It's insane to watch Simone Biles win 5 more gold medals and all gold. Although she has a different standard to the rest of the field it's a great personal victory for her to compete a lot better here than she did at worlds last year where she was of course hindered by both kidney stone and still honing routine construction. Her beam has been great all week and although the interior of her routine can't match some other routines she absolutely nailed the life out of it in beam finals today and deservedly took the title. Fierce isn't the word. It's odd to think of the sport without her. She has been in it for almost my entire time of watching it and is still getting better.
Angelina Melnikova realising her full potential finally was so satisfying to watch. 3 medals for someone who has been bringing in results and carrying her team all quad but never hitting fully when it mattered individually. I never thought I'd see her hitting beam and floor so well and so consistently and I'm glad she was rewarded for that with a floor medal and beam scores over 14.
Russia had some amazing leos that I'm fully behind. Some a bit too shiny for me but loads of interesting work and several purple ones which is always an excellent choice. Can't decide if Lilia Akhaimova's AA leo was more stained glass or butterly, either way it was fun if a bit young for her.
Double Downies both medalling for the first time at worlds on the same day is a story for the ages. What a moment! Unfortunately the judges appear to have blinked while Ellie did the second-best vaulting of the final and gave her bronze instead. Becky, meanwhile, who started her worlds journey in the same city in 2007 and who has had an extremely rocky journey with injury FINALLY put it all together and knocked it out of the park to score silver. It should be mentioned that not only did Becky have to recover and hit but she also had to relearn her Ezhova and Tweddle by turning in the opposite direction than previously due to her elbow injury. Incredible isn't the word and the massive reaction and excitement of all the GB gymnasts Becky has competed with down through the years really solidified what a massive achievement that routine was.
Rhys McClenaghan qualified for the FIRST worlds final for Ireland and took bronze. The main thing to take away from that routine is that he did it to the best of his ability and that's all that can be asked for. His hip angle and extension need to be rewarded comparatively to Max Whitlock who won gold by a tenth with an 0.6 d score advantage but with a piked angle and flexed feet. Respect to Max for continuing to produce high difficulty and consistent work after so many years but that score...was not it. Far too high in contrast to Rhys and Lee Chih-Kai. No matter, it will motivate both of them to upgrade for Tokyo.
Roxana Popa's whip-whip-double tuck pass and her Mustafina turn are absolutely outstanding and so is her choreography and personality in that routine. How great to see her back after so long out! Her landings knocked her down a bit and she could do with an upgrade to really contend but that was amazing.
Tang Xijing did that. Incredible performance from a first-year senior especially after falling twice on beam in qualifications and initially being 2-per-countrie'd. The best she could have done on floor and hopefully she can get her DTY a bit stronger and slowly upgrade other events. She's not a standout on beam or bars within the national team but she sure was in the AA, crisp, efficient, precise. A huge total and really, second in the world behind the greatest of all time at the peak of her talent feels like a significantly higher achievement than China's other silver AA medallist Jiang Yuyuan who placed second to Aliya Mustafina. Pre-ACL tear Aliya was of course a force to be reckoned with but undoubtedly not in the same league as Simone.
It's perfectly normal to pull out of certain finals to concentrate on others. It's not always injury, it can be due to fear of re-aggravating an injury, overtraining/fatigue worry or simply focusing on medal chances. Liu Tingting being pulled was not exactly a massive surprise after such a disastrous TF as she had. As the team captain she would have felt an obligation to shepherd a mostly new but very talented team to a team medal and therefore to be the only one counting falls to throw them down into 4th is a heavy burden to bear. LTT has a beautiful floor and great bars when she hits and there's a reason why she is now a 2-time beam world medallist so her qualification to the AA especially with Tang Xijing falling twice and Chen Yile not doing the AA wasn't a big surprise but wasn't exactly the focus for her either. By all accounts it appears to have been a mutual decision both for LTT's own mental wellbeing (and probably physical too, her ankles are notoriously a problem hence double twist beam dismount) with the massive benefit of giving the usually very consistent and strong all-arounder Tang Xijing her chance. Ellie Downie pulled out of competing AA in TF and Nina Derweal pulled out of the floor final for very similar preservation reasons, so y'know, same sort of thing, just different finals order. No Gutsu, Galieva, Marinescu, Baraksanova, Mostepanova- gymnasts involved in shafting of qualified AA spots - comparisons are necessary.
