Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Fixed It

Sadly, the world championship has come and gone for another year, like a fleeting spurt from a stage-mounted flamethrower that you're convinced is going to singe Max Whitlock in the everywhere. But it was a good one! From the delectably OTT pomp and circumstance of the event production, to the avalanche of live coverage being injected into our eye sockets all throughout each day (thanks USAG!), to Maurice Lardo, to that thing where that small fishing village won the bars final for some reason, this ranks as the most entertaining world championship in memory. Everyone's memory. I tapped into all of them, so I know. And, frankly, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

A little wistful? A little wistful. So, now that we'll never again get to ro-TAINT, ro-TAINT—which is what it sounded like, a bunch of children just yelling TAINT—or wait with bated breath to find out whether Glasgow is ready or not (I didn't say I'd miss all of it), that means we have just two short months left to prepare with catlike compulsive licking for the upcoming NCAA season and for remembering that a 10 is, like, good and wobbles are, like, a problem. Freshman previews are around the corner, probably.

But there's still one more day of competition to break down until it weeps for mercy, so let's get into it.

-The big bad news is that Oleg Stepko did not acquiesce to wearing his I-just-had-sex-with-a-volcano lava-smear singlet from the European Games, but thankfully, he did remind us that just because you cut your hair with half a stolen blender, doesn't mean you can't be a star. Check your judgment at the door, you worthless moron. 

-Oleg S's hair and dystopian tattooscape carried him through to a bronze on pbars and a spot in the Olympics among an exceptionally high-quality pbars field that did this weird thing where all the routines were good and impressive, and the result came down to small things like hesitations in handstands and steps on landing. Almost like an event final, or something. Leyva had just a couple breaks in form, which was enough to shove him all the way down to sixth, and Nile Wilson had the gall to be just fine and got basically a 2.

-Speaking of exactly the opposite of that, beam. Let's face it, that beam final was a steaming landfill covered in mayonnaise on a hot summer day. The people who fell were everybody. I fell during that beam final, and I was in bed. (I'm very talented.) Medals were awarded to the people who successfully completed routines, because of ACCOMPLISHMENT, minus Victoria Komova, who stayed on the beam but went Full Weeble on every acro skill, which was doubly disappointing because it both took her out of the medals and struck a devastating blow to the "Vika has no fight!" narrative because she kind of stayed on. BUT NOW WHAT WILL WE SAY WHEN SHE FALLS???? Oh right. Still that, because we'll forget about this in 11 seconds and go right back to what we thought before. Yay, ignoring evidence. 

-Pauline Schaefer and Sanne Wevers both had a number of wobbles and breaks, which means congratulations, you're the best. Schaefer hung on for bronze, while Wevers spinderella-ed her way to silver. Meanwhile, the one competitor who hit a real routine without looking as though a ghost was passing through her center of gravity at every moment, one Dr. Biles, hopped to gold by a casual full point. The beam final was basically just The Simone and Nope Show.

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Medal Stand

Obviously, we're starting with uneven bars. Let's just get that sarcastic leprechaun's fever dream out of the way right now. Here's how it went down.

This morning, Nellie Kim met with all the women's judges to tell them of her plans for a passage of one-legged, no-look acro elements from side position in releve requirement for beam, because TEH ARTISTRY, at which point the judges robbed a Xanax truck at gunpoint, downed all of it, then hosed themselves into the uneven bars final going, "8.7 EXECUTION PROBABLY. EVERYONE TASTES LIKE WINNERS [coma]." 

Everyone tastes like winners, indeed. Except for Gabby Douglas, apparently, since the judges looked at her cleanest-routine-of-the-final and went "Not quite. BOOP."

But notwithstanding Gabby and Sophie Scheder, who sadly got the rickets in the middle of her dismount and temporarily forgot what walking is, the judges thought it would be funny (not ha-ha funny, more like sylvia-plath funny), if they just gave everyone and everything, all the flora and fauna, the exact same score. Because who the hell cares? Not us! Great. Fun. So once Fan Yilin got a 15.366, they said "Bingo, there's the one" and conferenced for several short life cycles of a sea turtle about how to get Komova's score down to 15.366. And with that never-say-die attitude they're so famous for, they did it! Because of...sure. And...reasons. Komova thought that was some hilarious bullshit. Throughout the whole tie process, from getting her shut-up-nonsense-steroid-conspiracy of a score to being forced to hop up on that sister-wives medal stand with everyone else, she was basically this.

And once they got Komova in the tie, why not get Kocian and Spiridonova into the mix too? I CAN THINK OF NO REASON. This is such a fun game of Electronic Talking Fuck It! You stepped? That's fine. You missed some handstands in there? That's fine. 15.366! It's a party! Four golds! We're doing our jobs and there's no problem with this! We definitely won't run out of medals and won't have to invite tomorrow's winners onto the podium to give them a scrap of notebook paper with "Redeemable for one Mother's Day present" on it.   

