouette but overall it was a better routine than yesterday. Unfortunately hoop wasn't too great, I had a lot of wobbles again and I think I have lost a lot in my D-score. Clubs started better than yesterday as well, until I dropped my last throw.. again :s That was really a pity, as the rest of the routine had been quite good. My AA ribbon would be hard to top for me and although most of the pirouettes still went quite good, I had a knot halfway the routine today and the overall feeling of the routine was a bit less as well. Although I think that I did a bit better on Saterday than on Sunday, I was still very happy with the whole weekend, especially because I was more stable than I thought I would be, doing 8 routines without screwing up any of them. Today I got 5th on hoop, 4th on ribbon (missed the bronze on 0.05..) 3rd on clubs and even 2nd on rope! The scorebord flashed the score over 4 routines however, and it showed that if today had been AA, I would've ended on the 2nd place :)

During the banquet after the competition some footage of the competition was shown on Belgian television! They showed a part of the ribbon of Emily Vandeperre (junior of SRG Mol) and a short interview with her, a bit of Miteva's ribbon and Atanasova's hoop and also a few seconds of my clubs! So cool! Niels, the speaker of the tournament, is sending me a dvd with the footage :) so I'll upload it on my site when it arrives at my place. (Thank you Niels!)

It was a very nice competition, very well organised and I was very glad that I could participate last moment. Once again it was great to speak to all my friends from Belgium again and it was very cosy with the delegation of de Badhoeve. I also would like to say thank you to Kim for accompanying me during the competition!
One week left till Dutch Nationals now, I'm really looking forward to it as it will be a great competition :D

Photos
Videos Senior finals
Results Saterday AA and Sunday finals

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24-05-07
Last weekend the No Limits Open were organised in Belgium. It was already the 7th time this tournament is held and like previous years the organisation was great. I would have loved to participate myself, but unnfortunately the Dutch Federation prefered to send other gymnasts. I went to Antwerp anyway, as a spectator, as the competition always has high level gymnasts and is great to see.

The All Around competition took place on Friday and started with the juniors. As there were so many junior gymnasts, they were divided in two groups. I think this was a wise decision, as last year the junior competition took like 6 hours or so and was very tiring for both gymnasts and judges. My mother and I were invited by the organisation to sit in the VIP-seats during the competition, which was a very nice gesture. You're just as close to the floor as the judges are, so we could see everything very well. It was nice to see Amber (Heijdens) and her family again - I stayed at their place for a week last summer and they're incredibly nice people. The competition was opened by Cristina Lautaru, I like her a lot and the more I watch her, the more I enjoy her gymnastics. Together with Marina Fernandez from Spain, Cristina was the highlight of this first group. I also very much enjoyed the performances of Kelly de Block from Belgium. The 13 year old British junior in this group was reported to have started gymnastics only at ten years old! She showed quite nice routines allready (although ribbon was still a bit difficult - well I don't blame her!) so it will be interesting to see how far she can go.

Daniëlle Bubberman participated for the Netherlands in the 2nd group. She started with some mistakes in hoop, but her other three routines went good, especially ball which was nearly flawless if I remember correctly. My favourite was of course Amber and she did so well today! She was cheered very loudly by the audience as well and all her routines were great to watch. She really deserved to win IMO, although the competition of the Romanians was very strong.
Alisa Bilali from Germany was a surprise for me. I saw her for the first time and I like her a lot! Her routines are very energetic and she's clearly in control of her body. And she uses my clubs music for hoop :p. Another surprise was Tetyana Zahorodnya, I had seen her a couple of years ago, also at No Limits Open, but she was mainly cute back then. Well, she still looks cute (she's very tiny for a junior) but now she also performs great routines, very nice to watch.

The senior competition was won by Daria Koroleva from Russia. She's not my favourite gymnast but she was clearly the best here (the difference between her and the silver medalist was bigger than the difference between the 2nd and the last gymnast :p). It's really a pity Esther Escolar, who was listed for this competition, didn't come to Belgium.
Sanne Kouters from Holland did a good competition especially with rope and clubs, unfortunately mistakes with hoop costed her some points. She did however reach two appparatus finals, a very good result.

Before the finals started on Saterday, the AA competition for the Benjamins (girls born in 1998 and 1999) took place. There was quite a difference in level between these girls and the Russian girl really stood out. She was very flexible and did very nice difficulties allready on such a young age. She still lacked a bit of body tension, but I'm sure that'll be fine when she gets older. For the Netherlands Lisa Boersma competed. Seen from my point of view it was a bit of a curious decision of the Dutch Federation to assign a C-level (lowest competition level in Holland) gymnast for a FIG-competition, but Lisa did a very good competition without any major mistakes in both her routines. I think performing like this on her very first big competition at such a young age is admirable. Besides the russian girl, I really liked Liselot van de Kerckhoven, a girl from No Limits Gymnastics. I saw her last summer when I was training at No Limits and she improved so much since then! Her freehands routine is a must see, the 2nd part is on a tango-ish music and she performs it with a lot of power and expression, very impressive for a 7-year old.

The apparatus finals were nice to watch as well, but almost all gymnasts made more mistakes than yesterday. For example I think there were only 1 or 2 juniors that didn't make a major drop in the ball final. Still the level of the junior competition was very high. The Romanians swept most of the gold medals today, and I was very glad to see Bilali take a silver on ribbon. One of the seniors also used my clubs music... it gave me butterflies in my stomach as today I was really craving to compete even more than yesterday, don't know why. Senior finals were quite predictable, Koroleva did 4 fine routines and won 4 gold medals. Sanne did a good rope final, although I think yesterday she did slightly better, and she ended on the 3rd place and won the bronze medal! With clubs she did great, I don't think she made any mistakes at all and with this performance she won another bronze. Congratulations Sanne! Funny thing was that during the award ceremony the speaker of the tournament mentioned the link to my website :p So cool!

After the finals there was a gala that took almost 1.5 hour with a lot of great exhibitions. There was a bit too much acrogym to my taste, but we couldn't complain as the galas of the gymnasts, especially those of No Limits Gymnastics, were absolutely superb. I loved their demo on Calabria and also one with a very different style on music of Troy. Lautaru and Lalciu performed the same exhibition as they did in Romania, and I have to say that I liked it much better without the live singer trying to get some attention :p. But I missed Piscupescu :(.

Overall it was a great weekend and I'm glad I decided to come to Antwerp even if I couldn't compete. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, I know I said the same last year but I really hope to particpate in this tournament next time!
Hope you guys enjoy my videos ;)

Videos
Photos

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29-04-07
Sunday May 13th we had our 2nd qualification for the Dutch Nationals, and at the same competition in the morning the finals for categories 3B and 4B were held.

We had no participants in catgory 4B (both our gymnasts that have that age qualified for the A-level final) but in category 3B Tayla and Sanne participated. I haven't seen their competition, but Tayla told me she had done well on ball and without apparatus, but made mistakes in ribbon. Unfortunately this costed her the gold medal (she scored the highest marks on both other routines) but 2nd place is off course a very good result!
Sanne didn't have a very good day and ended 8th, but as this is only her 1st year in category 3, she still has a lot of time to improve.
The gymnasts of category 3A also had their competition in the morning. They only did three apparatuses and a draw right before the start of the competition decided that the girls would perform rope, ribbon and a routine without apparatus (ball was dropped). Vera did a good competition and ended just out of the medals on the 4th place. I don't know how Verena did, I only saw her ribbon where she had a knot but made some very beautifull pirouettes. Both Vera and Verena qualified easily for Nationals.

Demi was the only junior competing for SV Pax. This was not her best competition, but she showed a lot of improvement on ribbon which was way better than at the 1st qualification. Demi won the bronze medal, which seems to be destined for her this year, as there is a large gap with both the 2nd and the 4th place. (but of course anything can happen before June!)
The battle for gold was again between Danielle Bubberman and Fleurine Menijn. Had Danielle been the strongest at the 1st competition, Fleurine was the best today and won the gold. Two Ukrainian gymnasts, who have been training in the Netherlands for a week while their coach was coaching in the club De Badhoeve, were competing out of competition. Their routines were very nice to see and especially their pirouettes are very strong.

Christel, Valerya and I participated in 1A. It's really a pity that, since we were with 11 gymnasts, there would be one gymnast who could not qualify.
Christel did a very good competition with a very strong rope (3rd highest mark!). She had some small problems with clubs but again strong routines with hoop and ribbon and ended on the 6th place in the end rankings. Last competition she was 9th, so this is a very good result that shows her improvement during the last month.
Valerya had some bad luck today, but she did a strong hoop routine. Valerya ended 10th last competition and again today, but unfortunately this was not enough to qualify for the nationals.
For me this competition was quite important, for it had been a long time ago that I did a good competition and I also wanted to make up for my 2nd place last time. Annemiek was accompanying me during this competition, which is very comfortable for me :) and I finally did a good competition again! With rope I had some minor mistakes but a satisfying routine over all. My second routine was hoop, which is a quite risky routine and today for the first time I was able to perform everything in competition =) When I finished the routine I felt like I had done really great, but looking back the video I had to change my opinion a bit as there were a lot of difficulties that I didn't do exactly as I'm supposed to. Anyway I'm still happy with the routine, there's just more room for improvement... Clubs I messed up a bit, I made a very small mistake in the beginning, which was followed by a drop and another drop later in the routine. The difficulties went quite good however, especially my cossack pirouette, which was 4 full turns this time! When I came off the floor after ribbon, Annemiek asked me why I wasn't smiling, so I answered that I didn't think my routine was that great. She disagreed, however, and looking back on the tape I also think that it was ok, especially the pirouettes.
After all I was quite satisfied with the competition, and I'm very glad to be 1st again =)

Now we will just continue to work hard for the National Championships, which will be on June 9th an 10th in Deventer!