Sunisa Lee is a joy to watch. She has a real lightness and floaty quality to her gymnastics, a really clean style. Floor finals was unexpected but probably shouldn't have been, she's improved so much even since summer. Sad to see her come to grief on bars and beam and knock herself out of the super competitive all-around podium but she is young and only going to improve from here.
Gutted for Melanie de Jesus dos Santos who has really had a miserable worlds, no other word for it. Clean in her 2 event finals but to fall short in team, AA and EF is a bitter pill to swallow for such a fabulous and well-rounded AA gymnast. Powerful on vault, dynamic on floor, solid beam, crisp on bars. I suppose it's great motivation for next year.
Purple leos had a really strong showing at worlds, nice to see.
Alexandra Schekoldina has a really stunning DTY. So tidy
The fact that Liu Tingting and Li Shijia both medalled in a final when they both lost significant connective value with pauses is very promising. The rest of their work has such quality it still keeps them high.
Nina was really fun to watch on bars. It's not my favourite routine but she has really tightened up on it and it's incredible to see her hit her crazy difficulty and do it so well. And then to plant the dismount as such a final statement. My heart said Becky but really and truly Nina earned that gold no question.
I'm so impressed that Ellie Black went for the Rudi after seeing the standings. Extremely brave move and obviously it didn't work out for her but wow, what an athlete. Hopefully she will be well recovered by the end of the year.
Giulia Steinbruber's leaps are a masterpiece. Such height, split and sheer power behind them.
Simone Biles is really not that far behind her. Her tumbling takes almost all of the focus naturally enough but her leaps on floor are seriously difficult and always very high with a great split.
It's late so, part 2 of X tomorrow! Hope everyone enjoyed a really excellent worlds.
Sunday, 13 October 2019
Sunday, 6 October 2019
Worlds Qualifications
I knew it would be interesting but I'm still surprised at all of the twists and turns.
First up, Kara Eaker and the notorious beam inquiry which will live long in the collective gymternet memory for knocking her out of the beam final she was comfortably placed in. Her original placing, 5th, would have meant she would have competed last in the final and therefore stood an excellent chance of gold or silver with a hit routine. I understand the perspective of 'this score is too low, we need the d-score looked at' but share the common view of 'she was IN the final there was no point' and of course, that the creditability of her dodgy ring leaps should not have been brand new information to anyone. When you pay FIG to re-evaluate using the superior jury with the ability to use slow-motion replay then you run the risk of them spotting something, which of course they did, and I've no issue with what they did. Extremely cruel for Kara of course but they were doing their jobs. A great pity it wasn't spotted in real time in any of the other numerous competitions she competed in but it must be noted that the leaps are worse than they were last year at worlds. The beam judges were also on serious crack as noted in the extremely harsh execution scoring of the earliest subdivisions, the too-tight scoring range and not originally crediting Flavia Saraiva's ring leaps which are the best in the game.
US domestic judging does the athletes and coaches no favours by inflating scores and ignoring questionable skills and connections. They're not the only ones and of course USA has such a cushion that in terms of the team it doesn't really matter but it has crappy consequences individually as Jordyn Wieber (beam connections not creditable), McKayla Maroney (floor overtime penalty at Antwerp knocked her out of the final) and now Kara can attest. I'm sure there are more examples. The worst thing now is that it will be very difficult for Kara to remain relevant for Tokyo if she cannot rework her beam routine. Without a monster beam score and with Sunisa Lee becoming such a fantastic beamer, the gap is closing. We'll see what happens with the specialist spots.
I haven't been watching gymnastics long enough to be used to seeing China with a fantastic team. 2012 of course had amazing veterans but also injury and inconsistency issues. Watching them nail routine after routine was trul exhilarating. One highlight was Liu Tingting with so-close-to-perfect beam and bars routines and a really charismatic floor throwing her so far up to the top of the all-around standings when up until very recently it wasn't sure at all if she would do the all-around at all. She has a DTY but it's not great and I'm glad she played it safe with the FTY. Chen Yile also had a great meet which is wonderful to see after her recovery and so did Li Shijia. Chen Yile will be working her back to full all-around capability for Tokyo while Li Shijia had a great AA showing qualifying in 6th overall helped by her monster beam score which placed her second in that final. Tang Xijing had 2 falls on beam of course but had the all-important DTY, a really strong bars and recovered after beam to do fine on floor. Floor was as expected, not notably great but not awful by any means and better than many recent floor rotations. There are options there to upgrade such as Qi Qi's silivas and full credit for Li Shijia's triple full which WAS rotated. Great showing for finals, 5th and 6th AA so top group, Liu Tingting in 2 event finals - bars and beam, Qi Qi just taking the last vault spot in a seriously competitive final and Li Shijia second qualifier on beam.
