A note on Team China

Making time for a quick attempt at clarifying!

Recently, news, videos and gifs emerged of fantastic upgrades from some of the girls. Shang Chunsong landed a beautiful and secure 3.5 twist on floor, Wang Yan threw a triple off beam and Chen Siyi either a triple or 3.5, Tan Jiaxin threw an amanar, Deng Yalan a 2.5 (!!) Tsuk and Yao Jinnan a full twisting DLO bars dismount..and other skills were on display also. No double doubles which I know I saw mentioned somewhere.

The key word is display. Many of the above skills were on trampoline or into a pit. The quad twist, if Shang Chunsong actually threw one, definitely was.

This was an internal verification of upgrades, not a competition. Essentially, kickstarting their new internal code previously detailed here - emphasising floor and vault, and harder skills in general. No full routines were shown. Songsong's 3.5 on competition floor does look good indeed, but ALL of the upgrades have to be put into full routines and it's worth bearing in mind also that basically, the girls are not really built to be able to massively up their difficulty and endurance. Not that none of the upgrades will appear or anything, but just to be aware that they were performed singly. The 3.5 in particular was a skill assigned to the girls over winter training to accomplish on trampoline. Other combinations were probably assigned individually.

Tan Jiaxin's amanar looks serviceable. In her case, she has a lot of adjusting to do from her previous status as a one-eventer. Hopefully she can perform well on bars, floor and vault as she is very, very valuable.

Yao Jinnan IS AN ALL-AROUNDER at this point in time. She had one upgrade to show, and showed it. There is nothing to read into what events she will drop in the future. Don't get me wrong - she could indeed drop vault and floor, but she will not be able to do that this year. They are going to have a horrendous time scraping together enough girls and alternates for Nanning and the vault rotation will be an issue - there is just no way a guaranteed DTY will sit on the sidelines during it.

Tan Sixin and Huang Huidan did not appear, which indicates no upgrades to show or none to show yet. No need to fear, they'll be back in action when appropriate.

Wang Wei may retire. If she does, hopefully she'll be very happy in what she chooses to do. She would have been very valuable on floor this year and possibly vault, so it's a blow if she does :/

Upgrades are good news, but should be treated with caution! :) I have noticed a lot of certainty in the reporting of them and also about Yao Jinnan's status so thought I'd try to make it a bit clearer (hopefully).