All my advice, useful or useless, is from my own experience, so I do have crappy prints to back it up!
First off, your equipment must be sound, ie. not falling to bits, and have at least a few features (spotmeter is handy, as is aperture priority), autofocus can be handy too, but beware of how fast and accurate it is, or it will become more of a pain in the arse than a help. Dynax 7 autofocus is very good! I always use it now, as it is dependable and fast enough for most things. Beware though, the major let down will be the lens. I used a 100-300 4.5-5.6 lens at worlds, and the autofocus managed to cope with pretty much everything, but I now operate a Sigma 100-300 f4 which is considerably faster in the autofocus department.
Remember that you want at least an f4 lens before you even THINK about trying to catch action shots! Otherwise its is very hit and miss...mostly miss.
Lightmeter is all important, as is the lighting in the arena, but you can't do anything about that, so be prepared with some fast film. Fuji 800 is the fastest you should use for colour pics (800 Kodak is awful), 1600 is available, but believe me, not worth it. 3200 is available for B&W pics, though I'm not sure how well that stands up to the slower film speeds.
Take a light reading from a light area of skin on an athlete, or anyone else standing in the arena floor, and take that as gods word. as long as you stick to those settings, you should be quids in, guaranteed pictures that will come out. Whether you want to use any automatic features of your cameras lightmeter (assuming it has any) is up to you, though I wouldn't reccomend it too strongly, you just need to be pointing at a small area of black in the background, possibly between the legs of a leaping gymnast, and you will massively overexpose your shot. So, I set the camera in manual mode, and set it up so it doesn't change unless I move the dials. Therefore you can only blame yourself for badly exposed pics!
Now, you can safely say your pics will come out, whether they are any good is a different question! This is where the speedy finger wins the day, as if you miss a brilliant pose where the gymnast is looking straight at you by just a millionth of a second, you've still missed it. Know the routines you are going to be seeing, or if thats not possible, just drink lots of coffee!
Also, if your settings are slow (shutter speed below 1/200th of a second) don't shoot off all your film at the vault, bars, or try to catch tumbling, cos you will only disappoint yourself. Shutter at 1/250th is a slight improvement, and you might manage to get some bar releases, but ideally you should be able to set your shutter at 1/500th and not underexpose grossly. If you can manage that, then you can pretty much freeze anything. Vault may still be a bit blurry, as may be tumbling, especially twisting runs, but for poses and leaps, you won't go wrong
My settings at worlds were 1/125 with 800 film, and a measly increase to 1/250th with 1600 film, all on F5.6, and I managed to slightly OVER expose most of my shots...not to a destructive level, but less easy on the eye than for example Gymworlds.
As you will see, I have a chronic lack of action shots, and those that are on display, all have signs of blur, testimony to 1/125th being a bit too slow for gymnastics.
At the world cup finals in Glasgow, I used an f2.8 lens, 400 speed film, and ran at 1/500th of a second, so there you can see what a good fast lens wil do for your shutter speed...though I wouldn't reccomend Kodak 400 at all. In an ideal world, I would have used Fuji 400/800, or even possibly a 400 slide film.
Oh yes, one other thing, TAKE PLENTY OF FILM WITH YOU! You may not be able to get the film type you want in the area of the event, so be prepared! Think along the lines of 5 films per day, cos once you get carried away, it will disappear quickly! If your favourite team/gymnast is competing, make it 10 films per day, cos being conservative just means you end up regretting NOT taking pictures when you had the chance!
So, there is my wisdom in writing, mail me with any questions, or anything I've missed out.
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