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke Everything I've Ever Loved

Well, there we have it. The annual Kohei has Koheied for another Kohei, and Kohei managed to Kohei through all six Koheis and Kohei the gold Kohei by Kohei points. In case that was unclear, Kohei "I, like, invented Simone" Uchimura did this thing where he pops out of a golden lamp, does all the perfects, and then laughs at all those pathetic sloths with leprosy that can barely even get a 90. Kohei persisted in being so much more un-terrible than everyone else that he physically died from lack of competition in the middle of his rings routine and still sent everyone else to the sadness corner by winning his 84th world championship and becoming sultan of hair and everything.

After this competition, if Kohei doesn't fill a bathtub with gold medals and then take a picture of himself in it wearing only a captain's hat while holding a cigar and a snifter of brandy with a parrot on his shoulder, then he and I have officially nothing in common.

[Spot reserved for Kohei Bathtub Pirate. Oh, I can wait......]

Hm. You want to play underwater charades? One word, five syllables? Talk to the hand because my finger is busy? Hi mom, but give me a minute? Hit me blisters, one more time? I just can't crack your code.

-But memo to the world championship: you need to pick yourself up off of the snooze pile and pull your shit together. For a competition that started out with such promise of life-enforcing ridiculousness (remember when Romania got possessed by all those poltergeists on bars and got 11s? REMEMBER????), it has turned into a stale rehashing of three-year-old storylines these last few days. This isn't Gossip Girl, you know. We have standards.

-The event finals really better bring out the big drama to make up for all this predictable Kohei/Simone will-they-won't-they nonsense. At least give us a murder mystery, or a fake pregnancy, or an uneven bars mount, or an amnesiac quintuplet who bursts open the doors of the balance beam final and goes, "I'M THE REAL SANNE WEVERS! THAT'S AN IMPOSTOR!" Is that too much to ask? I don't think so. But let's get into the men's AA.

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke Everyone Else's Spirit

Was I the only one who didn't know that Simone Biles is a space scientist? I feel like her PhD in Astronomical Beatdowns should play a bigger part in profile pieces about her. Just a note heading to the Olympics. Today, Dr. Biles went out to conduct some field research into how much bacon grease a preposterous alien space queen can rub on her feet before a meet and still beat all y'all serfs by an obscene margin. The study is ongoing, but the results we obtained today are very encouraging and indicate that the original hypothesis of 20 handfuls might be quite low.

Should any other gymnasts even bother having dreams anymore? That's not for me to say, but absolutely not.

You see this?

And this?

You're welcome. Have fun handing me my scepter.

-But the major conundrum confounding the space-science world lately has been just how many times Simone could fall and still win a world championship. Right now, it's looking like the answer is two instead of the previously prevailing theory of SHUT UP A BILLION QUEEEEEEN [faint], proposed by Nichols, Me, et al. Simone didn't fall today (there are still a lot of experiments to do be done in this field; we're just scratching the surface of what we can learn), but her mistakes across three events probably combined to equal a fall, and she still won by a full point, then hugged a thousand pandas, ran into a nest of hipster beards and cured all of them, and eradicated the world of all LinkedIn requests. She's basically a Marvel hero.

-Really, the only event Simone hit well today was bars. On vault, she danced out of her Amanar in stork stand (don't give Nellie any ideas, girl!), and on floor she forgot that she still has event finals coming up and tried to split leap directly into the Cadbury factory on the second pass. Excusable. Though on beam, I do have to give Simone credit for attempting the very challenging punch front+Nastia combination for 0.2 CV, but the judges didn't view them as separate skills and got all pissy and deductiony about it for some reason.

-I mean, yes, take for bending the back leg, but otherwise I feel like she achieved what the code is looking for from a Free-Standing Nastia in Resting Bitchface position (D value) and shouldn't be penalized so drastically.

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Good China

With the US women, Simone the Conqueror, and Kohei Maximus all coming into this competition as ACME-anvil-sized favorites for three of the four major titles, the men's team final was under a lot of pressure to achieve that elusive goal of being a slightly compelling sporting event, instead of a "Kim Jong Un challenges you to badminton"-style foregone conclusion. Tough task. But boy, it delivered like a raven bringing news of the pox. 

We'll all remember where we were when Kohei Uchimura totally trolled the entire world and only pretended to throw away the gold medal on high bar but then popped out from behind a bush and was like, "HA HA, I'M THE BEST!"

Coming into 2015, China had won the last 1207 consecutive team titles, dating back to the days when the pbars were elephant tusks and the vault was just a pile of scorched witch carcasses. And in spite of Japan being, you know, clearly several times better than China these last couple years (WHAT HOW DARE YOU), China learned in 2014 that they could pretty much just mobility-scooter their way down the vault runway, ask the high bar for a bedtime story, and then hand Bruno Grandi a drawing of a family holding hands and go, "CHAMPIONSHIP PLEASE." So why would anything different happen this time? Perhaps that's what lulled China into a false sense of security. 

