OK, let me first say congratulations to all of the gymnasts who competed in Beijing.  What an accomplishment after years & years of hard work … way to go!!  I’m especially thrilled that Nastia won gold in the All-Around and that Shawn won gold on the Beam.  All very exciting -:)

NBC’s coverage of the gymnastics was great on one hand yet left me wanting more on the other.  Sure, I was happy to watch gymnastics on TV each night, regardless of whether it was the men or women competing.  And it was nice to see some coverage of the trampoline, too, but hey - what about rhythmic gymnastics?  I didn’t see any of the rhythmic competitions; the only time I knew they were even there was when they were briefly mentioned during the gymnastics gala.  So yeah, I wish that would have been covered differently.  Same with synchonized swimming … I wanted to see that sport, too, but never did.  Bummer!

Oh, & kind of along those same lines is that I also wish NBC would have shown gymnasts from all of the particpating countries, not just the USA and the other top-placing countries all the time.  That kind of coverage could have been achieved during the preliminaries or something.  Oh well - nobody ever asks for my input for these types of events.  *lol*

Anyway, from what I DID see and hear, I was very happy to observe how MUSICAL the floor music was … great use of orchestra and orchestral instruments!  *am very happy*

I’ve gotten a number of e-mails from people asking specifics about the Olympic floor music.  Here’s what I can tell you about a few of the gymnasts:

• Nastia Liukin:  “Variations on Dark Eyes” (from Lara St. John’s CD called Gypsy) 
• Shawn Johnson:  A medley of music from the movie August Rush (great movie btw)
• Anna Pavlova:  Music from “Exodus” (performed & recorded by Maksim Mrvica)
• Yang Ylin: “Bolero” from Moulin Rouge
• Yekaterina Kramarenko: “Leyenda” by Vanessa Mae.  Hey, there were vocals all throughout this song, yet no deduction was given!  What’s up with that?  The thing is, the ah’s that we could all clearly hear were not in the original recording.  I have this recording by Vanessa Mae and while there are some male vocals in it, there aren’t any female vocals (at least not all throughout the song like that).  So why they were added is a mystery to me – the music would have been just fine without them.  But more to the point, why didn’t the judges give a deduction?  And why wasn’t anything mentioned about it by the commentators?  Strange!!

I’m also very familiar with the “Bolero” piece that Yang Ylin used.  It’s almost 7 minutes long, & pretty much the whole thing is instrumental, except for there’s a male vocal singing “ah” for about 5 seconds towards the end.  I heard just the beginning of that “ah” in the cut Yang Ylin competed with.  OK, a split second of an “ah” is one thing, but a whole 1:30 is quite another!  I took a look at the official Code of Points just to make sure they didn’t change that rule, and they didn’t.  It clearly says that floor music is to be ”without singing”, and that a 1-point deduction is given if the gymnast competes with no music or competes with “music with voice (song)”.

Oh well!  On the upside, I can happily say that I finally understand the new scoring system.  Whew!  I’ve been struggling with the whole scoring thing ever since it first came out, and I’m proud to say that I was able to grasp the concept at last.  So contrary to what others might think about my abilities, obviously it IS possible for this old dog to learn new tricks.  *hahaha*