Petar Smilajkov - Peconi » Blog » The 2008 Tour of Gymnastics Superstars

Last Saturday, Sally and I went to The 2008 Tour of Gymnastics Superstars, a show we both were looking forward to since before the Olympics were even over.

We really enjoyed watching the Olympics, swimming and especially gymnastics were on our TV almost all the time. Heck, we even bought the 52″ Sony Bravia XBR4 mostly so we can watch the Olympics in style .

Maybe we expected too much from the Tour, or maybe we were just too excited about it, but in reality I must admit - whoever organized this whole deal is simply AN IDIOT.

Imagine, you have a group of young gymnists, the best gymnist in the whole World, and instead of having them showing off in style, you go and make a mockery of the whole deal by having some stupid kiddie bands (KSM and Jordan Pruit) blast more than 7 songs as if we went to see a cheap (and heckuva loud) High School musical.

I kid you not, out of thousands of people at the arena you could count on fingers of one hand of how many people loved seeing these singers.

To put an insult on the wound, from 17 awesome gymnists out there, we saw maybe 5 individual performances out of which 3 were worth-while watching. If they were scored, they would not even pass the qualifications.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that this was not a gymnastics event but rather more of a prolonged party for winning the bronze and silver medals, but it was so dumbed down that I really hated it.

Nastia did one double bars routing which was very nice to see (especially since we had floor seats right next to her), AND THAT WAS IT for double bars! After that Shawn and Nastia did one or two individual high-bar routines, and then one together - just dancing around.

Now that I mentioned Dancing - you will see 98% of dancing in this tour and 2% of real gymnastics. If you are down with that, and with listening more than 7 songs by screaming kiddie bands - you’re in for a treat.

I admit - it was really great to see these kids in person. It was amazing. I personally cannot wait for April and some real gymnastics competition - but in my opinion - the Saturday’s performance was a waste of $200 bucks.

Furthermore, I sincerely hope that gymnists get a good chunk of this since we all know most of them quite need it. If that is the case - I am glad I spent $200 bucks.

P.S> Watch out for the floor seats. Your arena may have a really funky seating chart. We had 4 sections for floor seats, the two closer to the stage and AWAY from the double bars (closer to the high beam and pomel horse) were a GREAT place to sit at. The other two, next to high bars and double bars, SUCK! Don’t get those, you’ll be better off sitting on the side in regular seats .