Like Russia I hope they haven't used up their consistency in qualifiers. There was much discussion over this weak Russian team relying on largely untested gymnasts to fill in the gaps for qualifying and team finals but....they really knocked it out of the park. Really surreal to see 3 out of 4 hit beam routines. Rough day for Schekeldina but valued experience and she did have an absolutely beautiful vault. Lilia Akhaimova was a force to be reckoned with, I expected her strong vault and floor but was surprised with her bars and beam...bars were fierce and very different to what went before her, but efficient and got the job done and into the AA. I never am sure of Angelina Melnikova even though she has been very consistent for the last good while. Great to see her having such a good day. I will say I thought the e-scores were running too high on bars for them and slightly on floor considering how they were the previous day but climbing has been, is and will always be an issue.
USA obviously went out and lead the field by 5 points afterwards. Simone Biles is top AA qualifier and into all event finals as well as having 2 new skills in the code, the double double off beam (more on that later) with a super upright landing and the triple double which of course she had too much energy on and went out of bounds. A bouncy day for her, the 0.3 neutral deduction on the explosive Cheng which left her in danger of running out of mat made the difference in her qualifying second into vault finals behind Jade Carey but presumably she will use her own vault in the finals and excess energy won't be a problem and she'll get more used to the floor too during TF and AA. Jade Carey had exceptional vaults but ran into trouble with OOB on floor, tying with Sunisa Lee and subsequently losing the tiebreak and getting 2-per-countrie'd out of finals. I mean, it should probably have been less of a surprise that Sunisa's massive improvement puts specialists such as Jade and Kara at risk while Simone is still competing. The out of bounds is not really the culprit I don't think, but the artistry deductions Jade's routines incur. Nobody is expecting her to whip out a Soviet special but failure to engage with and express properly as well as poor choreography should be harshly deducted, it's only right. The bars and beam execution scores sure were interesting. Simone's beam was the best she's done in ages and the fact that the risky skills are removed means I don't see much issue with her execution score, she didn't leave them much to work with in terms of deductions. 13.4 for Sunisa with a fall though is a choice. She IS brilliant (LOOK AT THOSE RINGS ARMINE AND AL!!) and very clean but there's not really justification for that compared to the quality of routines that scored LESS than that with no fall or significant error. Similarly, Grace without a fall would have had the highest execution score of all and her form doesn't stand up to that. I also have no idea how her bars score went over a 14, they are not notable and have inbuilt errors in late skills and handstands. It's not in the same league as the actual bars specialists. Efficient with a great dismount but...that's it.
I've been watching individual routines of Melanie De Jesus Dos Santos, the rest of team France, Netherlands, GB and others but not enough to give a proper team opinion. The team final is going to be incredible with not much between France, China and Russia. Great to see teams like France upping their game so much. Japan falling out of team final contention is to be expected after leaving Mai Murakami at home but it's devastating for Brazil to be knocked out. They've been crushed by injury. Thrilled for Spain and to see Roxana Popa so strong again and beautiful routines from Cintia Rodriguez. To me, this is the most exciting worlds in a few years.
Chen Yile is far from the only one competing through recovery, Ana Padurariu is far from her full difficulty but thankfully is in beam finals after the inquiry fiasco. Brooklyn Moors also got knocked from floor finals (although the day before) from an inquiry. Her artistry and devotion to expression is just gorgeous and hopefully she'll be back in floor final next year but the pre-rotation on the leap they took off for is quite clear in the screenshots and her twisting form isn't cute so there are areas of improvement other than loading difficulty.
Back to the double double beam dismount. There is no way the same skill should be a H on beam and floor clearly it is far harder on beam to execute. Countless gymnasts can compete the double double on floor while we are basically never going to see anyone else do it on beam. The 0.3 rise between a full twisting and double twisting double back on floor is very relevant. They should have given it an I rating on beam. The safety argument FIG countered with doesn't really wash because any salto imposes a risk for a gymnast if something goes wrong. How many times have we seen a foot slip on beam and a double tuck go wrong as a result? In this case it's just not a skill that someone can chuck out of the blue and the rating is an insult to the extreme skill required to do it and it is done excellently too it's not some horrorshow landed with her head almost at the ground.