-China was so hooked on championships to start the meet that Xiao Ruoteng suggested everyone jump up for a rousing game of The Pommel Horse Is Lava Now. The rules are as follows: the pommel horse is lava. That's pretty much it. Sounds fun, right? Nope. Terrible. Two falls later, and coupled with some floor routines suffering from a little bit of "this body ain't big enough for the both of us" legs, China basically needed Japan to join a hippie commune never to be heard from again mid-vault to have any chance at title #1208.

Worlds 2015 - You Guys, I Think We Broke the Tear Ducts of Ellie Downie

I must begin this time with some pretty big news. You might want to sit down for this. I don't really know how to say it but...the US women won the team gold medal. I know. Totally blindsided. That's life, isn't it? You never see it coming. The beautiful thing about sports is that on any given day, anything can happen.

Man, Japan and China's race for the men's team gold medal tomorrow has some big shoes to fill. How can it possibly be as exciting as USA vs. [scene missing]?



-But really, the US margin of victory over China was only 5.174 this year. Pitiful. Have some self-respect, ladies. Imagine if Simone had fallen five times on floor. You would have...still won.

-OK, here's how it played out. The US team entered the arena, unzipped their warmup jackets, and were immediately awarded the gold medal. WE DID IT! And then Gabby did such an excellent job putting on her grips that she got another gold medal, then the organizers were so impressed by the "ode to a weeping willow's vagina" leotard (thanks to Spanny, that's all I can see now) that they created a special Georgia O'Keefe tribute gold medal expressly for the United States, and then Simone smiled and six more gold medals popped out.

-We get spoiled by the US team. They're just doing the backstroke in their money bin, lighting cigarettes with those podium bouquets, while the other countries are going, "Might we have a brass farthing to buy a sack of crumbs, please?" And they're like, "NO! Stop getting poor all over the rug. AH HA HA MY WINNINGS." 

-But when a victory is this inevitable, it is hard to appreciate the performance as much as it probably deserves. The Americans can only meet expectations. They can never exceed them, regardless of how well they perform, because the expectations are hitting every routine and winning everything. And it happened again. The US went 12-for-12 for the 4th consecutive team final, and we just go "Yawn, toss another bag of diamonds in the diamond room." Yeah, you nailed every routine when the pressure was on yet again with only a couple minor wobbles across four events. So what? I almost did laundry tonight. Who's the real hero?

Worlds 2015 - You Guys, I Think We Broke the Actually Everyone

The last two days brought the opportunity for the MAGs to strap themselves into their manitards, chalk up the Pbars using pointillism, and turn to the women to say, "You thought you had a nightmare day this week? That's adorable. We've been getting 6s in execution before you were even born, thank you." But tomorrow, the women will have a chance for a splat-rebuttal as we arrive at the main event, the Great American Cakewalk. I mean, the team final. It's going to be close........anyone could win............



The lineups for the women's team final bring the news that Maggie Nichols will be competing the all-around. Oh. Hmm. What a groundbreaking idea. I wish someone had thought of that before. I suppose the opportunity to be the big AA star/hero for the team is Martha's attempt at an apology alpaca. It will have to do for now.

Also note that Brenna Dowell has officially been erased from all of history. After her bars-tastrophe, Martha went back in time and killed a butterfly to ensure that Brenna was never born. Not only will Brenna compete no events in the team final, but she's not even listed among the alternate team members on the start list anymore. Burnnnnnn. Taking someone off the roster is the gymnastics equivalent of pouring a drink in her weave. There has to be some kind of injury, right? They wouldn't just expunge someone from the record as punishment for missing a routine......would they? Cut to Mattie Larson going, "Hello." But, they also have not taken the opportunity to sub Skinner in to do the one-armed wonder, voluntarily competing with just five members.

Italy has made a substitution, replacing the hastily sewn-together form of Vanessa Ferrari with young Enus Mariani, who will be competing bars and beam in the TF after getting relegated to alternate status for qualification. Sadly, Ferrari is also out for the AA, meaning our global shoulder cut-out levels have reached an unprecedented low with serious environmental consequences. An inconvenient truth.  

But, before we get into all that tomorrow action, there's a whole day of men's qualification action to break down.

DAY 2:
-The main event today featured the US men finally getting the opportunity to enter the fray, just a few short eons after arriving in Glasgow.

-.......They've been better? It wasn't a particularly glorious day for the US, one that got less glorious and more "why are you on the ground just now, honey?" as the competition went on. It was the kind of day that propagates a lot of words like "grit" and "fight" and "heart," which are sports code for "I like you as people even though that wasn't too nice to watch." Today, the Americans were really gritty and full of heart. But, they qualified in 5th, which is perfectly fine, and they'll still be in the hunt for that bronze medal come the team final, as long as someone gets the Sasha Artemev pills out of the first-aid kit and the Jake Dalton costume out of my constant clutches.