Results Final category 4B & 3B
Results 2nd competition A-level

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29-04-07
Last weekend the European Championships in Artistic Gymnastics were organised in The Netherlands (Amsterdam). I went to watch the qualifications on Thursday and I really liked it.

The first subdivision started at 10:30 and there were two Dutch gymnasts competing (Verona vd Leur and Sanne Wevers). I really had to get used to the fact that there were gymnasts competing at all four apparatuses at the same time. I decided not to pay much attention to the vaults, as I can't tell a good vault from a bad one unless the gymnasts lands on her butt and the apparatus doesn't interest me much. But then I still had to divide my attention between bars, beam and floor and I was constantly feeling like I was missing things.
I really liked the little Belgian girl Gaelle Mys, she was one of the few gymnasts that I've seen actually using her floor music and expressing something, as for most girls it was mainly background noise. Verona vd Leur impressed me on floor, she looked a bit insecure and I had the feeling she had to adjust a lot on beam and especially bars, but on floor she rocked! Alina Kozich from Ukraine stood out even to my untrained eye, she's very elegant and has great form and she placed first after the first subdivision.

The 2 remaining Dutch gymnasts competed in the 2nd subdivision: Stephanie Tijmes and national champion Lichelle Wong. My favourite in this division was Steliana Nistor, she looked really tiny but performed amazing skills. A girl from Iceland I think, who was actually quite flexible, used my clubs music for her floor =p.
It bothered me a bit that some of the gymnasts didn't seem to be able to hit 180 degrees in their split jumps. I can understand that it is much more difficult to jump on the beam, but if you're watching with a rhythmic eye, expecting huge oversplits of half of the participants, it's a bit frustrating. Some gymnasts attempted ring jumps as well, but I think a lot would not even have gotten credit in RG. On the other hand, gymnasts performed extremely powerfull switch split jumps and the young Dutch gymnast Sanne Wevers did beautifull pirouettes where she was really turning around her axis. Very nice to watch, I wished I could turn like that.

Unfortunately I had to leave after the 2nd division or I would be late for my training, but I really liked watching AG (it was my first time actually) as it's very spectacular and the gymnasts perform really amazing skills. I'm really planning to follow this great sport more in the future.

Photos (quality is rather bad, but maybe you'll still like them..)

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17-04-07
Last weekend the Irina Deleanu Cup was held in Bucharest, Romania. Demi and I went to Romania on an invitation send to my club (!), joined by Fleurine, who was send by the Dutch Federation as they also were invited. Lisette accompanied us and judged at the competition.
I had never been in Romania before and it was great to go there.

We met Fleurine and her parents at Schiphol airport at ten. We went without a coach, as the tickets to Romania where expensive enough already. The four of us boarded the plane to Milan at noon. Waiting in Milan for our flight to Bucharest, we were entertained by the cutest 2-year old, who was singing and dancing for us and could even say the entire ABC. The plane was delayed 30 minutes in Milan, but we made up for it during the flight, arriving on the scheduled time (18:30 local time). We were picked up at the airport and brought to the competition hall where the judges meeting almost immediately started. While waiting for the meeting to be over, we watched the ukrainian and austrian gymnasts train. Afterwards we were taken to our hotel, which turned out to be a different one than previous years. Funny detail: at dinner the coaches and judges were served different food than the gymnasts :p.

The competition started Saterday with the rope and hoop routines for both juniors and seniors. Demi and Fleurine both started with rope and both did a good exercise. With hoop Demi had some problems in the beginning, where she missed the first throw. Fleurine did a good routine again with only a small mistake midway the routine and a bit unclean finish. For me today was not my lucky day as I messed up both hoop and rope. Hoop was worst, with two big drops one of them out of the carpet. I had just been doing hoop very well in trainings last week, so I was really disappointed not being able to show this at the competition. Rope had some good parts, but I still made some (stupid) mistakes, including a drop. After the senior competition the competition for junior groups took place. The Bulgarian team is absolutely amazing! I had seen their routine on video before, but in real life it looks even better, it's so cool! We had also been looking forward to see the russian jr. group but unfortunately the group that was here wasn't the national team. After the competition finished we returned to the hotel, while Lisette stayed in the hall for another judges meeting. In the hotel we saw an AG competition on tv that was also taking place in Romania today, and we even saw the floor routine of a Dutch gymnast.

On Sunday we had to get up early, as the buss to the hall left already at 8. Today the juniors did ball and ribbon. Fleurine unfortunately had some problems in ball, but her ribbon routine was much better with some very beautiful pirouettes. Demi did a very good ball and ribbon went nicely as well, despite a small drop halfway the routine. Senior were doing clubs and ribbon today. Although warming up went good, I was much more nervous than yesterday. Lisette told me the nerves would help me focus however, and today defenitely was better than yesterday. I had a small drop in ribbon but most of the pirouettes went good and I didn't make other big mistakes. Most importantly, I was able to enjoy myself on the carpet. Clubs went very good in the beginning, I had a lot of time to perform everything well and it felt very easy. I did a double cossack pirouette however, while we just changed my forms to make it a triple. And I dropped my last throw.. again :s It was exactly the same mistake as at the qualification competition in Holland last month (ok a bit smaller though as this time I could finish with both clubs),

and I couldn't believe that I was so stupid to do that again. Actually I was thinking for it during the routine, I was just thinking to late...
I was a bit dissapointed by my clubs mark, as it was almost the same as I got for rope and I didn't really understand that. I climbed from 8th place yesterday to 6th place however, so that was a good thing. Fleurine and Demi ended 12th and 14th out of 17 gymnasts.

After the competition there was a banquet, it was nice but it went on a bit to long and thus got a bit boring in the end, as it was mostly just sitting and eating. The next morning we would be taken to the airport at 4 AM, but no bus arrived at 4:05, nor at 4:10... This was quite a problem, as our flight was leaving at 6 and who could we call in the middle of the night. Eventually we made the receptionist at our hotel (luckily there was one) call someone of the organisation, who told us to wait two minutes and they would call back. We were told this several times.. in the end we decided to call a taxi, which arrived very quick at half past four. But as the driver took one look at our luggage, he said that it would be impossible to get all of it to the airport.. However at the same time the bus finally came, so we did arrive on the airport in time.
Troubles weren't over yet, as there were problems with the luggage belt at the airport. Both flights went fine, and from Bucharest to Milan we were even put in business class as all other seats were full. When we arrived at Schiphol however, it turned out that three of our suitcases were found in Milan... They were put on the next flight and should be delivered at our homes today...

Photos
Results and detailed results

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06-04-07

Back from Calais! We left Thursday (March 29th) in the afternoon. We were supposed to go with me and Danielle, Annemiek (judge), Daniela (coach) and Paula (mother of Danielle) would also accompany us. Unfortunately due to some miscommunication at the last moment Daniela couldn't come with us. We went to Calais by car and the trip was supposed to take less than 4 hours. But an hour away from home, around Rotterdam, we took a wrong exit and ended up on the wrong side of the city and it took us like 45 minutes to get back to the right way through a traffic jam... Than in Belgium we missed the E40 highway and drove the entire part in Belgium through small towns --> nice sightseeing :p. Eventually the trip took over 6 hours and we arrived at the hostel were the delegations stayed around half past 8.

The next morning we had training early, at 08:30 I think. Training went fine, I only had some problems with the reversed roll of the hoop because the carpet was very different from what I'm used to, and also in the end we started to feel that we hadn't have breakfast yet. It was very nice to see the girls and coaches from No Limits (Belgium) again =) There were 2 groups of juniors and 2 groups of seniors. Danielle was in the 1st junior group and I was in the 2nd senior group, and it turned out that we were both first in the starting order.. great..:p Danielle's competition started at 14:30 and she first had to do ball. She had two small drops in the routine and unfortunately she failed her 1.00 difficulty (double cossack pirouette to cossack balance). She wasn't totally happy with the routine, although the rest of the elements were quite good. Juniors did ball and ribbon on this 1st day, and Danielle did a good ribbon routine only with a small drop and the pirouette was good this time =) Alexandra Ermakova from Russia was obviously the best here and also the one with the shiniest leo's... we really liked her ball leo, it has so many rhime stones on it! I also really liked the two Canadian juniors a lot and also Solene Bereszczynski from France. Of course Amber and Lieselotte from Belgium were great to watch as always.

