A nice routine from Youna Dufournet (for a change)

France's Youna Dufournet

You can tell it’s been a hard couple of months for Youna Dufournet.

The 16-year-old has been heralded as the “second coming” of the French (Wait, who was their first coming? Ludivine Furnon? Isabelle Severino? Emilie LePennec? Marine Debauve? But whatever.) She was the 2008 Junior European vault and bars champion, and placed third in the all-around, a more promising start than any of the ladies mentioned above — more promising than anyone since Elodie Lussac took four gold medals at the 1993 Junior Europeans, then promptly went and competed for Russia.

But then Dufournet became a senior. And she grew and has stopped being able to pull around a lot of her tumbling. And those form issues, not as apparent when she was a junior, became appallingly, well, more apparent.

And the falls. First there were three from the balance beam at the 2009 American Cup. Then more disasters on beam in the all-around competition at the European Championships. There’s also the issue of her floor routine, which bloggers like me are panning as “scary” in the serious way. Rick McCharles, editor of the always excelletn Gymnastics Coaching blog, even sent an email to an FIG official asking if it’s possible for someone — anyone — to intercede on Youna’s behalf before she ends up paralyzed.

So it’s nice to see a routine which Youna not only doesn’t fall but does pretty darn well (few little leg seperations, but that’s being really picky; at this point, this blogger will cheer to see her land on her feet). Here she is on bars during event finals at the 2009 European Championships.

From the way she’s developing, it looks like Youna’s going to be tall for an international elite, or at least long-legged.

Youna Dufournet, 2009 European Championships Event Finals, Bars:

Dufournet looked a lot sharper as a junior, leading some to believe that her problems are somewhat related to growth issues.

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