-It would have taken an unprecedented catastrophe for the US not to qualify to the team final, and this wasn't a catastrophe, or even a fiasco. It was somewhere in between an oopsie and a snafu. You could even go as far as debacle if you wanted, but I don't see the need. They'll be OK.     

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Judges

One more day of qualification action still to come, when the US men will be taking us to pretty-boy rehab to try to teach us that we don't need Sam Mikulak to have a good time. I'm not convinced yet.



DAY 1:
-The men opened qualification today, and I must begin with a confession. I did not watch Great Britain's session, even though USAGym is lovely and made it available to us. I freely admit that I bit that hand that feeds me. I don't feel good about it, but I needs my sleeps. Spending two whole days watching people pirouette themselves right off the uneven bars like a cow in a tornado takes a lot out of a person. As the NCAA coaches have taught me, time spent not watching gymnastics is just as significant as time spent watching gymnastics. You've got to take care of your body.

-But, that doesn't mean I don't still want to marry all of them simultaneously and keep them for myself on a secret polyandrous pleasure island. (Or, I mean, something legal...) I absolutely do. Trust me. Really, all relationships go through these rough patches, but we can get through it if we're strong enough. I believe in us. The question is, do you Louis?

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Aly Raisman

Can I break some news to you? There are guys in this competition. I know. Weird, right? Here are the scoresheets for tomorrow's (tonight's) opening day of Koheichella 2015.



The women's qualification finished today, and I'm still slightly unclear about whether it was a fever dream or real life. Aly Raisman is inconsistent now, or something, and I don't really understand what to do with that. At least no one tried to perform a Dirty Romania on us, so that's always a positive.

DAY 2:
-Welp, the US went today. As expected, the Pink Eagles are leading by roughly a googol. That said, it didn't go super awesomely awesome. They had three falls, which according to the Martha Rules, is six falls too many. When a third of the team is having a near emotional breakdown in the post-meet interview, you know it wasn't an ideal day.

-The biggest news was that Carmen Sandiego stole Aly Raisman and replaced her with some nervous, erratic hot pink replica. Aly threw herself out of bounds on her opening floor pass, won the gold medal in the triple jump on her vault landing, and then 2010-2011ed her bars routine. Fortunately, in true "Here's my beam-ah! NEXT BEAM-AH!" fashion, she came back and was solid enough to be useful on beam, although she did not get D panel credit for...really anything. The judges were just like, "No skills here..."  The US filed a petition on the D score, which Nellie Kim threw immediately into the round circular filing system in the corner of the room. Raisman won't advance to any event finals or the all-around, though she will advance to an awesome narrative for next Trials season, so that's something. I'M FULL OF REDEMPTION.

-Aren't you really impressed that I got through two whole paragraphs before turning into a barrel of slime about the Maggie Nichols AA qualification situation? Because I am. I'll just say this: Maggie would have needed a 12.985 on bars to take the second US AA final spot. And after that, I'm just going to stare straight ahead and blink a whole lot. Once Martha is done yelling at the team, she needs to buy Maggie an apology alpaca or something. Whatever they use for currency in Karolyiopolis. Because Maggie got hosed by the system here. Fight the power!

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Romania

Before we get to the nonsense, the scoresheets for day 2 of WAG action.



And now, brace yourselves, because Romania.

DAY 1:
-Obviously, Romania's performance is the big talking point because it was the worst thing ever to happen in the history of time. It was like the black death, but with more poor hip circles. I think we all felt it would be a mess going in (I may have used the words "garbage fire"), but I still firmly believed that Iordache would be able to pull them through to the TF anyway. I was wrong. Romania currently sits in 8th after the first day, and will drop pretty deep into the test event field when it's all over since there are legitimately six more teams with a chance to pass them yet to perform. Something needs to be done. We can't let Romania go the way of Ukraine. Nadia needs to throw some Nadia money at the problem, like now.

-It started out not completely disastrous, just sort of meh. Floor was OK, no major errors, just uninspiring (and I thought a little harshly scored). Vault was perfectly fine. And then bars was even worse than last year. Somehow. Jurca hit, and then the covered wagon fell into the gully, and everyone drowned while getting dysentery and losing all the cattle and children. It was very "How many times, Alyssa?" How many times, Romania? Even beam was wobbly and emotionally scarring, featuring yet another fall from Iordache. The rest of the world is too good right now for Romania to have one event be that weak. This will continue to happen, though the Romanians will still be a favorite to get out of the test event. They just need to cut up some old mats and wrap them around Ponor, resurrect Izbasa, commission Interpol to find Ana Porgras, and hurl Nadia into a time machine. It'll be fine.

Worlds 2015 – It's Almost Here

We're swiftly approaching the beginning of the World Championship and our customary annual journey into forgetting what sleep is. First things first, I embedded my usual scoresheets for the first day's subdivisions here for reference, just in case you've reached my level of nerdiness. It takes most people a lifetime. 