My competition started only at 20:45 and I had to start with rope. Unfortunately I had a lot of small mistakes and missing of one of the ends of the rope on the wrong moments in the routine, so that I couldn't perform some of the difficulties well either. My second routine was hoop, and it went good! After my first throw, which isn't very spectacular or original, I heard the audience yelling, (later it turned out to have been Amber and Lieselotte and their parents) very nice and it really helped me in the routine. I didn't have any big mistakes, except that I couldn't fix very well both my 0.6 and 0.8 Utiacheva difficulties. In Holland they're very strict on fixation and I'm sure they would've been crossed out there, but I guess they might've been counted today as I had a very high D-score (6.050; 4th score of all the hoop D-scores!). I got a 13.525 for hoop, which is the highest score I've ever gotten for this routine =). Unfortunately it was not enough to make the final, I was the first reserve... :(

Saterday morning we had training a little bit later, so that we could have breakfast first. After we were done training, Annemiek, Paula and I went to the center of Calais. It was very nice to see that there was a lot of advertising for the tournament, even a large flag on the town hall or something. Danielle was in the first group again (a bit strange that the groups didn't change the 2nd day..) but not the first gymnast anymore. First routine was rope, which was fine without big mistakes, but in the end she had to rush some things down in order to finish with the music. Danielle's last routine was hoop, and it went very good! When she came off the carpet she said that she probably had never done such a good hoop. She earned a very well deserved 17 something for it. I was doing clubs and ribbon today, but during warm-up I had allready some mental problems, it just didn't feel good, totally different from yesterday. I couldn't totally come out of it, and I made a lot of mistakes in clubs. Right after my ribbon routine I also felt quite bad about it, but looking back I think I might have been pretty satisfied if it hadn't been right after clubs. I had placed quite good after the first day (14th out of 20 gymnasts) but of course now I dropped a lot in the final results, ending 18th. Danielle ended 22nd out of 25 gymnasts.

The finals took place the next day. As it was April 1st, I tried an April fools joke with Annemiek, telling her that one of the gymnasts had dropped out of the hoop final and that I could compete. I never thought she'd believe it, as it was half an hour before the start of the competition and I was wearing jeans without my hair or make-up done or anything, but she did :p. It got a bit painful though, because then I had to say it wasn't true... The finals were very nice to watch. We cheered a lot for Amber, who was in all four finals. She did great too, with even a 4th place in rope. Amber is one of the sweetest and hardest working girls I know, and I'm very glad she's doing so well. I was surprised by Delphine Ledoux from France, I never was a big fan of hers but I really liked her routines on this competition, especially her hoop. We didn't go to the banquet but left right after the competition finished, as most of us had work/school again on Monday.

Photos Friday, Saterday and Sunday
Results and detailed results (only seniors for now)

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25-03-07
Today the first qualification competition for nationals took place in Nieuw-Vennep. The best 10 gymnast in each category over this competition and the 2nd qualification will participate at the Dutch Nationals in June.
The competition was originally planned for next week, but as the federation found a organizing club only at the very last minute, there was no sports hall available on that date anymore. Because of the date change, there were not enough judges to form two complete teams, so due to the time limit it was decided that everybody would do only three routines. On the day of the competition would be decided by draw which apparatus would be dropped.

When I arrived category 3A had just finished the competition. Vera and Verena had competed for Pax and had done a good job by ending on the fourth and fifth place. Marit Harte won the gold medal in this category.
Demi competed in junior category. The routines with hoop where dropped, so the juniors performed with rope, ball and ribbon. Demi did a good rope with only minor mistakes. Ball wasn't bad either, but I think she can do it better. She had some problems with ribbon, but she still scored enough for the bronze medal. Fleurine Menijn and Danielle Bubberman fought for the gold in a very exciting competition. The difference between them was extremely small on every routine. Danielle had 0.20 point more in the end and ended first.

Christel, Valerya and I competed in senior category. Valerya actually turned 17 today, happy birthday Val!! For us it was also hoop that was dropped, so we would do rope, clubs and ribbon. Christel showed good and stable routines with rope (5th place) and clubs, but had some problems in ribbon and the judges were very strict on her here.
Valerya had some trouble with an injury on her calf muscles the week before the competition but she managed to do quite good with rope and especially clubs. Unfortunately she had a big mistake in ribbon, but the pirouettes were very good.
I had a pretty bad competition again after not doing too well at regionals last month either. I started with rope, where I made two drops and I also failed my 0.8 point Outiacheva. It felt a bit like I was reliving 2005 Nationals, hearing the scores and seeing that I'm one point behind already after one routine... My second routine was ribbon and I still couldn't totally get it together; although it was much better than rope I have missed a lot in Difficulty. Finally with clubs I started very good, I felt more relaxed and very comfortable, but then I made a big drop and another one in the end, finishing with one club out of the carpet. On the plus side: I made a clean triple passé pirouette in ribbon and almost a quadruple cossack in clubs :) Not that it matters anything as they're both written as doubles on my forms but still :p
Christel ended 9th, Valerya 10th and I was 2nd. Evelien van Rheenen won gold and Sanne Kouters ended on the third place.
I have to admit that I really, really hate to have lost, but seeing the video I can only say that it was totally fair. And besides that, as a lot of people told me today, things like this keep you focused...

Anyway I hope to do much better next week when I'll be competing in the Coupe d'Opale in Calais together with Danielle. Also coming up is the Irina Deleanu Cup together with Demi and Fleurine in April. I'm really looking forward to these competitions, and for now I will just try to forget this competition as fast as possible and then continue to work, especially on consistency, for I have much more to show than I did today!!

Results

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23-03-07
Back online after my site has been down for a week!
We had a busy weekend, with the 1st qualification competition for groups on Saterday and the 2nd C-level competition on Sunday.

The 1st qualification competition for groups was held in Hillegom. All SV Pax groups were competing in the morning. The group of category 2B was the first to perform their routine with 10 clubs. The group, consisting of Chelsey Borchers, Roxanne Mooijekind, Martine Tromp, Nicole Tjan, Tayla Greyling and reserve Kimberly Borchers, started very good, but in the end they made some big mistakes and big drops that costed them a lot of points. Clubs defenitely is a difficult apparatus for groups, and lots of teams had quite some troubles with their routines. Verena Janga, Vera Meulblok, Sanne Faber and Eline Lakerveld competed in category 3 and did a routine with 4 hoops (compulsory apparatus) as well as their routine with 8 clubs that lasted from last year. Both routines still lacked a bit synchronity but were completed without big problems, which earned the group the gold medal for their hoop routine and a silver on clubs.

Our junior group (Christel Grimbergen, Demi Aarts, Michelle Tjon, Nicole Tjan and Patty Groeskamp) performed with ten clubs. The routine is pretty difficult, and at the last competition 2 weeks ago they had still had a lot of mistakes, but today they did great and improved their score with almost 4 points! They ended first with a large advantage on nr. 2.
By the results of today, all our groups have a good chance at qualifying for the national championships, but this will be decided at the 2nd qualification competition which will be held April 21st.

Photos

The 2nd C-level competition on Sunday was held in Kudelstaart. This competition was important, as the best 3-4 gymnasts in each category over this competition and the first one (held in February) would qualify for the Dutch nationals. I had my first coaching experience today :D - well not my very first, but it was the first time that I had young girls who really needed me during the competition.

The day started with the youngest girls in category 4C, I had two girls here who are both very young, for one of them (Nicole) it was even her very first rhythmic competition. I had to tell her that she had to salute to the judges before and after her routine :P. Anna had done some competitions allready, but now for the first time she did both routines (free and hoop). Alisha, who is a junior actually, competed in the morning as well because she was not able to compete in the afternoon. She started good with ribbon, without major mistakes, and continued this way with her routines with ball and without apparatus. Anna did well in her routine without apparatus and she looked extremely endearing as she's very tiny and cute. With hoop, her music was wrong so she had to leave the floor and start over again, but she took it very good and did a nice routine. Nicole only started rhythmic gymnastics a few months ago so she only did her routine without apparatus. She had a little problem with the direction of the routine, but for the first time she did really great.

In category 3C Suzanne, Angela and Samuella competed, where Suzanne had a good chance of qualifying for nationals by her 4th place ending at the 1st competition. Angela was the first to show her hoop routine to the judges and audience and she did quite well although she admitted that there were some flappy toes throughout the routine. In her next routine, without apparatus, her body tension onfortunately was a bit less. Ribbon is still a difficult apparatus, but Angela managed to do it without too big mistakes. Angela ended on the fifth place in this competition, and with hoop she was the best in this category!
Suzanne had to start without apparatus. I had worked on a few things with her during warm up, and I was seeing every single thing of it back during her competition routine! That was so cool! It was a very good routine anyway, with nicely fixed difficulties and no execution mistakes. With hoop and ribbon she did quite well too, although she had a drop in both routines. Suzanne ended on a (shared) 3rd place today, and 4th over the 2 competitions which was just enough to qualify for nationals! Samuella did her best, but you could see the routines are still a bit difficult for her.

