... (!!) successfully farms edible snails in Romania's first snail breeding farm

On the 1st of July 2006, Gina GOGEAN, one of the most successful Romanian gymnasts of all times, got married in both a civil and religious ceremony in Deva, Romania to her long-time boyfriend and fiancé Cristian ('Cristi') GROZA , a grandson of Dr. Petru Groza, a leading political figure in interwar Romania, becoming Gina Gogean-Groza that day as Gina decided to keep her maiden name...

A multiple Olympic, World and European medalist, Gina concluded her competitive gymnastics career in 1998 with an astounding total of 27 Olympic, World and European Championship medals, 12 of them gold!

Following her active career, Gina remained close to sports and gymnastics. After her graduation she worked as a coach in Romania and Scotland and acted as TV commentator for Eurosport in Romania and France. In 2001 Gogean was appointed the honorary president of the newly formed Romanian Federation of Fitness, and was also a voting member of the Romanian Olympic Committee. In 2001 she received her International Judge Brevet and acts as a national and continental judge in competitions ever since.

She and Cristi made up a business plan, contacted and took courses at the renowned International Institute of Heliciculture in Cherasco/Italy and successfully started the production and breeding of snails/escargots.
Their initial investment returned after their very first harvest and their farm is currently delivering a considerable amount of escargots to the export market.

saying that so far she has never tasted snails herself as she never liked “exotic seafood, crawdads or snails” yet doesn’t know how long it will take until she will concede her husband the favor who is continuously trying to persuade her to give up resistance.
Source: Various Romanian press articles, by
GYMmedia correspondent G.-M.Guendisch

Last weekend the Swiss Gymnastics Federation STV arranged its National Championships of artistic gymnastics in Glarus: Niki Boeschenstein got his third and Ariella Kaeslin her first all-around title....
... more on the German GYMmedia platform on
>> www.gymmedia.de

Coming weekend the traditional German artistic gymnastics club 'Turn-Club 72 Leverkusen' organizes the 31st International Leverkusen-Cup.
This international gymnastics competition for girls is the oldest and most traditional competition in Europe! Since 1976 all together 89 different clubs out of 39 Nations from all over the world took part at this annual high level competition called 'Leverkusen-Cup'.
This year the Leverkusen-Cup is the last international test for the World Championships 2006, which will held some days later only in Aarhus (DEN).
Many National-Teams compare at Leverkusen-Cup 2006 for having a last high level competition before they take part at this years absolutely highlight in Denmark...

.... but also Teams from
- Great Britain; - Italy; - Latvia; - Slovenia; - Czech Republik; - Hungary.

German Team has won the Leverkusen-Cup 2005 and tries to defend their trophy this year! This year the best German gymnasts will participate again!

<< PHOTO, left.:
Daria Bijak - reigning German Master 2006 and member of the winning German team 2005.
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TICKETS to buy from NOW on !!

Tickets:
- advance sell (- only available t0 Sep 30 !): 7,00 €
- in competition hall: 10,00 €
(- children under the age of 7 years - for FREE!)

Exclusive offer for clubs and groups:
- Clubs get the chance to get tickets nur 5,00 € (- each ticket if they buy at least 10 tickets !).

- Ticket reservations can be made by phone or by e-mail:

GYMmedia Special - Flashbacks:
>> 30. Leverkusen Cup 2005
>>
>> 28. Leverkusen-Cup 2003
>> 27. Leverkusen-Cup 2002
>> 26. Leverkusen-Cup 2001
>> 25. Leverkusen-Cup 2000

HA NOI — Hanoian gymnasts grabbed four gold medals to become victors at the National Games Gymnastics and Sports Aerobic Championships.

Ha Noi topped the medal tally with six gold, six silver and six bronze medals, beating HCM City who came in second with four gold, one silver and five bronze medals.

<< Truong Minh Sang gave a top performance for three gold medals in the individual events of all around, pommel horse and high bar.
The Army team placed third with two golds and five silvers....