Day 1 lineup news and notes:
-The big news of the day is that Romania looked at Russia and said, "Anything you can garbage fire, we can garbage fire better." Anamaria Ocolisan contracted 20 polios (or something) during training and will not be competing. Apparently, Andreea Munteanu is also down with a severe case of the Romanias and can't be the replacement for some reason, so Romania will be putting up an old tire in the sixth position instead. The team is now Larisa Iordache and a random collection of limbs. She's still enough to carry them into TF.

2015 US World Championship Team

You might have heard, but some big, earth-rattling news came out today: Norah Flatley has announced for UCLA.

I can't think of anything else that happened.

I guess there was the other tiny matter of the US World Championship team. We'll have to muster the energy to distract ourselves from National Norah Flatley Day to think about that for a moment. In what would certainly have been a surprise earlier in the summer and would have been a pretty big surprise after nationals as well, the team is Biles, Raisman, Nichols, Douglas, Kocian, Dowell, and Skinner, with the alternate to be named as late as humanly possible. It comes as less of a surprise now after the withdrawal of Ross, the apparent natural-disaster implosion of Key, and the Spoiler Alert Roster from the end of September that told us this was the way things were leaning, though I'm still scheduling time for a sad-nap about Alyssa Baumann.

Unlike normal, it isn't immediately clear which gymnast will be the alternate in this group, but it looks likely to be Dowell or Skinner, with Skinner making the most sense to me. I won't entertain the blasphemy that it might be Nichols. I won't. Skinner is usable on vault and floor, but she wasn't top three on those events at nationals, which kept her out of all the highest-scoring team permutations as she came in behind Raisman's Junkanar on vault and variously behind Douglas and Nichols on floor. We can hope Raisman's Junkanar has become slightly less junky in the intervening months. Floor will be the closest battle on this team through training, and I'm sure that third TF spot won't be decided until after qualifications.

At the same time, Dowell also didn't make a mark on the highest-scoring team permutations at nationals either because, even on her one bars hit during the summer competition season, she scored the same as Biles and wasn't in the top 5 on the day. The main lesson, once again, is that camp matters and Nationals...not so much. Honestly, this is as US team that probably won't need its alternate even if an injury occurs. There will be strong, likely backups already in the 6. 

It's a huge accomplishment for Dowell even to make the seven, a prospect I thought was iffy when she announced she was deferring (which I still question because even with making this team, the Olympics remain a very tough ask), but it ended up being a perfect confluence of events for her with Locklear not able to get her difficulty back and Kyla pulling out. Suddenly, a bars door was open and she walked right through it.

As for Bailie Key, has anyone ever gone from pre-summer lock to not-even-the-alternate so quickly without an injury? I do have to say, it was always work to try to shoehorn her into teams with a "maybe she can do bars?" argument. What became apparent at Nationals is that she isn't necessary to the team on any event, and if consistency has become a problem, that seals it. If she's going to have any hope for 2016 at all (dreams that were pretty much just decapitated), she needs an Amanar and they need to go back to the drawing board with that beam routine. To me, it's a tear down. Start from scratch. She was a beam star as a junior, and she should be a top three beamer for this team right now. The fact that she isn't close to that is a problem.

Beam. I'm hoping this roster indicates that Gabby Douglas is doing another one of her late-season beam renaissances because otherwise this team is looking a little light on beam. Maybe not light, but questionable compared to its potential score. Baumann seemed to have a chance at a beam spot because she's capable of gaining a solid five tenths over the scores Douglas, Nichols, and Kocian were getting at nationals. To see her not among the seven tells me that a third high-14s beam score must have emerged during the camps to make any Baumann benefit negligible. Or Martha just really likes MyKayla Skinner's company. 

If Skinner is indeed the alternate, the conversation about who goes on which events in qualification gets very interesting. Especially for Aly "I'm coming back because of unfinished business in the AA" Raisman. Watch that space in the coming weeks. It'll be fun. Also, the US competes in qualification at a totally reasonable time for us this year. Mid-late morning (depending on where you are)! On a Saturday! What is this exciting witchcraft? 

Worlds Final Thoughts

The World Championships are over for another year. Sigh. Now we have to return to normal sleep schedules of more than 2.5 hours per night. Like losers. On the plus side, this means it's officially time to start thinking about the NCAA season again. I'll be starting up the freshman profiles again in the coming weeks. We've got some good ones. But first, a few final thoughts about Worlds, including multiple mentions of Cheng Fei. Because I need to.

1) My theory that the best things about gymnastics competitions never have anything to do with actual gymnastics continues to hold up.

2) You should never stop watching this video. Ever. The bee was my third-favorite gymnast at these championships. Such poise. Such grace. It knows how to hit a cue.

3) This year is the most I've ever watched of a World Championships. So many sessions. And I was bleary-eyed for all of them. Scott Bregman and USA Gymnastics are nailing this whole coverage thing. Live coverage of Russia's qualification session? Sure. Because heaven.

