Press Releases 2008

Australian Youth Olympic Festival 2009 - Team selection PR

AYOF.doc

Nationals 2008

Press_release_Nationals_2008.pdf

 CSG Classic 2008 - July 12th

This weekend will see gymnasts from around New Zealand and Australia descend upon the Lion Foundation Gymnastics Stadium at QEII Park.
The Christchurch School of Gymnastics Classic competition has attracted competitors from as far away as Midlands in Perth, and Lake MacQuarie in NSW.

 “We are delighted to have attracted so many quality athletes from so far a field.” “This year we have top senior gymnasts from Auckland
and Wellington competing, which will provide excellent competition for our seniors.” said Event Director Jane Clark.

 A New Zealand Women’s team of 15 was announced last weekend travel to Perth to compete in the International Levels challenge in September
against Australia and Singapore.

CSG provides 8 of those representatives.

Samantha Russell 18, Karla Singh 19, Charlotte White 16, Michelle Lewis 18, Lani Hohepa 14, Laura Carpinter 15, Annie Stevenson 13, Justice Shaw-Cross 11.

 One of the reasons for the popularity of the competition is due to the local CSG competitors scooping 8 of the 12 titles at the 2007 National Championships
which were held in Auckland last year.

 “They are coming to check out the competition prior to this year’s Nationals” said Head Coach Jozsi Ferencz, they got a fright last year with how good
we were, and we have had to step up our preparation to ensure we stay ahead.”

 The competition starts on Friday evening at 4pm and finishes on Sunday at 5pm; it will be a busy weekend for all involved.         

Fourth Olympics for local judge, June 08 

Beijing is on the itinerary for local gymnastics judge Avril Enslow. Mrs Enslow, the Christchurch School of Gymnastics Executive Officer has received the invitation to be one of the 32 artistic judges for the Women’s Gymnastics competition.

 
Enslow has attended the Atlanta, Sydney, and Athens Games and was pleased and surprised to receive the call to Beijing.

 
“I will have to wait until arrival in Beijing to find out what apparatus I will be drawn for, but as I am down as a execution panel judge, I will get an opportunity to judge different apparatus like I did in Athens. The highlight there was being drawn to judge the floor final, which was very exciting and closely fought. The winner was Romania’s Ponor and all the judges gave the same score 9.75. It is the first time I have seen that all 6 judges ‘snapped’ with the same score at an Olympics or World Championships, she was a worthy winner.

The rules have changed dramatically this Olympic cycle, due to the problems in the Men’s competition in Athens.
The previous scoring system didn’t allow enough separation between the top athletes and the mistakes
were made in the evaluations in the individual all around competition and in finals.

Gymnastic now has an open ended scoring system after dropping the previous maximum 10.
The new system has stood the test, and is doing a better job of enabling the gymnasts to be correctly placed in relation to their exercise content and the execution of the routine.  There were problems initially with the new system when it was first used in 2006
at the Commonwealths in Melbourne, but there have been some adjustments since then.

New Zealand has not qualified a gymnast to Beijing, after many of the senior gymnasts retired after a disappointing performance
in Melbourne Commonwealth Games, so it was not definite that Enslow would get the call to Beijing.
Enslow has been in the top ranks of officiating since 1992 and was appointed to one of the remaining places
due to some countries with qualified gymnast not having judges of sufficient standing.

NZ didn’t send any gymnasts but as a build up to Beijing, Enslow travelled in March to San Jose for the Pacific Alliance Competition.
This regional competition has always been a very important guideline in the Olympic year.

Stephen Kendall from Auckland gets his first call to an Olympics and will join Enslow in Beijing as a Men’s artistic judge.

The Romanian Connection    Monday 23 June, 2008

Christchurch School of Gymnastics has added another Romanian High Performance gymnastics coach to its already impressive coaching line up.

In 2006 the club employed Romanian Jozsef Ferencz, and have now signed Martin Simo a former Romanian Junior National Coach to head its nationally ranked Men’s Artistic gymnastics programme.

Ferencz was originally employed to coach the men’s programme, but soon moved to overall Head Coach, which left the opportunity open for Simo.

“The girls programme is developing exceptionally well and we have squads of talented gymnasts working hard and achieving at many levels”
Said Jozsef Ferencz, we now need a similar tiered system for the boys.

“The current boys programme in the club is already strong; there are some very good boys, very well prepared, but the numbers are low.
Most of them have National titles already so it will be exciting to watch their progress under Simo” said CEO Avril Enslow.

As well as leading the current squad, Simo has undertaken the task to talent identify the current gymnasts at the club
and look over some of the over 13,500 school children that come into CSG on an annual basis.

He has had experience of doing this in Romania, England and Venezuela, and has noted a dramatic drop in overall fitness
and strength of children in the last 25 years.

GYMNASTIC SEASON UNDERWAY WITH A TUMBLE.

The 2008 Gymnastics season took off on Saturday with the popular annual Christchurch School of Gymnastics Tumbling Competition.

Over 225 competitors turned out to tumble and roll to impress the judges.

The many spectators were treated to an excellent display by the senior and intermediate gymnasts. The gymnasts were taking the opportunity to try our their new high level skills in front of the judges and in a competition setting prior to the first full gymnastics competition of the year at Queens Birthday Weekend.

The Meet Director Jane Clark, was pleased with the turnout and the organisation of the competition. It was a short sharp competition held over 5 hours utilising both gymnasiums at the Stadium. “It was an excellent opportunity to test our equipment and structures ready for all the competitions in 2008, which will be a bigger year than ever.”

 
This year Christchurch School of Gymnastics is hosting not only their annual CSG Classic Competition in July, but also the Canterbury Senior Championships mid August, and the South Island Invitational at Queens Birthday. The latter competitions were previously run by Canterbury Gymnastics.

The club based at QEII was awarded the hosting rights after the National Body - GymSports NZ – gave the order to dissolve the 15 Regional Associations late last year. The sport is going through major organisational changes and the gymnastics regional bodies voted themselves out of existence. GymSports New Zealand received the mandate to focus and deal directly with Clubs rather than through the previous provincial regional organisations.