American Cup lineup announced

I'll try not to call it SCAM, but it's tough. For some reason I have it in my head that it takes place in the same venue in New York every year. Maybe it often does, but the NBC commentary is in my head 'It's in this venue that Nadia blah blah blah'. Anyway, it's not this year- it's on Aly's turf, Massachusetts.

The American lineup is Kyla Ross and Elizabeth Price.  Not very surprising as these are the only two with senior international experience, and who are fighting fit to compete. Kyla needs to show strong upgrades to stand a chance of beating Ebee, who has monster d-scores and is coming off the back of two easy World Cup wins. Two very different gymnasts- should be interesting! No word yet on whether there will be an exhibition gymnast. If there is, my money is on Lexie Priessman, who, like Gabby Douglas before her, is quite capable of equalling or even beating her compatriots.

The international lineup (2 free spaces currently) is Asuka Teramoto, Vanessa Ferrari, Larisa Iordache and Elizabeth Seitz. Vanessa was expected to fade out from competition, she only did the World Cups a while ago for money to get an apartment with her boyfriend. Presumably this competition is furthering her quest. Not that I think it's a bad thing or anything. Asuka, who was in London, was the new-found star of the Japanese team, who is very very strong on beam and floor. Hopefully she can step it up on bars and beam and really contend well. She was injured last year and did not compete at the Asian Games or Japanese Nationals- I cannot wait to see her again. Please please please let Larisa actually compete this time. This is probably to make up for her being pulled from the World Cup last year. I hope to see her in full health. Elizabeth is really quite strong and could be very successful at least at Euros if she cleaned up her form and polished her routines some more. Lovely floor routine- and I hope she throws her Def. I don't care if it's sloppy. As for the two remaining places- I would think one would be a Brit- Kristian Thomas is competing, makes sense to send someone with him. Not neccessarily Rebecca Tunney (who if she does show up, should be unrservedly apologised to for the awful commentary she had last year at the hands of the trio), but one of their new seniors- and they have several. There really is no new faces in this lineup, would be nice for the last two spots to be filled by them. I'm going to guess no Russians. Chinese...hmm. They are and have been for a while sequestered in winter training, which the competition comes right at the end of. It's not great timing, not sure how much they would be bothered over a biased competition even with the lure of experience. I would think the likeliest scenario is a Brit and a Romanian or South American- the men's side has quite a few.