In the afternoon, Alannah and Annelotte had to defeat their first places of last competition in junior and senior category. Allthough the competition was in the afternoon, Alannah seemed still a bit sleepy, as she forgot one part of her ribbon and did another part twice instead :p. With ball she'd wake up however and did a very good routine. Unfortunately she had a big drop in the end, but she still had the highest score of all juniors on this apparatus. Her routine without apparatus went good as well, so Alannah won gold again and logically also became the regional champion over the two comps of this year. Elleander started with ribbon, which went very well and looked very solid. She wasn't completely satisfied with her ball routine, that had some minor mistakes, but she still earned a very good mark on it. With hoop she did good as well, which made her end on the fourth place today, one spot higher than on last competition. Over the two competitions she earned the 4th place as well, which is onfortunately one place short of qualifying for the finals.. Annelotte was starting with ribbon also. This is an obligatory routine (the same for every junior and senior gymnast...) and not really difficult compared to her other routines. She still had some small mistakes however. Her 2nd routine (hoop) was her best routine today and went almost without mistakes. The last routine with ball looked a bit insecure but didn't have big mistakes and even earned a score of 12.225, which was the highest score of the day and almost two points above the 2nd ball score.

This was more than enough to win the gold again, and with two gold medals Annelotte off course also prolonguated her titel as regional champion.

Annelotte, Alannah and Suzanne will participate at the national finals on April 14th organised by SV Pax!

Photos, results

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24-02-07
Today the start of the RG season in Holland, the regional championships, were organised in Beverwijk. This competition is for both individuals on A-level and groups on A- and B-level.

The groups started their competition in the morning. SV Pax competed with groups in category 3, 2B and 2A. I haven't seen much of 3 and 2B, but I guess they did well, as they both won on all exercises they participated in. The group of 2A was the only participant in their category so they got first also, although they still had a lot of drops and other mistakes. But they haven't worked on group too much yet this year, so more consistency will come with time.

After the groups, the seniors of category 1A had their competition. The club SVOD from Deventer participated as a guest, which made the field quite interesting actually as there will only 3-4 additional gymnasts in the national competitions. My competition was a little disaster... I started allright with rope, there were still some messy things but this is only my third comp with this routine and it was better than the last two so there's defenitely progression. My second routine was hoop, also only the third competition but I know I can do this routine better than I showed it today. I had a drop that came totally out of the blue for me, the throw looked perfect to me but I had to rebounce the hoop on my chest and it suddenly bounced way to far away.. Later my coach also said she never saw that coming and I still don't understand.. but I was most fed up with having to put my hand on the floor twice during a difficulty (2 times 0.40 deduction :S) I was really looking forward to do clubs, as it is my most stable routine, but it turned out terrible.. I dropped 4(!) times, big drops also and I failed some difficulties as well... I was so angry with myself afterwards. I didn't show a routine or anything, I was just going from drop to mistake to next drop. Luckily I could use the anger to hit my ribbon quite well, especially compared with how I've been doing it in trainings this last week.

Valerya and christel were also competing in 1A, I haven't seen their routines but Valerya ended 7th and Christel 5th. I ended 1st and, looking at my scores, I realised that my current goal (an AA-score of 55.300 - so an average of 13.800 per routine) isn't as far away as I thought it was! With rope I already scored enough and with ribbon I came close (13.400). Considering rope and especially ribbon are normally my weakest events, it must be possible to get there with hoop and clubs as well if the judging doesn't get much harsher on next competitions.

After the break the competition for category 2A and 3A started. Demi participated in category 2A and, still recovering from her knee injury, she decided to skip rope so she wouldn't worsen the injury by the amount of jumps that are required in rope. The remaining three routines she did good, with some mistakes but without big problems. Of course with only three routines she ended on the 4th place.
Verena and Vera participated in 3A and ended 2nd and 3rd.

Results and detailed results

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11-02-07

Yesterday the Belgian club Les Provinciales from Verviers organised their annual international tournament. This year the only foreign countries participating were France and the Netherlands, but the level was slightly higher than last year, especially in junior category due to the participation of No Limits gymnastics. The organisation had kindly allowed us to come with one extra gymnast, so we went with the four of us: Demi competed in junior category and Christel, Valerya and I in senior category. We had no participant in the morning competition (espoirs) but Lisette did have to judge, so we had to leave early again. Because we were with 4 gymnasts, we were going with two cars and Demi's parents, who drove, came to watch the competition. We arrived at the hall just in time for the start of the espoirs competition. Some of the girls were still very young and looked mainly very cute on the carpet, but others like Nina Evrard and Nyamekye Dupont where allready doing some great stuff, amazing for girls their age.

The junior competition was scheduled next and Demi started quite good with her rope routine. However, as it turned out later, she had landed one of her leaps in a wrong way, which caused her a painfull knee and unfortunately prevented her from finishing the competition.

Christel, Valerya and I had to compete in the senior competition. We could do three routines, so Christel and I did rope, hoop and clubs and Valerya choose to do hoop, clubs and ribbon. Christel was the very first gymnast in this competition and besides some problems with rope she showed nice routines.
For Valerya, who was still competing in the national senior group at the ECh in Moscow in September, this competition was her first individual performance since more than a year. She also has four new routines, so inevitably there were still some mistakes in her routines but for the time of the year she could be quite satisfied.
For me my still quite new routines with rope and hoop went ok, especially the first half of my hoop routine. In the second half my work with the apparatus was more messy and I had to skip some CAPs but I didn't make big mistakes and it was defenitely much better than on last competition.
My clubs routine is allready 'old' so the difficulty is that we cannot be satisfied with anything less than a flawless performance anymore. This competition my elements went quite good, but unfortunately I made two very stupid, absolutely unneccesairy drops.

Eventually I ended 4th, Christel ended 7th and Valerya 8th. The senior competition was won by Catherine Gerontitis from the organising club, Charline Marchal from Royale Vaillante won the silver medal and Florine Dally (FRA) became third. The junior competition was ruled by the girls from No Limits Gymnastics, with Tamara Tevdoradze winning their intern competition and the gold medal. Amber Heijdens ended 2nd and first-year junior Kelly de Block 3rd. Demi's rope routine earned her a 8th place on this apparatus. We didn't really have a chance in the team competition, as we didn't have an espoir and only a half junior score, but we ended 5th and got a beautiful statue. Apart from Demi's injury, it was a very nice competition, also because I could see a lot of my Belgian friends again, and it was a good preparation for the start of the competitive season in Holland, which will begin with our regional competition in two weeks.

Photos
Results

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08-02-07
Yesterday evening the awards for athlete of the year 2006 of the Haarlemmermeer (part of Holland where I live) where announced. Valerya was nominated in the category SportTopper Team with the Dutch national group that performed at the 2006 ECh and I was nominated in the category 18+. Besides we also had to do an exhibition together with Demi and Christel.

The presentation of the awards took place in the city hall of Hoofddorp. We had to be there at six to warm up and prepare for our demonstration, which would be on Christina Aguilera's 'Hurt'. At half past six we had 30 minutes to work on the official podium, which was only 5 by 6 meters (!). At half past seven all nominees officially entered the hall together and the evening was opened by the Haarlemmermeer alderman Michel Bezuijen. The presentation of the evening was done by Humberto Tan, who is a television sports reporter and well-known here in the Netherlands. After the official opening the presentation of the awards started, alternated with all kinds of exhibitions. Our exhibition went good, at least we didn't fall off the podium. Off course we had included some flexibility, and after we were finished Humberto Tan commented that the titel of our song 'Hurt' had been very suitable :p.

The group and I both didn't win the award; a baseball team was awarded Sporttopper Team of 2006 and hockey keeper Lisanne de Roever got the prize in my category.
After the official part there was an more unofficial part with drinks and snacks which was very cosy. We even got to take a picture together with Humberto Tan. At first Lisette tried to take it but it was all blurry, so in the end Humberto took the picture himself. It was a very nice evening and it really hope we can go again next year!

Photos

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16-01-07

The first 2007 competition is over again! Saterday January 13th a match was organised between juniors and seniors from Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The competition was held in Verviers (BEL). From Holland juniors Fleurine Menijn, Danielle Bubberman and Demi Aarts and seniors Sanne Kouters and I participated. Although it was possible to stay in Verviers the whole weekend, we decided to make it a one-day competition so we left early Saterday morning. Verviers isn't too far away for us (about 2.5 hours driving) so Valerya, Christel and Kim-Manou came along to support us, as did some of our parents. We arrived at the Athenee Royale around 12, and as it was the first competition under the new COP, the judges meeting almost immediately started. At 13h the junior competition started. Unfortunately there were no France juniors competiting, but there were quite a lot Belgium girls, making a total of 11 juniors. Demi, Fleurine and Danielle did a good job showing their sometimes very changed or new routines.

In the afternoon Sanne and I had our competition. For me this was the first competition were I would perform my 5 weeks old rope and hoop routine, so I was pretty nervous about it. Rope went quite good for a new routine though, off course with some small mistake but I could continue the routine and finish in time ;) With hoop I had some very big mistakes unfortunately. Clubs went very good but ribbon was very bad with a drop, a knot and almost all pirouettes performed badly.

