According to the article Nastia wants to move on to bigger and better things since achieving such a big goal at a young age. She’d like to become more involved in TV and go to college to study something in that line. Of course, there was a plug for her new clothing line too. I never take these gossip sites too seriously. It tends to happen that one gossip site reports something (often false) and the other sites pick it up and add bits on. So I’m still holding on for a proper announcement from Nastia’s website, until then she’s still a training gymnast to me!

I’d love to see Nastia come back, she’s a beautiful gymnast. My gymnasts idolize her, although in 2 years time when the 2012 Olympics are over, they’ll idolize another gymnast if she doesn’t come back and win the Games. There’s been no updates on Nastia’s site since earlier this year which is such a pity. She seems to be using a more direct approach of social media by Tweeting, although I rarely see her communicate with her fans who adore her.

What do you think? Should Nastia come back or should she continue on making money from advertising, sponsorship etc?

International Olympic Committee website is great! They have a great list of the calender of events in Artistic Gymnastics and also a fantastic database that you can search for all of the medal winners, over all of the sporting categories since 1896!

Following on from my Coping with injuries post, here is a post I came across about Refusing to break: General Gymnasts don’t let injuries get them down

With the Winter Olympics fast approaching wired.com have compiled a list of all of the American Olympians who are on Twitter. It’s great, over a third of the American team for the Olympics have Twitter accounts! Check it out here

• Womens Artistic (WAG)
• Mens Artistic (MAG)
• Tumbling
• Acrobatics
• Special Needs
• All Disciplines
• Aerobics
• Trampolining
• Rhythmic

2. There are eight different regions throughout the country in IG. In these eight regions, there are currently 92 clubs registered with IG, the governing body.

3. While Ireland is not renowned for producing gymnasts to the standard required for Olympic competition, Barry MacDonald became the first and only Irish Gymnast to compete in the Olympic Games when he performed at the 1996 Atlanta Games

4. In Ireland, Salto Gymnastics Club in Lisburn, Co Antrim is the country’s only dedicated gymnastics academy, one of only two full time gymnastics facilities. Every other club must hire time in a sports hall and put their equipment in and out every time they use it.

5. Earlier this year, IG received a core grant from the Irish Sports Council of €169,545 ($220,610.87 ) with an additional €89,000 ($115,806.23) under the Women In Sport grant scheme. Gymnastics is considered a minority sport compared to our national sports, Gaelic Football and Hurling, and other sports such as football, rugby and boxing.  These sports gain substantial grants from the Irish Sports Council.

How does this compare to your country?

Note that these facts may have changed since publishing this post as the interest in sport is becoming more popular.