4) Simone Biles has 9 Worlds medals. 9. She basically just has to make the team next year to set the US record. Technically, I would say she's tied for the record already. As much as I adore Alicia Sacramone, she wasn't even in the same country as the team competing when she got her 10th, so it doesn't count.

5) Only one member of the 2010 US team ended up making the Olympic team (Aly Raisman), and to be honest, I wouldn't be all that shocked if it happened again for the 2014 team.

6) Competitive women's AA final! Until things started to take shape a few weeks before Worlds, I don't think many people thought it would be this competitive, but combine a slightly shaky Biles with a hitting Iordache and we had a real competition. An interesting one. For four whole rotations. We haven't had a legitimate, international, multi-year rivalry in a long time, and I would love if Biles and Iordache got that going for the next few. With a Mustafina thrown in for luck.

7) Hopefully this competitiveness will put to rest the silly idea that Simone running the table in the AA this quad and winning all the competitions through the Olympics is inevitable. It's not inevitable. There are challenges both in the US and outside the US.

8) Kyla Ross. Keeping it simple. Don't fall, win medal. Repeat.

9) The Chinese women are hard to watch on floor right now. Dance of the Splintering Stick Figures. We need some Cheng Fei action out there. Stat.

10) Speaking of Cheng Fei, is the ragged Cheng the new hip thing on vault? At least it's a different entry. I expect to see a number of Sosnitskaya Chengs at Worlds next year. It'll be a thing.

11) Huang Huidan should have won bars.

12) But that's really the only individual gold medal result I'm feeling worked-up about, which is pretty good. I think you can argue that Hong Un Jong was just another member of the broke-ass Cheng club and that she wasn't adequately penalized for her landing on that vault, but the difficulty deficit was always going to be hard for Biles to make up, even with superior execution.

13) Also Beckie Downie didn't medal on bars, so the final is invalid.

14) If you don't fulfill all five composition requirements in your routine, as you try to land your dismount, the mat should automatically retract revealing a shark tank below.

15) These acro series on beam. I love originality and creativity and people not doing the easy, expected thing as much as the next person, but you have to be smart about it. I was very disappointed that Mustafina wasn't able to muster some kind of acro series in EFs, especially because she has so many routine options to choose from and is usually good at routine improvisation.

16) That said, Mustafina still got the bronze on beam. HA! Only Aliya could miss a CR and still win a medal. Many are up in arms about this. I'm not.

17) Mustafina's reaction to her floor bronze was priceless. Such shock and joy. Oh sorry, I meant COLD COMMIE DIVA. I forgot my narrative for a second. How silly of me. Many are up in arms about this one as well, and I'm still not, even if this is the weakest floor routine she has ever had. She still carries the hell out of it. Do I have a Zamarripa-esque blind spot where Mustafina is concerned? Maybe. I also don't care. 

18) For those of us who focus on women's gymnastics, the joke is that we can't stand watching pommel horse, but I enjoy it (at least from people not in the "happy to get a 12.000 category," but that's true of every event). I find it visually soothing, like watching a screen saver, especially from people who make it look easy like Berki.

19) Speaking of Berki, let's hear it for the talls! While our Dear Wonderful Shatilov didn't make floor finals (mostly because he is currently sporting unauthorized facial hair), Berki and Moznik both got medals. I think those two might legitimately come up to my chin, which is an accomplishment. We'd actually look like part of the same species. 

20) So yes for pommel horse, but less yes for rings. That's my 6th place men's event. Although the "sup y'all" chin lift still makes me laugh every single time, so that's something. In breaking news, parallel bars has moved to the top spot on my men's event rankings. There is little more satisfying in the world than a perfect handstand on pbars.

21) Ryohei Kato looks exactly like a porcelain doll. I imagine that immediately after a competition ends, he goes all Toy Story and flops to the ground before being put back up on an old lady's shelf.


22) Who is in charge of selecting the between-rotations music at Worlds? I really hope there's a committee about it and they take it super seriously. With graphs and flow charts.

23) The World Championships of Hilarious Pronunciations finished on a high. During the men's hbar medal ceremony, the PA guy introduced the gold medalist "Epic Zonderland." Fitting.

Women's Team Final

After a thrilling and controversial x 1000 men's final yesterday, we had a not-that on the women's side today. I don't have a specific-enough understanding of the men's code to make any kind of argument about scoring, at least with any confidence in myself (I'd start giving Kohei hair bonuses, and it would be all over the place). But, Uncle Tim has an excellent write-up of some of the issues involved in Zhang's final gargantuan score. I defer.

I will say though, at first viewing, the Chinese high bar score that stood out to me as the stranger one was Lin's preceding Zhang's, with that completely horizontal turn at one point. Is this a situation like we often see in NCAA where a questionable 10 is awarded, and gets all the attention, but the real culprit is the super-random 9.950 beforehand that pushes the following score up?

But now some thoughts on the women's team final.