Originally we were told this competition would be a competition between countries, were individual scores would add to the country total. However this format seemed to be dropped along the day, and during award ceremony only individual rankings were announced. Fleurine was the only medallist in our team, ending on the 3rd place. The other junior winners were Sjarai Burms (1st) and Valentine Berg (2nd) both from Belgium. Danielle and Demi ended on the 5th and 8th place. Belgium gymnasts took all medals also in senior category, with Manon Masset ending first, Katrien Morbee 2nd and first-year senior Catherine Gerontitis 3rd. I ended 6th and Sanne 7th. Our favourite here was Florine Dally from France who unfortunately had some problems with ribbon and ended 5th.

It was a nice competition and a very good opportunity to test our new routines and see if we're on the right track concerning the new code. After the competition there was a meal organised for the foreign gymnasts and after we were finished eating we returned home.

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08-12-06

Last weekend the Belgian club Happy Gym Gent organized their annual international tournament Happy Cup. This year for the first time my club also got an invitation, so we went with Demi (junior), I (senior) and coach Natalya Bouravkina and judge Lisette de Meza. Two other dutch clubs were also invited; from Badhoeve Roxanne Stoffer and Fleurine Menijn participated in junior category and from SVOD Sanne Kouters took part in senior competition and Lineke Schurink and Joanke van Dijk in junior competition. Fleurines parents had also come to see the competition and her father Leo took some beautiful photos which can be seen at his weblog www.leomenijn.blogspot.com.

We left Friday morning, as the first half of the AA competition would allready take place that afternoon. We arrived at our hotel around one o'clock, where we met the delegation of the Badhoeve at the reception. Our training officially started at 13:15 but we decided to skip the training and have a meal in the hotel instead, as Demi's competition allready started at four. Both the junior and senior competition was divided into two groups. Demi and Fleurine were in the first junior group today.

Demi had a few drops in ribbon but rope was allready much better despite some small problems. Fleurine did a very good clubs routine and ribbon was also quite good, especially if you know that it was only finished for two weeks or so. Roxanne officially isn't even junior yet till January, but she coped very well with the high level of the competition and showed nice routines with hoop and clubs. I really liked the canadian juniors, especially Sarah Briand, she has the most impressive jumps and very nice and original apparatus handling. I was almost the last participant in the second senior group, so my competition started only at half past nine... My first routine was ball and I wasn't completely satisfied with it, I didn't make very big mistakes but there were a lot of insecurities and I can perform it much better. It was extra dissapointing because it was my last ball routine, as ball will be gone for seniors in January...=( In clubs I had two big drops, one very stupid, and also my music skipped several times so that wasn't the best routine either :s.

The next morning we could sleep late, as we decided to skip the visit to the city townhall or something and have a little bit of training instead. Roxanne, Lineke and Joanke were in the first group today. The competition started with the hoop routine of Joanke, she had to perform it again as yesterday there had been something wrong with the files and the routine had not been judged. Demi and Fleurine were in the second group now, Demi did her two favourite apparatuses (ball and hoop) today and especially ball was very good.
I had to do rope and ribbon now and somehow I was much more nervous than usual. After all, I think the routines were both not bad but I was more busy trying not to make mistakes than with showing a nice routine.
This night, Demi and I moved over to the room of Fleurine and Roxanne who had two extra beds, so it was very cosy.

The next morning we couldn't sleep too late, as Fleurine and Roxanne were leaving early and Demi and I wanted to join the city tour that the organisation had planned. The tour was nice, it was fun to see some more of the city than just the sports hall. It only took a bit too long, as in the end it started to rain and the wind got very hard (I had to hold Demi or else she couldn't keep standing). In the afternoon we watched the finals, I just loved Vanya Kirova from Bulgaria, nice jumps, nice pivots, very nice to watch. Mojca Rode was great too, very powerfull although she made some mistakes in clubs and ribbon. In junior category Nevin Sevinc Deveci was amazing, she improved again after the last time I saw her and she's getting more and more impressive.

After the competition Demi and I were the only gymnasts left to represent the Netherlands in the closing ceremony as the girls from Badhoeve and SVOD had allready departed. We didn't go to the banquet following the competition but went home immediately after the competition.

Photos Friday, Saterday, Sunday

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29-11-06

Since the start of the season in September my club SV Pax has an own training hall, and last Monday it was officially opened. The opening was celebrated with homages to the champions of the club and several exhibitions. The hall is called Vespo hall and is situated in Nieuw-Vennep, a town close to Hoofddorp where I live. The evening started with the homage to several Dutch Champions in MAG. Valerya and I were also honoured for Valerya's participation in the Europeans this year and my first place at the Dutch Nationals (although the chairman of the club started his speech with "... the RG-department didn't have any national champions this year.." ok thanks!) Afterwards there also were some exhibitions of WAG and RG.

Photos

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13-11-06
Last Saterday the annual 'koppelwedstrijd' was organised by the regio Noord-Holland. This competition takes place for the 4th time now and girls of all ages and all levels from our part of the country compete. The competition is a bit different from usual competitions, the gymnasts are divided in teams and not the individual gymnasts but the teams compete for the first place. Every year the competition has another theme and this year it had to be fruit and vegetables (yes really...!).
The teams got the name of a fruit (morning competition) or vegetable (afternoon competition) and during opening and award ceremonies the members of the team are supposed to dress up like the fruit/vegetable they belong to... We repeatedly tried to convince the organisation that now it's the judges and coaches turn to dress up, but for some reason we haven't been succesfull yet.. :P

In the morning competition the teams were build with gymnasts of category 1 (seniors) and category 3 (11-12 years old). Everyone could show 2 routines, but some of the youngest or less-experienced gymnasts did only one. Still there were like 50 gymnasts in every rotation, which made one rotation took over 2 hours.
I had to do rope and clubs, and I had planned to do my brand new rope routine.. but when I first did it completely with music in training this week it turned out to be simply impossible... even for such a small competition. So I did my old rope, and it went very very good. Two hours later I could finally do clubs, which wasn't bad either except for one small drop.

My team (banana's) had been on the third place during the whole competition, but during award ceremony it turned out we dropped to the 7th (and last) place... auch :p. The pineapple team won the competition. Next to the prize for the best team there were prizes for the most talented gymnasts, the best dressed team and the highest score. The best dressed team was the team of the grapes, where most girls were covered by green or purple balloons. Marit Harte of Omnia was the most talented and I had the highest score of the morning competition (15.016 for clubs). I was very happy, since for a few months my goal has been getting a score over 15 and I knew it had to happen today cause in national competitions I won't get it (yet).

In the afternoon category 2 (juniors) and 4 (youngest girls) competed. Some of the girls can't have been older than 7 or 8 years old and it was very cute to watch. The best team here was the team of the tomatos. Highest score was for Danielle Bubberman (13.916 for ball - very beautiful routine) and Denise Leijerzapf was awarded the most talented gymnast.

Results
Photos by Leo Menijn part 1, 2 and 3

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09-11-06

Last weekend the Belgium club 'Les Provinciales' organised the 20th aniversairy of the international junior tournament Eurygym Cup. Traditionally some of the best juniors from all over the world compete there and this year was very interesting again, with participants from Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and many more countries. For my club SV Pax Demi and Christel went to Verviers together with coach Daniela Kostin and judge Lisette de Meza. I was very lucky, because my coach had asked the organisation if I could come too as a spectator, and they allowed! I'm very greatfull for that, cause I really enjoyed myself in Belgium =). We left Thursday evening right out of our training and after 2.5 hours of driving we arrived in the boarding school were the delegations were staying. The drawing of lots had allready taken place, as most delegations arrived earlier that day. Demi turned out to be the very first gymnast of the entire competition and Christel was in the second group. As it was allready near midnight, we (almost) immediately went to bed.

The next day we had to leave for the competition at half past twelve, so in the morning we had some time to watch the trainings of other countries. We discovered Monika Mincheva was there to do a gala exhibition! It was very nice to see her training. At twelve we had lunch, and at half past twelve the bus to the competition hall was supposed to leave. We took our own car however, because only gymnasts of the first group were allowed in the bus (although it was almost half empty when it left). Demi opened the competition and she did good exercises. She had some problems with rope which had just been changed a lot, but especially her ball was very good. Alexandra Piscupescu was very very impressing, she's still so young and allready amazing. The 2nd group was much more interesting than the 1st, with the two Russians (I was told they're twins), the two other Romanians, Stoimenova from Bulgaria and also Amber Heijdens from Belgium. Christel was in the 2nd group too, lucky for her she was not one of the last since the competion ended after midnight. You could see the gymnasts got tired towards the end of the competition, there were more and more small mistakes as it got later. Christel did good exercises and ended 30th out of 44 gymnasts, Demi got 37th. The russian twins won gold and bronze and Irina Lalciu got 2nd.

