The Last East German WAG Stan

Bitter old lesbian who knows better than to get attached to fictional ladies.  So this is a gymnastics blog now? 

[freifraufischer]

Hey,

So I’ve always liked your posts in the gymnastics subreddit as you always have a lot of knowledge. I’m also particularly interested in German gymnastics as I’m German myself. But over the recent months I’ve noticed that you’ve deleted your account. May I ask what happened? It’s just that I really miss your posts; I think the subreddit has become quite boring.

I am also curious to know what you think about the current gym situation in Germany - like the last Bundesliga match, Helen’s comeback, Marlene Gotthardt regaining power, the current juniors, Pauline Schäfer trying to build up, Stuttgart…

Reddit's automatic moderation decided I was a crypto spammer and decided to delete my account. Then... a really unfortunate discussion of me as a person was allowed to go on for hours on the subreddit and I do not feel welcome or safe posting there.

I'm one of the moderators of https://www.reddit.com/r/gymnastics_info/ and you can find me on twitter at kmkeirns

I am encouraged by Helen's comeback. She looked rusty but otherwise good. I was told the knee injury wasn't as bad as first thought. Speaking of encouraged Lisa also looked amazing given her first return after her knee injury.

Marlene Gotthardt looked more secure than before but she frustrates me because she doesn't seem to be able to connect things on beam and I'm not sure she can make teams if that isn't fixed. I think Stuttgart is a mess but that Boorman wasn't a good choice. She never coached anyone to elite level besides Simone and I wonder if that was more Simone than her.

Pauline I'm deeply curious about. the training videos of a van leuween and the return of her dlo have me excited but I try not to count on anything until we actually see it in competition.

[freifraufischer]

What happened with the 100? o_O

[freifraufischer]

FIG playing the wrong anthem at the 2025 Rhythmic World Championships All Around Final medal ceremony.

Georgia instead of Germany

[freifraufischer]

As my go-to "has all kinds of weird information about gymnastics" mutual, I wanted to see if you could answer this question for me: do you know what is Jennifer Williams' ancestry? I looked her up to see if she was one of those "Born in the UK but my mom is Swedish so I'm competing for Sweden" types (because the name doesn't sound Swedish at all), and her Instagram has a Jamaican flag (where I guess the "Williams" comes from) AND A GREEK FLAG. So as a Greek, I need to know. Is she Greek?????

I honestly don't know, I vaguely thought she had American ancestry too but I don't know for sure.

[viktoriakomova]

ik it’s wild to say this bc like 5-6 years ago we were having the opposite conversation but. does anyone else feel like USAG is losing elite talent to NCAA lmao???

[freifraufischer]

It absolutely is. And elites are tailoring their routines towards ncaa. See why we are seeing fewer dtys and more y1.5s

[freifraufischer]

Me, two seconds after starting the Europeans All Around Final: Helen Kevric qualified second, frefrau must be *thrilled*!!! Me, fifteen minutes later: .... oh no, freifrau must be heartbroken.

Yeah but I have been told she's already doing increased bars training and in good spirits. Knowing that kid I'm sure she'll be back.

[freifraufischer]

The best part of watching old Mixed Pairs/3-on-3 is the murder plotting.

1997 International 3-on-3, Fort Worth, USA

Yana Batyrshina (RUS), Rhythmic Gymnastics Yuri Kryukov (RUS), Men's Artistic Gymnastics Elena Dolgopolova (RUS), Women's Artistic Gymnastics

[freifraufischer]

"[Gymnast] could learn another vault likely. Maybe a Tsuk 1/1 or Lopez would be good."

This is about a gymnast who would need to show a second vault which she's never shown ... in the next 2-3 months. I do not believe she's ever done a Tsuk or YHalf entry.

[freifraufischer]

Retired Gymnast Oksana Chusovitina has won a bronze medal at the 2025 Cottbus World Cup.

[meanderingorange]

Just for funsies, like you do.

[freifraufischer]

She's turning 50 in like a month

[freifraufischer]

Retired Gymnast Oksana Chusovitina has won a bronze medal at the 2025 Cottbus World Cup.

[freifraufischer]

So... let's talk about CaMarah Williams and more importantly .... USAG International Elite Committee bureaucracy

This year the IEC instituted a rule that says that if you use vault to qualify with a 2 or 3 event score to US Championships you need to do 2 vaults and the average will be used. A lot of us assumed that rule applied to Winter Cup and Classics but the wording actually only says Championships. The fact that the rule only applies to championships was proved when CaMarah Williams was qualified to Winter Cup. But ... there are some implications here.

Let's start with the mechanics of qualification: Winter Cup, American Classic, and US Classic are primarily intended as a qualification route to US Championships. Yes some gymnasts will use it for competition experience but those gymnasts either have already qualified to championships or are not expected to have any trouble doing so. And USAG has, allegedly, been trying to keep the numbers of athletes at these competitions under control. But by using different rules to qualify to Winter Cup and US Championships they've created a situation where Williams can't actually qualify to nationals without getting the qualifying score to Classics that she's already failed to do.