1) The USA. Obviously. As much as I enjoy watching the US step all over everyone else's faces while wearing Rene Lyst heels, it does make things super boring. A few more years of this, and I could see a serious change coming to start increasing the p-word. (Which is parity, if you don't read here a lot.)



2) Alyssa Baumann's lovely, non-broadcast leadoff beam routine. If I had to pick one place where I thought the US would fall in TF, it would have been here, but she got it down with just a couple wobbles. Martha's little project scored big points (both real and figurative) for this.

3) Baumann had the smallest issues of the three US gymnasts on beam considering Ross did a third-base coach on her side somi and Simone had a larger-than-usual break on the layouts series. Of course, it didn't matter, which was the problem with this final. That was such an uncharacteristic break for Kyla, but it was like, "Eh, whatever, go ahead and fall if you want. Have a blast. Do some jazz hands. Take a nap. It will change nothing."

4) While we still have a chance to be excited before everyone gets injured over the next 12 months, the fight for the 2015 US team looks fuu-uun.  

5) Overall, this competition was terrible. We're allowed to say that. Splatty bombatty. I'm looking at you, Russia and China.

6) Credit to Romania for pulling it together a little bit more in TF, or at least for letting Iordache be the star and not getting in her way too much. With that bars situation, fourth was as much as they could have hoped for, yet they almost got a Happy October gift of much more.

7) The Craig Heap and Christine Still pronunciation debacle is hysterical. Seriously, it's not that hard. It takes two seconds of research to figure it out (the magic of youtube videos of domestic competitions—put your listening ears on!), and yet that definitely would have decreased my enjoyment of the meet tenfold. Craig stopped trying after a while. By the time we got to floor, he just introduced "Tan Jrrrrrr."

8) Gah, Russia. You should be doing so much better. It's not exactly an "I never expected the Russians to put up an athlete with so little talent" situation, but they're seriously lacking in the non-Mustafina category.

9) It's sort of offensive to me when people don't even have the common decency to be Aliya Mustafina. There were so many people walking around today not being Aliya Mustafina. Unacceptable behavior.

10) I can finally (FINALLY) remember the difference between Alla Sosnitskaya and Daria Spiridonova after this competition. And I don't like it.

11) I love how Grishina is seen as the fragile, headcase one in the eyes of the Rodionenkos and cronies because of the Olympics, but . . . as opposed to . . .? You have no less-headcasesque options. You better get on hands and knees to get that girl back when she's healthy. You would be lucky to have her.

12A) China's lineups. A side-eye experience. Why on earth was Shang Chunsong going on bars over Tan Jrrrrrr? Shang had been doing consistently worse than Tan at Asian Games and in prelims. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. No sense. A fall is appropriate punishment for that decision. Though a 7.666 is not appropriate punishment for that routine quality.

12B) Also, Bai Yawen, who qualified second on the team into beam finals, was not selected to do beam. It didn't end up being a problem for the team, but it does reflect that she's probably not in the highest standing with the team coaches if they didn't even want to use her on her good event.

13) There's no excuse for Hannah Whelan's 4.5 D score on beam. She missed her acro series and lost 0.5 in CR, but when you do such a risky combination as your only acro series, there has to be a plan B in mind (and trained) just in case. This is like in 2010 when Mattie lost that decisive CR after not doing her combo pass or a simple forward element. That cannot happen. It's too avoidable.

14)


Let's play "Who can actually find 1.2 in deductions in Kyla's bars routine?" Remember after the first night of US championships when SHE CAN'T DO BARS ANYMORE?

15) It was nice to see Australia show up with three events worth of routines that are very well-executed, though somewhat low in difficulty. An important change from the "you must have a 7.9 D score on beam, otherwise get back in the cage" attitude from last year.

16) Italy managed to finish 5th at both Worlds and Euros this year. One of those is a good result, and one is a bad result. Today, Italy scored 7.5 points better than Euro team finals, Russia scored 2 points better, and Romania and GB did around 2 points worse.

17) Japan is also a team, and I'll just say this about the leotards: at least they're going for something different. In true Project Runway fashion, I give more credit to that than to the fourth-rate versions of SPARKLY GIRL TIME SPARKLES that we usually see. 

World Championships Qualification

The qualification round happened! And we got to watch most of it! And I have thoughts! At least three. Probably more.

1) Simone Biles. The end.


2) Screwing up a kip is the new going out of bounds.

3) Eight real vaulters made the women's vault final. Is the era of "just throw a random second vault, you'll probably make finals"/"Tsuk full—I'm the best!" ending? Steingruber's yfull was the only easier vault to make it to finals, and that's sufficiently balanced by her rudi.

4) There are three executions scores on vault. 9.233 (great vault!), 8.933 (medium step or form break!), and 8.633 (ugly poo-poo!) Those are the choices. 

5) Do the US men select teams with more attention to qualification than to team finals?

6) Madison Kocian and MyKayla Skinner got basically the same E score on beam. What?