On Saterday the finals took place, 2 of which were won by Irina Lalciu (hoop and ribbon), one by Elena Romanchenko (rope) and one by Marina Stoimenova (clubs). Stoimenova had made some mistakes during AA but was much better in the finals. Alexandra Piscupescu qualified for the clubs final and ended 6th.
After the competition there was a gala show including Monika Mincheva who did her ball routine. Unfortunately she had some small mistakes, but the routine was still very beautifull. Demi and Christel also did an exhibition.
After the gala we left right out of the hall to be back home at eleven that evening.

Photos and results

Two weeks earlier the final of the 2006 grand prix series took place in Berlin. Since the Netherlands organize a grand prix, I was allowed to participate being the national champion. I left with my coach on Friday morning very very early, since we went by train we had to be at the railstation at 6:15.. Seven hours later we arrived in Berlin where we were picked up by a car of the organisation. We were one of the last countries to arrive, together with the Finnish delegation. We were taken to the hotel first were we did the accreditation and had half an hour to unpack before we went to the hall to train. Training wasn't too great after the long trip, also because they kept postponing our turn on the competition carpet. But it was good to feel the carpet and the athmosphere in the hall (which is still great - after Kiev Berlin is one of my favourite sport halls). After training Lisette and Jolanda Sap who judges for Holland stayed in the hall for the drawing of lots. The competition was divided in two groups, first group A did all four apparatuses and after that the gymnasts of group B did their complete competition. I like it this way much more than in Deventer, where there was a break of almost three hours between my 2nd and 3rd routine. I started in group A as number 7, which meant I had to start with clubs.

Saterday morning we had a little bit of training and in the afternoon the competition took place. Warming up with clubs went very good, but unfortunately during the actual competition routine I made a big drop and I also had to make some saves. My coach said that still a lot could be counted in difficulty and artistry, but off course it costed me a lot of points in execution. During warm up with ribbon I had troubles with my first throw, I have to catch during a pivot and I actually didn't catch it a single time. But on the carpet I was so focused on it that I didn't only catch it but completed 2 turns instead of 1 like I was supposed to. Allmost all other pirouettes went very good (normally I'm a disaster with pirouettes) so I liked the routine a lot despite one small drop in the middle of the routine.
My third routine was rope, which was fine except that I dropped one end of the rope on my first throw. The last routine, ball... I was so happy with it, it was almost flawless and when I turned to leave the carpet I saw my coach standing with thumbs up =).

On Sunday we first had some sightseeing in Berlin (me and Naazmi Johnston from Australia were the only ones who prefered to hear it in English so we had like a private tour guide :p. In the afternoon the finals took place, but unfortunately we could only see rope and ball before we had to leave to catch our train back to Holland...

Photos and results

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18-10-06
Last weekend I went to Italy for the 5th Udine tournament together with Danielle Bubberman of SV Omnia and coach Barbara Gerritsen (also Omnia).
We left Friday October 13th from Schiphol Airport in the afternoon. We were first flying to Zurich and from there we went to Venice with a small plane. The plane was so small that our handluggage (with our leos, musics and apparatuses) had to be checked in... We were a little worried about our balls and ribbon sticks, but luckily everything arrived in Venice and nothing got broken.
In Venice we were picked up by the organisation and after we waited for a few minutes for Liubou Charkashyna to arrive, we drove to Udine with a little van. We arrived at our hotel at about 8 o'clock, so we immediately had dinner and went to bed early for we had to take the bus to the competition hall allready at half past nine the next morning.

Saterday morning Barbara went to the competition hall allready at half past eight to deliver our fishes and musics at the judges meeting. After Danielle and I almost missed the bus (not our fault, it left 5 minutes earlier than scheduled!) we arrived in the competition hall at 9:45. The little girls who competed in the girls competition and also some juniors were allready warming up and Danielle had to start almost immediately too. The girls competition was so cute to watch and some of the gymnasts were really amazing. The little girl from Russia (Margarita Sarkisyan) really was stunning, I wouldn't believe the things she did when I hadn't seen it myself. I've never seen such a young girl perform the difficulties she did (like backscale pivot starting from the floor, very impressing!) The gymnasts in this category only did a routine without apparatus and not so surprisingly, the competition was won by Sarkisyan. The juniors did a routine with hoop and a routine with either rope or ribbon. Danielle had to start with ribbon and she did quite good, unfortunately she had one drop out of the carpet which costed her a lot of points. Her hoop routine was good with only some small mistakes, but when she was finished Barbara was called to come to the organisation desk and it turned out that the execution panel had not been ready and had not judged the routine, so Danielle had to do her hoop routine over again! Luckily she performed it even better than the first time.

Seniors had to do clubs and either rope or ball and I was the very first to perform with clubs. I wasn't totally satisfied with the routine, I didn't have very big mistakes (although I can't remember if I just catched or just dropped my last throw) but the difficulties in the second half of the routine were not very well performed and it felt a little shaky overall. The second routine I did was ball, and it went very good! I had one very stupid mistake but the rest of the routine felt great :) I was especially happy with my last catch, 'cause I had dropped that throw over and over again during warm up, and also with my cosack pivot that I did better than usual after I had done it very bad in clubs.

The first 8 gymnasts of the junior and senior category continued to the finals (clubs for juniors and ribbon for seniors), but first there was a competition for teams. Each team had to present five routines with the five different apparatuses, performed by at least three different gymnasts. The mexican team was very nice (Cynthia Valdez, Rut Castillo and jr Sofia Sanchez). I saw Rut Castillo for the first time and I really liked her routines, especially her ball, she is very flexible and has a beautiful style. The russian team was very nice too (Olga Kapranova, Olga Stryuchkova and Diana Botsieva), Stryuchkova did an amazing pirouette in all her routines, from leg high up in the back held with the opposite hand to leg to the side during the same turn. The russian team got first, silver for Mexico and bronze for one of the Italian teams (with Beatrice Zancanaro). The junior competition was won by Diana Botsieva, before Lucia Miola (Italy) and Sofia Sanchez. Olga Kapranova got first in senior category, Charkashyna 2nd and Gimatova 3rd. I hadn't seen Gimatova perform for a long time but now I like her more than before.

After the competition there was a banquet held in the hotel. During the exchange of gifts between gymnasts, Danielle got a tiny ping pong set so we ended up playing ping pong over the table were the food had been :p.
Sunday we had to leave to the airport at 12 o'clock so we had some spare time in the morning. The weather was very nice so we wanted to walk to the center of Udine but it turned out to be 3 km from the hotel. Luckily our hotel offered free bikes that we could borrow, so we could go by bike (two bikes for three people, since the key of the third bike was broken). The center of Udine was very nice and also very busy for a Sunday morning. After Danielle had made friends with a 2 year old boy who kept coming to her, we went to get a delicious and very big Italian ice-cream for us and a capuchino for Barbara. Then we had to go back allready again to go to the airport.
After a long trip we arrived on Schiphol at 7 o'clock that evening, pretty tired but with another great experience. I really enjoyed my time in Italy, we had a lot of fun and I really hope to be able to go again next year!

Photos of qualification and team competition, results

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10-09-06
Last weekend the Deventer Masters Grand Prix took place in Deventer, Holland. The Netherlands participated with the national group, 2 juniors (Linda de Geus and Fleurine Menijn) and 1 senior (myself).

We left Thursday morning and arrived around half past ten in the hotel where I and my coach stayed for the accreditation. After we received some presents from the organisation and sponsors we immediately left to sport hall De Scheg, as our training started at half past 11 already. It was very nice to be back in de Scheg again, it's a very nice hall and very suitable to organise such a big competition as Deventer Masters.

Training didn't went very good for me, I really had to adjust a lot because I never train with those springs under the carpet. For jumps this is very nice, but it made my balances and pivots very insecure. Luckily there was no training scheduled on the competition floor for 2 hours after our training, so Linda, who also had some problems with the carpet, and I could continue to work and get used to the floor. When we were finished, we watched the warming-up of Belarus, which was very nice to see. We also watched some of the music training afterwards and then I and Lisette left to our hotel to have dinner. All other girls were in hostfamilies, but I was staying in the hotel because I was in the grand prix competition. At first I didn't really like that, but it turned out to be not so bad at all. I shared a room with the german gymnast Johanna Gabor, who was very nice and friendly.

The next morning we had training allready at half past 8 because I had place 4 in the starting order. We didn't have training together with the whole team, which was the case in previous years I think... But I have to say that I liked it better, because now I was on the carpet with only one other gymnast instead of 9 and we could train a bit more quiet and didn't have to hurry to get all routines done with music.
I didn't have competition yet today, so when I was finished (I didn't have problems with the floor any longer so training went much better allready) we watched trainings of the other countries.
In the evening the junior competition took place, which was very nice to see. The russian junior Daria Kondakova does just amazing pirouettes, she turns incredibly stable and so many degrees! (Her releve is pretty low though, but still...!)
I was really sad that Filipa Siderova didn't participate, I would've loved to see her hoop and also her other routines live again. But Bulgaria did send another junior (Stoimenova) who looked very promising and showed beautifull elements. Her ribbon routine was on the music of Peycheva's 2004 ribbon and the routine has a lot of similarities too, very funny to see.
The dutch juniors did very well, I think Linda was a little nervous for her first routine with hoop but she showed a very good ribbon. Fleurine did two almost flawless routines. It's really a pity that the Dutch federation decided to send only 1 junior to Europeans, I think she would've done very well in Moscow.