On Saturday, August 19 the European high bar champion 2005, Fabian HAMBUECHEN (Wetzlar) won the all-around competition of the first German trials in preparation of the upcoming world championships with a score of 90.700, followed by the 19-years old Philipp BOY (88.650; Cottbus) and Christian BERCZES (86,350; Halle).

On women's side Kim BUI from Tuebingen won the all-around with a score of 55.350 in front of Jenny BRUNNER (52.200; Chemnitz) and Heike GUNNE (52,050; Niedergirmes).

The second trials will be the German Championships in Stuttgart from September 01 to 03...
>> ... read more on the German GYMmedia portal on www.gymmedia.de

To the first time the Organizing Committee of the next, the 2nd European Individual Championships, which will held in Amsterdam (2007, April 26 to 29), met in the Dutch metropole.
This first official meeting with the local organizing committee (LOC) under the direction of the President WTC/UEG, Marie-Paule Hoffmann shows that the preparations progress very well indeed....

Press accreditation:
- from January 15th, 2007 on (deadline March 31st, 2007) via the UEG Internet.
Source: UEG

The national championships of the USA Gymnastics Federation held in St. Paul, Minnesota this week.
Nastia Liukin won her second straight national title Saturday despite closing her night with a wobbling, warbling beam routine that belied her usual elegance and excellence. On second place came Natasha Kelley, followed by Jana Bieger, a member of last year's world championship US team,

Artemev entered the night with a lead of 0.50 points over Guillermo Alvarez but pulled clear with outstanding performances on pommel horse, with a score of 15.35 on the new open-ended International Gymnastics Federation scoring system, and 15.9 on vault, with a performance score of 9.7 out of 10.0 on that event.

While Artemev held a convincing lead of more than a point over Jonathan Horton, who won the NCAA all-around title at Oklahoma, it would have been closer had not Horton fallen off the high bar, his best event, on Wednesday, and on pommel horse, perhaps his weakest event, on Friday. Horton's chances of cracking the top three appeared perilous after his fall off the horse, but he hit all three release moves on the high bar for a score of 15.3, then added a 15.5 on the floor to move past Alvarez, who stumbled on his closing floor routine, his only mistake of any consequence.

David Sender of Stanford moved into fourth with a monster 16.5 score on vault, including a 9.9 score for performance, to ease past former national and world champion Sean Townsend of Houston, who finished fifth after falling on his rings dismount.
Sean Townsend, however, regained a spot on the national team after struggling with injuries and inconsistency last season and said he hopes his performance signals a new start.

Detailed Men's AA Results

The men's program named its World Championship team:
On it are national champion Alexander Artemev, Guillermo Alvarez, Jonathan Horton, Justin Spring, Clay Strother and rings specialist Kevin Tan.

Men's Apparatus Champions 2006:
- Floor Exercise: Horton
- Pommel Horse: Artemev
- Still Rings: Tan
- Vault: Sender
- Parallel Bars: Artemev
- High Bar: Brooks

... results after Day 1:
>> Men's AA Results, Day 1

Jana Bieger, also a member of last year's US world championship team, finished third while Alicia Sacramone, the defending world champion on floor, finished fifth. All are pointing to Worlds in October and, of course, to the Olympics in 2008, so the result of this event wasn't the most important thing. But this was the first major event contested in America under the sport's new scoring system. Problems this night: The panel of American judges took a full two minutes to post Liukin's score – about a minute longer than usual.

The women's US world team will be named in October, after a pair of training camps at the Karolyi ranch.

>> Women's All-around Final

>> Women's AA results, Day 1

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) released the Pictograms of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on the occasion of the 2-year countdown to the opening of the Games.

One of the basic image elements of the Olympics, the Olympic Games Pictograms are widely applied in areas such as Olympic directional instruction system, advertising and communications, landscape and environmental arrangement, TV broadcasting and souvenir designs.