Former Golden Gopher gymnast and current volunteer administrative assistant Guillermo Alvarez is taking part in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials later this week in Philadephia. He is being accompanied by Minnesota head men's gymnastics coach Mike Burns, who will be blogging about the experience here on GopherSports.com. Check back here each day for the inside scoop from Coach Burns about Guillermo's quest for a spot on the Olympic Team:  

Guillermo and I traveled to Philadelphia Monday on a 10 am flight from Minneapolis. When we arrived in Philly we were greeted by a local organizing committee volunteer who led us to our ride to downtown Philly in a Cadillac Escalade. Sweet ride!!

We checked into the hotel which is directly across the street from the historic City Hall in the center of downtown Philadelphia. Guillermo is rooming with Justin Spring of Illinois and Mike is rooming with Miles Avery from Ohio State. After getting our credentials and some additional adidas gear we were ready for a little bite to eat.

This is an interesting meet because even though it's a USA Gymnastics (USAG) event it's really a United States Olympic Committee (USOC) event, so the USOC takes certain precedence over the USAG. Adidas is the apparel sponsor for USAG while Nike is the official sponsor of the USOC. All the gymnasts have adidas National Team apparel and there has been some concern over the guys wearing the noticeable three stripes of adidas over the swoosh of Nike. Because there wasn't enough time to get all new Nike competition apparel for this meet, the USOC is allowing us all to wear adidas gear as long as the three stripes of adidas are very inconspicuous! Crazy stuff.

Anyway, this evening Guillermo had a fairly brief workout in an effort to get comfortable with the arena and the equipment. Tomorrow will be Guillermo's main workout prior to the competition. He looked great tonight, just doing some basic sequences on all the events except vault.

More to come later.

--Coach Burns