The next morning we had training again at half past 8. It seemed that a lot of countries had decided to skip this training, so I could start on the competition carpet earlier. I didn't do too much, just all my routines with music once. We went back to the hotel immediately, as I had to start my warm-up for the competition allready at half past 12 again. I had to start with ribbon, which is not my best apparatus, but I felt almost no nerves. I had felt very nervous during the training this morning, so I think I was allready over it. I had two small drops and some pirouettes that were not complete, but I was quite satisfied for the first routine. My second routine was rope and I had two small mistakes again, but the difficulties were good and it felt very continuous. (afterwards I got to see my forms and one of the D judges only crossed out 2 of the 18 difficulties :o) Because I was in group A, there was almost three hours break between my second and third routine and I was able to watch group B and the group competition. The Dutch group did a very good routine with 5 ribbons and ended on the 5th place after 1 rotation. Finally I could start again for my third routine, with ball. Normally ball is one of my best apparatuses, but today I had a lot of mistakes and I was quite dissapointed. Luckily my clubs routine went good again, except for the first throw where I had to run to be able to catch one of the clubs and the last throw, that I dropped.

Overall I was quite happy with my competition, although I ended on the last place as expected. There was only 0.3 difference between me and the next gymnast however, so in the future (Berlin Masters??) I want to try to end one or two places higher...
The group made a few mistakes in their second routine with hoop and clubs, but still ended on the fifth place all around, a very good result.

On Sunday the finals took place, and Linda and I were given a wild card to participate. I was very very nervous this time, but my first routine with rope went quite good. I was very happy with ball this time, it was much better than yesterday and the only big mistake was my fouette pirouette that wasn't totally completed.
Unfortunately I had three drops in clubs and an even worse ribbon routine. Not really how I'd hoped to finish the competition... =(
The banquet however was very cool, it was organised on a big boat and we really enjoyed it.
After the banquet Maaike, Fleurine and I went back to the hotel. Fleurine was picked up by her parents there and Maaike and I went to receive the money that I'd won (:o) by participating in the finals. It was a completely new experience for me, but it wasn't that big, I just had to sign and take the money :p. Actually waiting in the hall together with the big stars (godunko, sesina, shpekht) made the most impact :p.
After we were done, my parents picked us up and we returned home to start school and also the 'first' official training after holidays the next day.

Videos, photos and results

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05-07-06

Last weekend the Alegro Cup took place in Thargovishte, Bulgaria. From Holland the club GTV de Badhoeve was invited, and they invited me to join their delegation =). We went to Bulgaria with three gymnasts; Roxanne Stoffer (espoir), Babs Ponne (junior) and myself, coach Daniela and judge José. We left allready on Thursday, as there were no flights available on Friday. We arrived at Varna airport late in the evening and there a bus was waiting for us to bring us to our hotel just outside Thargovishte. We had three rooms for two persons, but we made one of them into a room for three persons.

The next morning we had to go to another hotel close to the competition hall for breakfeast. We had the abillity to train with music at 13:15 h, so after breakfast we first walked around in Thargovishte for a while. When we came back, we watched the Bulgarian gymnasts (including Filipa Siderova) train their exhibition, which was very cool with a lot of nice dance movements.
The training was very hot, as it was 38 degrees outside. Ribbon was very difficult to do, as it sticked to the body whenever it touched it for a split second. After training we first had lunch and then went back to our hotel.
There was a swimming pool very close to our hotel, and after sweating so much in training the temptation was very big ;). We had a lot of fun in the water and we could even persuade José to join us from the 'high' slide. Daniela took photos of us doing al kinds of gymnastics poses in the water :p.
At half past five we had to go back to the hall, as Daniela and José had the judge meeting there. In the mean time we watched the tiny Turkish girls train, they're really cute to watch. When the judge meeting was finished, we had dinner and went back to our hotel again.

On Saterday we had the all-around competition. We were supposed to be picked up by a bus at 8 o'clock, but it only came at half past 8. Then we had to hurry up, because we still had to have breakfast and Roxanne's competition allready started at half past 10. Eventually the competition started late, so there was no problem.

Roxanne did a good competition, with a small drop in clubs but very good routines with hoop and ball. She just missed the finals, as she ended 9th and the first 8th proceded to the finals. Then the junior competition started, with a lot of very nice gymnasts, including one of my favourite gymnasts Filipa Siderova. She does the most amazing things, especially in hoop she has one incredible throw.. (added: now approved by FIG as her originality). All her routines are great to watch and she really deserved to win the competition. Babs did a good competition with no big mistakes which resulted in a 8th place and a qualification for all the three apparatus finals. My competition didn't start very well, I made lots of mistakes in my ball routine, both in artistry and difficulty. Clubs was better, the first half of the routine went ok but I had some mistakes in the second half. I didn't expect much of ribbon because of the heat and the carpet that was quite difficult for pirouettes, but it did go very well! Almost all my pirouettes where better then I normally do them and I was very satisfied with the routine. I ended on the 8th place also, and I qualified for all finals (even ball).

After the competition there was a banquet for the coaches and judges in the hotel where we ate, and for the gymnasts in the sport hall. When we were finished eating, there were games for the small gymnasts, but we made our own group routine :p.

The next morning we had to leave only at 9:30 h, so we could sleep late. Babs first had her competition. She did stable routines, like on Saterday. She ended 8th with rope and clubs and 9th with hoop. I started with ball again, and I really wanted to make up for the mistakes yesterday. This time the routine went good and much better than on Saterday. Clubs was quite okay in difficulty, but I did have two very stupid drops. Unfortunately in ribbon the beginning of the routine was a complete mess which even resulted in a knot. Afterwards I had some problems with pirouettes too. I ended 8th on ribbon, 7th on ball and even 5th on clubs. Daniela had promised to take us to a disco, but it turned out that on Sunday evening everything in Thargovishte is closed... there was one open however, so we went there. They hardly played anything but house music and most of the time the four of us were the only ones on the dance floor, but it was still nice :).

Our flight back was at half past 8 in the afternoon, so on Monday we had enough time to visit Varna and we even went to the beach for a while. We didn't swim, as the weather wasn't very warm anymore, but we did walk in the sea for a few steps.
In Varna we said goodbye to Daniela and her boyfriend, who are staying in Bulgaria for holiday, and at 11 o'clock Dutch time we were back in Holland.

Results and photos Friday, Saterday part 1 and part 2, Sunday & Monday,


The weekend before, my club SV Pax organised our own international tournament.
On friday, most of the foreign delegations arrived, except the Namibian delegation who was allready training with us since Monday. Some of the higher level gymnast were a bit worried, because they thought that the competition would be in the traininghall (which is quite small and low). After the training there was a photoshooting with German photographers Barny and Manfred.

On Saterday the competition started with the juniors. I really liked the German girls, they have so much power and especially Kristina Goukova is so clean in her body work. The junior competition was won by Anastacia Romanuk from Germany, 2nd was the Latvian girl Lavma Dobelniece and Kristina Goukova was 3rd. Pax gymnasts Demi, Christel and Michelle ended 9th, 10th and 11th.
In the espoirs competition I was very impressed by Nyamekye Dupont from Belgium. I saw her two years agon on a competition, but she improved a lot and she does incredible things for her age. She'll be one of the top gymnasts in Belgium in the future for sure. Nyamekye won the competition, 2nd was Kaja Surdy from Poland and 3rd Marie-Madeleine de Ridder from Belgium. Patty ended 7th, Vera was 10th and Tayla 11th.
In the senior competition Annika Rejek unfortunately cancelled her participation. The biggest name now was Anna Zdun from Poland, and she won the competition. I got second and the Latvian girls got 3rd and 4th. Tessa and Roxanne ended on the 6th and 7th place.

On Sunday, the delegations that where not yet departured (Namibia, Norway, Latvia and of course SV Pax) were taken to Noordwijk to shop and maybe go to the beach. Unfortunately it rained almost all the time, but it was still nice.

The tournament went very well and I really hope we can organise it next year again.

Videos, results and detailed results

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21-06-06

Last weekend the Dutch National Championships 2006 took place in Aalsmeer. It was the first time in 5 years that the Nationals were not held in the Scheg in Deventer (where also Deventer Masters are organised), which is a pity because the Scheg has a great atmosphere and the competition really feels like a championship there. On the other hand, now the competition was very close to were I live and on Saterday (I didn't have competition then) I even went there by bike. The competition was organised by SV Omnia and I think they did a great job. On Saterday morning the competition of the juniors of category 2A took place, combined with the competition of category 1B groups. This year juniors in Holland still compete with all five apparatuses. The competition was won by Linda de Geus, who was silver medallist last year. Linda, who qualified for European Championships, also won 4 apparatus finals. The ball title went to Fleurine Menijn, who got 2nd in AA. Daniëlle Bubberman showed very nice routines and got 3rd.

