Ellie Black

Video submissions began today for this year’s virtual Elite Canada competition, and while many of the top seniors are sitting out as the COVID-19 pandemic has caused recent club closures around the country, two-time Olympian Ellie Black is back and ready to get her year started.

Black is the only member of the 2019 world championships team who will compete here, and she’s most notably joined by 2016 Olympian Rose-Kaying Woo, 2018 Youth Olympic medalist Emma Spence, 2017 Pan Am floor medalist Laurie Denommée, world championships team members Sophie Marois and Audrey Rousseau, and 2019 Universiade team members Jessica Dowling and Denelle Pedrick, with Pedrick now focusing fully on her elite comeback, training alongside Black at Halifax Alta now that she has wrapped up her collegiate career at Central Michigan University.

Also notably competing in the senior field this year is Clara Raposo, who was on track to win the junior title at Elite Canada last year until she injured her knee on vault in the final. She’ll be joined by junior world championships teammate (and club teammate!) Cassie Lee, as well as 2020 Elite Canada junior all-around champion Maya Zonneveld and bronze medalist Ava Stewart, all of whom should be exciting additions to the senior squad.

With all of last year’s top juniors moving up to the senior field, and with many other juniors sitting this meet out, this won’t be a particularly strong Elite Canada for juniors, but there are still some notably talented gymnasts in the mix, with Victoriane Charron the number one to keep your eye on. Charron, born in 2008, is technically still a novice-level gymnast for the next year, but despite being among the youngest in this group, she’s incredibly talented and so elegant on every event, and will be the most likely candidate to top the all-around competition.

So, how will this virtual competition work? Beginning today, February 4, and ending on February 9, each club with a gymnast entered to compete will host its own competition in the gym, which will be overseen by a local judge in real time and filmed to be submitted to the head judge for video review, which will begin February 13.

Gymnasts are following all of the rules you’d expect them to follow at a live meet, including wearing appropriate competition attire and dismounting on hard surfaces (or on 20 cm hard landing mats with supplementary mats below for height if the gym doesn’t have a standard competition landing for vault), and any special requests – such as raising the bars or wearing special bandages – have to be cleared with the head judge in advance. Just like at a real competition, gymnasts can submit D-score inquiries, and there is a 13-page guide to help ensure gyms are all following the same standards for filming routines, including camera set-up and the exact view that must be captured.

As for judging, the local overseeing judges will be responsible for submitting all routines to the head judge immediately after the scheduled competition for their respective gyms, and the assigned judges for each event will sign into an online platform to view and judge the routines and submit their scores at the same time. All junior routines will be judged on February 13, as will senior vault and bars submissions, while senior beam and floor routines will be judged on February 14.

All scores will be available in real time on LiveMeet, and Gymnastics Canada is investigating options for sharing videos of routines. A list of all athletes expected to compete is below, as are the schedules both for the local club competitions and then for the live virtual judging.