BUT...there are some seriously outrageous arguments out there. The rating is NOT racist and it is NOT anti-American. How could FIG or the code possibly be anti-American when tumbling skills are still open-ended but all new leaps, turns and bars transitions are capped? How is that fair to the likes of the Dutch etc.? How is it fair that the one-armed bars skills were utterly lowballed? The code has many stupid parts and there are LOADS of skills that are far more difficult than the code implies. This is not a unique thing or in any way anti-Simone. I think the best thing I saw was that Kara's beam score dropping was a retaliation for the criticism of the H rating. Please. Get. Off. The. Internet.
Anyway, I'm excited! There's a lot of stacked finals here and new and old faces that have seriously impressed as well as those were expected to do well.
The TF podium I want is USA-China-France. Nothing against Russia but it would be incredible for France. I sort of want Simone, Liu Tingting, Sunisa, Melanie and Angelina on the AA podium so that's an issue. For the rest I can't really choose either so I'm really bad at dream podiums.
What do you want to see in finals? Do you agree the scoring was dodgy at best? Do you think Kara's coaches should be rounded up and shot?
First up, Kara Eaker and the notorious beam inquiry which will live long in the collective gymternet memory for knocking her out of the beam final she was comfortably placed in. Her original placing, 5th, would have meant she would have competed last in the final and therefore stood an excellent chance of gold or silver with a hit routine. I understand the perspective of 'this score is too low, we need the d-score looked at' but share the common view of 'she was IN the final there was no point' and of course, that the creditability of her dodgy ring leaps should not have been brand new information to anyone. When you pay FIG to re-evaluate using the superior jury with the ability to use slow-motion replay then you run the risk of them spotting something, which of course they did, and I've no issue with what they did. Extremely cruel for Kara of course but they were doing their jobs. A great pity it wasn't spotted in real time in any of the other numerous competitions she competed in but it must be noted that the leaps are worse than they were last year at worlds. The beam judges were also on serious crack as noted in the extremely harsh execution scoring of the earliest subdivisions, the too-tight scoring range and not originally crediting Flavia Saraiva's ring leaps which are the best in the game.
US domestic judging does the athletes and coaches no favours by inflating scores and ignoring questionable skills and connections. They're not the only ones and of course USA has such a cushion that in terms of the team it doesn't really matter but it has crappy consequences individually as Jordyn Wieber (beam connections not creditable), McKayla Maroney (floor overtime penalty at Antwerp knocked her out of the final) and now Kara can attest. I'm sure there are more examples. The worst thing now is that it will be very difficult for Kara to remain relevant for Tokyo if she cannot rework her beam routine. Without a monster beam score and with Sunisa Lee becoming such a fantastic beamer, the gap is closing. We'll see what happens with the specialist spots.
I haven't been watching gymnastics long enough to be used to seeing China with a fantastic team. 2012 of course had amazing veterans but also injury and inconsistency issues. Watching them nail routine after routine was trul exhilarating. One highlight was Liu Tingting with so-close-to-perfect beam and bars routines and a really charismatic floor throwing her so far up to the top of the all-around standings when up until very recently it wasn't sure at all if she would do the all-around at all. She has a DTY but it's not great and I'm glad she played it safe with the FTY. Chen Yile also had a great meet which is wonderful to see after her recovery and so did Li Shijia. Chen Yile will be working her back to full all-around capability for Tokyo while Li Shijia had a great AA showing qualifying in 6th overall helped by her monster beam score which placed her second in that final. Tang Xijing had 2 falls on beam of course but had the all-important DTY, a really strong bars and recovered after beam to do fine on floor. Floor was as expected, not notably great but not awful by any means and better than many recent floor rotations. There are options there to upgrade such as Qi Qi's silivas and full credit for Li Shijia's triple full which WAS rotated. Great showing for finals, 5th and 6th AA so top group, Liu Tingting in 2 event finals - bars and beam, Qi Qi just taking the last vault spot in a seriously competitive final and Li Shijia second qualifier on beam.
Like Russia I hope they haven't used up their consistency in qualifiers. There was much discussion over this weak Russian team relying on largely untested gymnasts to fill in the gaps for qualifying and team finals but....they really knocked it out of the park. Really surreal to see 3 out of 4 hit beam routines. Rough day for Schekeldina but valued experience and she did have an absolutely beautiful vault. Lilia Akhaimova was a force to be reckoned with, I expected her strong vault and floor but was surprised with her bars and beam...bars were fierce and very different to what went before her, but efficient and got the job done and into the AA. I never am sure of Angelina Melnikova even though she has been very consistent for the last good while. Great to see her having such a good day. I will say I thought the e-scores were running too high on bars for them and slightly on floor considering how they were the previous day but climbing has been, is and will always be an issue.