In the group competition the group of Keizer Otto became the new National Champion with hoop/clubs! They did a very good and original routine and they really deserved their gold medal. In the free choice routine (the groups can perform with whatever apparatus they like) Keizer Otto got second with a difference of only 0.084 difference with the number 1, Wilskracht. In the afternoon, the individual competition for 1B and 3A took place. I didn't see this competition but Patty Groeskamp ended in category 3A on the second place and Vera Meulblok got 8th. The gold medal in this category was for Lisette Beekhuis from OKK, bronze for Roxanne Stoffer from De Badhoeve. The 1B competition was won by Maike de Groot. On Sunday afternoon, I had my competition in senior category. The competition was combined with the group competition for the categories 3 and 2A. Because of this Roxanne, who is a senior but competes in the 2A group also, would have her group competition in the middle of her indiviudal competition with only one routine in between. Luckily the organisation could switch a bit in the working order.

For me this competition was THE main goal of this year and I really wanted to perform well, especially after last years nationals had been quite dissapointing. Allready during warming up I felt very sure, and if I started to have some doubts during competition my coach made sure they dissapeared again =).
All gymnasts had to start with rope, as it was combined with the group routines of category 3. My routine went good, I had lots of luck in the beginning of the routine where I almost got stuck in the rope for three times (I felt the rope hitting my feet when I leaped through..) but it did never happen. I had some small mistakes but overall I was very satisfied with it. My second routine was ball, and I have a bit of a complicated starting position for it (standing on my elbows with my legs in split position, with my ball between my back and my shoulders) and the music was started before I had gotten in this position, so I had to stop and make it start over before I could start my routine. I really loved the routine, not that it was flawless (I even had a drop and one almost-drop) but everything went very fluent and felt very easy. With clubs I had some problems, with a drop of one club in the beginning and I couldn't fix my Outiasheva difficulty. But the rest of the routine went good, and in the end I even had some music left (normally I'm just barely in time). Ribbon was ok, with some pirouettes that weren't complete, but some other pirouettes that I did better than I normally do. It was not my best routine ever, but it was good enough.. I'm the new Dutch National Champion!

The award ceremony was so cool.. the applause that I got was so long, I was just standing on the podium and I thought it wouldn't stop anymore. A big Thank You to everyone in the audience, you made me feel great! And then I had totally forgotten that winning nationals would also mean qualification for Deventer Masters... :D I also was first in all 'apparatus finals', although in clubs and ribbon the difference was incredibly small. Actually these rankings are based on the scores that the gymnasts obtain on each apparatus during AA - IMO it's ridiculous to give four extra medals for the same competition but in this case it was very nice off course :p. Second place in AA went to Anna Pobokova, Sanne Kouters was third.

Video's, results

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17-06-06
On June 3rd and 4th, the 8th International Actus Rhythmic Cup was organised by the Belgian club SRG Mol. There were participating gymnasts from a lot of countries, including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Portugal and much more. From Holland there were two clubs invited: my club (SV Pax) and OBQ from Leeuwarden.
Officially we were allowed to come with two gymnasts; Christel Grimbergen and Demi Aarts (both junior). But my coach asked the organisation if we could bring one additional gymnast (me :D) and we could! They even found me a hostfamily, which was a very nice and friendly family with two cutest little daughters. We left on Friday night directly after our training. First we picked up Daniella, who went with us as a coach, from the train station. Lisette came with us as a judge.

We arrived in Mol around half past nine. I'd been there a few times before, in fact I had my very first international experience (exhibition) here. The sports hall is very nice, with lots of space to warm up. We were all picked up by our host families and went to bed almost immediately.
The next morning I got to meet Klara and Lene, the two girls in my host family. At first they were very shy, but when they got to know me they were very cute and very energetic. Klara, who is four years old, is allready practicing rhythmic gymnastics.
We went to the competition hall for the opening ceremony at half past one. When I entered the warming up area I saw Silviya Miteva from Bulgaria (I saw her in Calais this year and at No Limits Open in 2005) and she said hi to me! Wow..
After a while I realised that I had forgotten my leotards in my room... Luckily my hostfamily lived very nearby the sports hall so we could go back and get them. I even was back in time for the ceremony.

The junior competition was divided in two groups. Christel was in the first group, together with Raifa Bazzi, a gymnast from the other Dutch club. Christel's first routine was rope, which she did very good and she even scored over 18 points for it. She started her second routine with hoop very strong, but in the end she made a big mistake which caused the hoop to leave the carpet and because of this she missed a lot of difficulties.
I think she did clubs quite good again and ribbon with some more mistakes, but I can't remember very well so I may be wrong.
Demi was in the second group and she started with rope too. Unfortunately she had some problems in this routine, but her hoop went very good and she also scored over 18 points. I didn't see her clubs and ribbon, because I allready started my own warming up by then.

The sports hall was extremely warm on Saterday, I was allready sweating before I was doing anything. Daniella even bought me some chocolade to gain some energy :P. My first routine was rope, which I did without big mistakes but with some wobbles and not very 'strong'. The second routine, ball, started very good until like 15 seconds before the end, when I lost my balance a couple of times. Ribbon started not very good, with pirouettes that weren't complete and even a small drop, but the second half of the routine was much better. My last routine with clubs went good, no mistakes except for a fall during a balance difficulty on my knee. I had to put my hand down for a moment, which costed me 0.4 in execution :s...

Eventually Demi and Christel placed 15th and 16th out of 20 junior gymnasts and I got 8th out of 13 seniors. Silviya Miteva got first, with a difference of more then 7 points with the 2nd place. Actually the first place in all categories went to Bulgaria, they came with four clubs and they brought lots of beautiful gymnasts.

On Sunday morning Klara's group did an exhibition, very cute. The rest of the day we could watch the finals. I really liked the Portugese junior Joana Saraiva, she has amazing strenght and performs very difficult and powerfull elements. Of course Silviya Miteva was wonderfull too, especially her ball.
After the competition there was a banquet, and the competition was broadcasted for a couple of minutes on Belgian television!
After the banquet we went home again, it was a very nice tournament and it was also very nice to have Daniella with us as a coach.

Results

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01-06-06
Last weekend the Belgian club No Limits Gymnastics organised for the 6th time the No Limits Open. For Holland, the 2 juniors Linda de Geus (SVOD) en Fleurine Menijn (Badhoeve) and senior Anna Pobokova (O&O) participated. Instead of training, we went to Belgium with the whole club on Friday (over 20 people!) to watch the all around competition.
At 8:30, my mother and I were picked up by Paula, Marisha and Danielle Bubberman of the dutch club SV Omnia. Together we drove to Antwerp, where we arrived after a little searching at 10:30, halfway the hopes competition. There were some great girls participating, like Natalia Garcia (ESP) and Alexandra Piscupescu (ROM). It's amazing what these girls already are able to at such a young age.
The competition was won by Valerya Pischelina from Belarus, followed by Piscupescu and Garcia.

The junior category was the largest category with 27 participants, and their competition took from 12:30 h till 18:00! It must've been very tiring for the girls and for the judges also. The Dutch girls both did very good however, with Linda ending on the 15th place (and qualifiing for the ribbon final) and Fleurine ending on the 21st place.
My favourite gymnasts in the junior category where defenitely the Turkish girls; Pinar Akilveren was very elegant and performs very difficult elements, while Nevin Sevinch Deveci has incredible flexibility and is so fun the watch. As every year, the girls of the host club No Limits had improved heaps and performed great. The competion was won by Irina Lalciu from Roumania, the silver medal went to Marina Fernandez (ESP) and Pinar Akilveren got 3rd.

In senior competition Anna Pobokova made her rentree on the international scene after being absent for a year due to her back injury. She showed nice routines and ended on a 10th place.
Nadiya Vasina from Ukraine easily won the competition, only with rope she placed 2nd behind Ksenia Stankovich from Belarus. I really love Vasina's ball routine, it's very impressing and original, especially the last catch. The 3rd place went to Alena Romanova from Russia.

Although I was a bit sad not to participate myself this year, watching the competition was very nice and inspiring and I had a great day.

Results, video's and photos part 1

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20-05-06

After two qualification moments, the Dutch Federation decided that the national group (Tessa Herngreen, Maaike Hoogstede, Melanie Kap, Evelien van Rheenen, Kim-Manou Brockhoff, Valerya Boeravkina and Eva Herngreen) and Linda de Geus (SVOD) qualified for the European Championships that will be held in Russia in September this year. The group allready qualified at the international tournament of Kalamata, where they even reached the 3rd place with their routine with 5 ribbons in AA. At the first national qualification in April the group again reached the limit of 22.90 points and last week they did it again at the 2nd national qualification.

Apart from the group competition, the european championships will also contain a individual junior competition. Linda allready qualified at the Irina Deleanu Cup in Roumenia and by also reaching the limit at both national qualification moments, she earned herself a ticket to Russia. Good luck to all girls!

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