She can only do vault and floor at Winter Cup. Theoretically she could do 2 vaults at Winter Cup and get that 2 event score, but the reality is she's never competed 2 vaults and if she throws a low difficulty second vault she is highly unlikely to get the 2 event score using her vault average. This Winter Cup is simply a dead end.

Williams is an extremely inconsistent gymnast.

She competed 2 elite national qualifiers this year:

Metroplex - VT: 14.150 UB: 10.300 BB: 11.450 FX: 13.150 - 49.050

Vegas Cup - VT: 13.400 UB: 9.800 BB: 13.000 FX: 11.900 - 48.100

Even with the IEC lowering the score threshold to 50 she hasn't come close to qualifying by the AA to Winter Cup/Classics. And at least for the moment the Nationals qualifying score is 52.

But I can hear you saying... she qualified to championships last year. Maybe she is just having a slow start to the season.

Except this is what her season looked like last year:

Vegas Cup: VT: 13.900 UB: 13.000 BB: 9.300 FX: 11.400 - 47.600 City of Lights: VT: 13.150 UB: 11.900 BB: 12.850 FX: 12.850 - 50.750

The City of Lights score gets her to Winter Cup ....

Winter Cup: VT: 13.850 UB: 10.800 BB: 13.600 FX: 12.750 - 51.000

That Winter Cup score gets her to US championships with the lowest possible qualifying score.

American Classic: VT: 13.800 UB: 10.250 BB: 11.700 FX: 12.250 - 48.000

US Classic: VT: 13.750 UB: 12.150 BB: 10.150 FX: 13.000 - 49.050

US Championships: VT: 11.800 UB: 8.100 FX: 12.700

I know that people think of gate keeping as bad... but gate keeping is the IEC's job. And they have failed at gate keeping. There is no actual reason to assume this gymnast will somehow get a qualification score at the post Winter Cup elite qualifiers. Winter Cup itself is a dead end. And I'm frankly not sure there is even justification for inviting her to National Team Camp.

So IEC... what the hell are you doing here? What is the point?

[freifraufischer]

"Guys the US has a bars problem this year..."

Jayla Hang just dropped a cool 6.0 bars routine.

Yup it was very cool. But ... are we forgetting that D has not been her problem?

[freifraufischer]

The USAG International Elite Committee has decided in it's infinite wisdom to lower the qualifying scores for juniors to Winter Cup and US Championships. And to hold more Elite Qualifiers in the spring.

They had to lower it to 48 to get even two more qualifiers for Winter Cup among the juniors.

They also lowered the senior qualifying score for Winter Cup to 50. Most of the people who are newly qualified are getting their scores from US Champs... which I will remind you was early JUNE of 2024. Several of them have competed this year with very mid scores. Others I know are injured. And at least one of them has regressed a lot.

They knew all of this about the gymnasts who would be qualifying when they lowered the score.

This all smells of desperation.

But you know why the IEC has reasons to do this kind of thing? Only coaches with gymnasts at US Championships get to vote on leadership of the women's program.

But anyway, guys maybe I'm dooming but the US program is collapsing over this quad and they're going to be desperate for Tokyo and a few Paris quad gymnasts to stick around.

[freifraufischer]

Now that we've had enough meets to have a range of gymnasts have scores in 2025 here are the score leaders as of Feb 9, 2025.

WAG AA

Single VT

WAG UB

WAG BB

WAG FX

WAG AA Difficulty

BONUS: Jr WAG AA

BONUS: MAG AA

[freifraufischer]

Training videos are training videos so one shouldn't expect them to be perfectly clean and any 6.0 bars routine is impressive...

... but does like no one else see how messy her form is or how little amplitude she gets?

[freifraufischer]

Re: USA bars situation and Claire and Hezly.... has Shi retired? Or are we just assuming she's going to stay out of international competition this year for more healing time?

Let's just say I have strong reason to think she would prefer to not compete in 2025 but she may have to go for a fall international assignment because she's an adult with bills to pay and her funding expires in August.

[freifraufischer]

I'm sitting here wondering when USAian fandom is going to realize the program is about to fall off a cliff as soon as any significant amount of the Tokyo Quad gymnasts retire from elite.

At the moment there are 5 French juniors with higher AA scores than the top US junior AA score. Yes the French scores are inflated domestic but the US scores are all from national qualifiers which aren't to be trusted either.

In terms of young early seniors we're looking at Pease and Rivera who are both Valeri WOGA gymnasts.

The highest US senior bars score right now is 13.6 from Izzy Stassi and the top junior bars score is a 12.7.

[fuck-usag]

That bars situation is dire now.

[freifraufischer]

This is the current top 10 bars scores. Now mind you the bulk of 2025 scores are US or French but .... Hezly and Claire Pease are the most likely to break 14 on bars at winter cup.

Senior

Junior

[meanderingorange]

These are scores that Romania could realistically get on bars. The US does not want a Romanian bars rotation.

[freifraufischer]

These are obviously not the upper end of US gymnasts but if you put the Tokyo Olympians to the side you are relying on Hezly and Claire Pease for your bars rotation.