Gymnastics Weekly News: Suni Lee shows off first glimpse at new vault
Plus, NCAA action continues with Oklahoma, Florida and Michigan the top-ranked women’s teams and a look back at Henrietta Onodi at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta
Artistic Gymnastics
Suni Lee has done it again.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympic gymnastics all-around gold medallist delighted fans this week with another spectacular training clip. This time, Lee, 19, shows herself performing a new vault: a round off, half twist on to the table, followed by a front flip with one-and-a-half twists. The vault is named after Russian Olympic gold medallist Svetlana Khorkina.
“In my learning how to vault era,” Lee later said in a quote tweet of the original video.
The element carries a 4.8 difficulty score, some 0.2 down from the double-twisting Yurchenko Lee competed in Tokyo. However, should Lee be able to straighten her body into a layout shape, the vault would earn a 5.6 D-score.
Lee is currently in her sophomore season at Auburn University. She said in November that it would be her final in college before she returns to full-time elite training with an eye of defending her gold medal at Paris 2024.
“I’m so excited to share that after this season I will be returning to elite gymnastics. I have my sights set on Paris 2024 and I know what I have to do to get there,” said Lee in a video posted to her social media channels.
• Olympic champion Sunisa Lee confirms Paris 2024 ambitions: ‘I know what I have to do to get there’
Oklahoma, Florida and Michigan top week two rankings in women’s NCAA
Speaking of Lee, she finds herself No. 5 in the all-around in the NCAA rankings which heads into its third week of competition.
2022 world team gold medallist Leanne Wong leads the standings ahead of defending all-around champion Trinity Thomas. Tokyo Olympian and Wong’s world teammate Jordan Chiles is third.
In the team rankings, Oklahoma is the topped ranked team after week two with Florida in second and 2021 champions Michigan third.
This weekend’s competitions include several big match-ups including Friday’s (20 January) dual between Florida and No. 11 Alabama.
On Saturday (21 January), No. 4 UCLA heads to the University of Washington, with the weekend set to wrap up Sunday (22 January) with Michigan taking on Michigan State and Oklahoma hosting No. 5 Utah.
For a complete schedule of competition, visit the Balance Beam Situation.
ICYMI: Nastia Liukin reflects on her time on ‘Special Forces’
2008 Olympic gold medallist Nastia Liukin spoke with Olympics.com in an exclusive interview last week about her experience on the reality TV show ‘Special Forces.’
The experience, she says, was all about breaking out of her everyday routine. The show took 16 celebrities including fellow Olympic champion Carli Lloyd and silver medallist Gus Kenworthy to the desert of Jordan to undergo military-like training.
“I think all-in-all, I just tried to keep telling myself that this would be good for me to just not be fully in control,” said Liukin. “So much of my life has been a schedule, very black and white. The thing that was probably one of the most difficult about the show was not being prepared, and also just not even not being prepared, but not knowing how to prepare.”
Read the full article by clicking here.
From the vault…
This week, we take a look back at Henrietta Onodi during the Atlanta 1996 Games. Onodi, who won vault gold and floor silver four years prior at Barcelona 1992, had returned to competition after a hiatus in 1995 before heading to Atlanta. Her Hungarian team finished ninth with Onodi’s top score coming for her optional vault, a 9.525.