Monday, March 10, 2008

Complete Italy Results

http://www.federginnastica.it/immagini/archivio/articoli/foto_articolo_3295.pdf

Shawn Johnson has cemented her place as the favorite for Olympic All-Around Gold, but the rest of the Americans failed to deliver spectacular performances. Peszek's consistency and improvement on bars is notable, but she failed to repeat her spectacular beam performance.

Bridget Sloan didn't compete after injuring herself in warm-ups. There is no word about the severity of the injury, but it is a shame for her to lose out on a chance to gain international experience and impress Martha Karolyi.

With Worley's injury and mistake-ridden performances at the American Cup, Bieger being beaten on the Uneven Bars by Shawn Johnson and Memmel's mention of shoulder problems on her blog, this opens the door even further for Ashley Preiss.

The USA needs to fill a hole on the Uneven Bars in order to be able to compete with the Chinese women and their home court advantage.

On a positive note, things are looking good for 2009 and beyond. Jordan Wieber, Chelsea Davis, Sam Shapiro, Mattie Larson and Rebecca Bross are getting stronger and stronger. The USA shouldn't suffer the same drop off experienced after the 1996 Olympic win.

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