Picture of the Day - World Cup Portimao
(Top) Ines split leap at 2008 Portimao in April. (lower)Added portrait of Laura with Ines at Baku World Championships banquet 2005.
Post these today (more coming) as a way to say thanks to the wonderful Portimao World Cup organization in Portugal for again so friendly and welcome event. Bravo!
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Statement of 8May2008 Apologize delay (had an ext harddrive crash last week, no data lost, whew!). Yet also, I was quite dismayed by FIG's recent announcement (Deriugina suspension) and it took some time to guage and absorb it's ripple effect.
After a lot of thinking, I can say I still believe in the beauty of rhythmic and will continue my work... From conferring with colleagues, fans, delegation members, sponsors of the sport...the perception is that the FIG
results and rankings cannot be trusted even more now and that consequently fewer will pay attention to this part of the sport, including myself. This is not new, just I have been personally very slow to come to this perception. From 1981
off-and-on, I send images to a major gymnastic magazine. Since 2001-2002, they began to show less interest in my monthly RG work (now max twice a year only). Understand more now, how they came to this perception (years earlier then I did).
I can say for the few of us that follow the international tour, we experience and have impressions of the behind the scenes RG world, how RG really is and more now it becomes not hard to understand the unfairness. For eg. I think of Inna's
(Zhukova) AA final result at Patras 2007 and it's not hard to put 2+2 together what happens in RG. I kept having faith in change, but now FIG's position has become so exposed and apparent. So much so, from now on my photographic intent,
emphasis will be more on that of Inna's BEAUTY (of all gymnasts, no matter what country)...and not so much their results and placings. That part is just not as important to me now. Meaning I may miss more award ceremonies in future.
As a photographer-journalist-human, I know what is true, what I believe in and stand for. That the beauty and friendships of rhythmic are wayyy more important to me and I hope to you, the kind visitors to my page. Thanks, Tom
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Miss Yesterday's? Week in Review? RG photographers: Patrick Tower, Barny Thierolf, Randy Brown, Esther Teijeira, Dirk Zimmermann, Sing Lo, Tomek Radek
Takako Kobayashi, Marvin Moore, James Glader, Daniel Palhegyi. Videographers: Guillermo, RSGMann, History: Jenn Isbister. Music: Norway index site. COP: Mario Lam,

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Today's images posted 8May2008 approx 1605hrs from La Mesa, California.
Page visited since May '98.

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Ps. If you missed, here is the full sequence of Anya realizing she has finally won. Anna Bessonova, 2007 All-Around World Champion.