Feb. 7, 2004
Feb. 7, 2004 - After securing a spot on the Senior National Team the night before, Dan Gill competed in two event finals on Saturday, February 7th in the 2004 Winter Cup Competition. In the company of past Olympians Blaine Wilson, twins Paul and Morgan Hamm, and Sean Townsend, Dan Gill was able to hold his own on the vault and floor exercise.
On vault, each gymnast is required to compete two different vaults. For his first vault, Dan performed a Yurchenko two and a half, which is a rear entry vault in which the gymnast does a round-off onto the springboard, a back handspring onto the horse, and a 1.5 back layout flip with 2.5 twists. During his vault, Dan had good height in the air, but he placed his hand down on the landing, giving him a 0.5 point deduction. Dan competed a Yurchenko double twist for his second vault, which is identical to his first one except with 0.5 fewer twists. This vault was excellent, but the average of the two vaults was a 9.250. Unfortunately, this was not enough to place in the top three.
On the floor exercise, Dan mounted with a beautiful double twisting double back flip, a very difficult pass. His second pass consisted of a whipback to a two and a half twisting layout and punch front full. With a small hop on the dismount, he received a 9.475, which earned him a tie for second place.
If you'd like to see Dan in action, come to Burnham Pavillion Saturday, February 14th at 7 pm, when he rejoins the Stanford team for the Cardinal Open.