Word: flooringly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...good place to be when you're a gymnast competing in the team finals at the Olympic Games. But that's where Alicia Sacramone, a Brown University undergrad, found herself after her second tumbling pass on the floor exercise. It was Sacramone's second fall of the meet, and it may ultimately have cost the U.S. women the team gold on Wednesday in front of a capacity 19,000 crowd, which mainly rooted against the Americans, at the National Indoor Stadium. Sacramone and her teammates - Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Chellsie Memmel, Samantha Peszek and Bridget Sloan - ended up with...
...just as she mounted it, launching the U.S.'s troubles. "Possibly, yes," said Martha Karolyi, the national team coordinator on whether an injury-free Memmel might have been the third scorer on the beam, with Johnson and Liukin. "Everybody knows how rock-solid Chellsie is. And definitely on floor also, she had a chance to perform, because we all remember what kind of routine she did at [the] trials...
...just injuries that hurt the U.S. team. On the floor exercise, all three Americans stepped out of bounds, earning automatic deductions and bringing the U.S.'s total score below that of the Chinese. It's been a recurring problem for the hard-tumbling U.S. women, who are physically bigger than the Chinese girls, run with more power and therefore favor the tougher tumbling passes to eke out as many points as possible. "We throw some of the hardest skills on the floor," said Johnson after the qualifying round on Sunday. "We are built of the strongest legs in the world...
...Chinese women, whose tinier physiques kept them within the lines of the competition floor. The international media had recently speculated that the girls were tiny for a reason - they had uncovered profiles of at least two of the gymnasts that suggested they may actually be under the International Olympic Committee's 16-year-old age minimum. The IOC was satisfied with passports produced by the International Federation of Gymnastics for the girls, showing they are 16. But Karolyi remains doubtful - and critical. "I have no proof, so I cannot say they are underage," she said. "If that is true - which...
...fourth round, the Chinese had found their Olympic groove and never faltered from that moment onward. On the vault, Li Xiaopeng scored a mindboggling 16.775, the highest score of the competition. Indeed, the Chinese ended up earning the highest scores on all apparatuses except floor. The Japanese tried to keep pace but couldn't match their hosts' technical difficulty and skillful execution. Meanwhile, the Americans - who weren't favored for a medal after the withdrawal of twins Morgan and Paul Hamm, two of the team's top gymnasts - found themselves, for a moment, in contention for the silver...