USA obviously went out and lead the field by 5 points afterwards. Simone Biles is top AA qualifier and into all event finals as well as having 2 new skills in the code, the double double off beam (more on that later) with a super upright landing and the triple double which of course she had too much energy on and went out of bounds. A bouncy day for her, the 0.3 neutral deduction on the explosive Cheng which left her in danger of running out of mat made the difference in her qualifying second into vault finals behind Jade Carey but presumably she will use her own vault in the finals and excess energy won't be a problem and she'll get more used to the floor too during TF and AA. Jade Carey had exceptional vaults but ran into trouble with OOB on floor, tying with Sunisa Lee and subsequently losing the tiebreak and getting 2-per-countrie'd out of finals. I mean, it should probably have been less of a surprise that Sunisa's massive improvement puts specialists such as Jade and Kara at risk while Simone is still competing. The out of bounds is not really the culprit I don't think, but the artistry deductions Jade's routines incur. Nobody is expecting her to whip out a Soviet special but failure to engage with and express properly as well as poor choreography should be harshly deducted, it's only right. The bars and beam execution scores sure were interesting. Simone's beam was the best she's done in ages and the fact that the risky skills are removed means I don't see much issue with her execution score, she didn't leave them much to work with in terms of deductions. 13.4 for Sunisa with a fall though is a choice. She IS brilliant (LOOK AT THOSE RINGS ARMINE AND AL!!) and very clean but there's not really justification for that compared to the quality of routines that scored LESS than that with no fall or significant error. Similarly, Grace without a fall would have had the highest execution score of all and her form doesn't stand up to that. I also have no idea how her bars score went over a 14, they are not notable and have inbuilt errors in late skills and handstands. It's not in the same league as the actual bars specialists. Efficient with a great dismount but...that's it.
I've been watching individual routines of Melanie De Jesus Dos Santos, the rest of team France, Netherlands, GB and others but not enough to give a proper team opinion. The team final is going to be incredible with not much between France, China and Russia. Great to see teams like France upping their game so much. Japan falling out of team final contention is to be expected after leaving Mai Murakami at home but it's devastating for Brazil to be knocked out. They've been crushed by injury. Thrilled for Spain and to see Roxana Popa so strong again and beautiful routines from Cintia Rodriguez. To me, this is the most exciting worlds in a few years.
Chen Yile is far from the only one competing through recovery, Ana Padurariu is far from her full difficulty but thankfully is in beam finals after the inquiry fiasco. Brooklyn Moors also got knocked from floor finals (although the day before) from an inquiry. Her artistry and devotion to expression is just gorgeous and hopefully she'll be back in floor final next year but the pre-rotation on the leap they took off for is quite clear in the screenshots and her twisting form isn't cute so there are areas of improvement other than loading difficulty.
Back to the double double beam dismount. There is no way the same skill should be a H on beam and floor clearly it is far harder on beam to execute. Countless gymnasts can compete the double double on floor while we are basically never going to see anyone else do it on beam. The 0.3 rise between a full twisting and double twisting double back on floor is very relevant. They should have given it an I rating on beam. The safety argument FIG countered with doesn't really wash because any salto imposes a risk for a gymnast if something goes wrong. How many times have we seen a foot slip on beam and a double tuck go wrong as a result? In this case it's just not a skill that someone can chuck out of the blue and the rating is an insult to the extreme skill required to do it and it is done excellently too it's not some horrorshow landed with her head almost at the ground.
BUT...there are some seriously outrageous arguments out there. The rating is NOT racist and it is NOT anti-American. How could FIG or the code possibly be anti-American when tumbling skills are still open-ended but all new leaps, turns and bars transitions are capped? How is that fair to the likes of the Dutch etc.? How is it fair that the one-armed bars skills were utterly lowballed? The code has many stupid parts and there are LOADS of skills that are far more difficult than the code implies. This is not a unique thing or in any way anti-Simone. I think the best thing I saw was that Kara's beam score dropping was a retaliation for the criticism of the H rating. Please. Get. Off. The. Internet.
Anyway, I'm excited! There's a lot of stacked finals here and new and old faces that have seriously impressed as well as those were expected to do well.
The TF podium I want is USA-China-France. Nothing against Russia but it would be incredible for France. I sort of want Simone, Liu Tingting, Sunisa, Melanie and Angelina on the AA podium so that's an issue. For the rest I can't really choose either so I'm really bad at dream podiums.
What do you want to see in finals? Do you agree the scoring was dodgy at best? Do you think Kara's coaches should be rounded up and shot?
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