7) Kohei Uchimura might be a cursed pharaoh. Anytime anyone is mentioned as being a potential challenger to his reign, that person immediately falls 50 times. Men's gymnastics is basically the plot of The Mummy.

8) Biggest improvements in 2014 compared to four years ago (women's category): Austria (31st to 22nd), Colombia (34th to 25th - *they didn't have enough scores in 2010), Mexico (21st to 14th), Germany (14th to 9th), Belgium (15th to 11th)

9) Biggest drops in 2014 compared to four years ago (also, women's category): Ukraine (12th to 27th), Uzbekistan (24th to 31st), Brazil (10th to 16th), Greece (19th to 24th), Venezuela (22nd to 26th), Romania (4th to 7th), Switzerland (16th to 19th)

10) Not so much with the Canada. And I admit NCAA is at least partially culpable. We've taken all your bars workers and doused them in glitter and enthusiasm. 

11) What happened to Brazil? They looked almost Team Final-y at Pan Am Championships. And then . . . nope!

12) Romania's bars routines are even weaker than I thought. They're so bad at bars, they're bad at beam. They finished 25th on bars. 25th. If bars were the whole sport, they wouldn't be advancing to 2015. 

13) The beam judges were much stricter about connections than we've seen at any other event. This is a good thing. Don't try to jam three rushed skills together and call it a connection. It just makes all of them look worse. If you can't CONNECT connect them, just perform them individually.

14) If there were a Claudia Fragapane stuffed animal, I would probably buy it.

15) If there were a Rebecca Tunney healthy, Great Britain would definitely buy it. And pay the crown jewels for it.

16) If the Welsh women had competed as an independent team and repeated the team scores from Commonwealth Games, they would have finished 17th, within a point of Spain and Brazil.

17) Bai Yawen is a beautiful swan whom we'll probably never see again because she has only one event of contribution, an area where China is already strong. Enjoy her while you can.

18) Tatiana Nabieva is my constant.

2014 USA Worlds Team

I feel obligated to have something to say about the US team for World Championships announced last night by USA Gymnastics, but I'm struggling to muster the energy because ultimately there wasn't much decision in it at all. Utterly predictably, enough people were hit by the injury bus along the way to make the team a default.

Named to the team were Simone Biles, Kyla Ross, Alyssa Baumann, Madison Kocian, Ashton Locklear, MyKayla Skinner, and Maddie Desch, with the alternate to be named once . . . it's Maddie Desch.

The only question was Brenna Dowell, who is the non-traveling alternate, which is code for "even if we need you, we won't use you because we'll be in China and that's far away. SEE YA." Someone would have to get injured before they leave for the non-traveling alternate to come into play. Without competing the AA this summer, she would have needed quite the camp performance to prove her worth. And because Desch was selected over her as a "we can throw you in anywhere because meh" alternate selection, we can assume that didn't happen. I'm fine with it. Get thee to a K.J.

The team final (which, by the way, is at 4:00am for west coasters—fun!) lineups seem pretty straightforward with this group, with Ross, Skinner, and Biles on vault, Ross, Kocian, and Locklear on bars, and Ross, Baumann, and Biles on beam. There's more parity on floor, so I assume the default will be Ross, Skinner, Biles, and then we'll see if anyone falls in prelims to create an argument over who should go in TF, a la Mattie in 2010.

This was the US team submitted for the nominative roster and the one nearly everyone predicted once the injuries shook out. So yeah. At this point, I'm more interested to see if the announced Russian team is actually the one that happens.

Worlds Reflections and Looking Ahead

The World Championships are over for another year. Breathe. Relax. Maybe have an entire pie. You've earned it. It's an emotionally draining experience that you need to talk over with some food. True science: Watching an Aliya Mustafina training session is the equivalent of running a 10K. You lose a lot of fluids and need to replenish. Here are my reflections about Worlds, as well as some notes about what's to come.

• On the men's side, I have to say that I'm being less of a disgrace to my sex and getting more into men's gymnastics these days. I think part of the reason is that I don't know the code all that well. I'm like Shannon Miller doing the commentary during the 2012 Olympics. I'm really proud of myself for knowing what a Tippelt is, and that's about it. I don't have a working knowledge of a lot of the deductions (at least the ones that are men-specific and aren't universal gymnastics deductions), so I can enjoy the gymnastics without seeing only deductions. In women's, all I see are the mistakes. 

• Kohei won again. Yep. OK. Heh. It's such a tough position because we expect everything from him. At this point, he can be interesting only by screwing up. His excellence is no longer news. We're just waiting for him to make a mistake so we can start paying attention. 

• Sam the Ham, Lord Dancy Pants, had a medal within his grasp in the men's AA, then America-ed his HB routine to finish 6th. That, however, was beside the point because his dancing became the star. It was a serious talking point like it was something unusual. Maybe I've just spent too much time watching NCAA, but my reaction was "Yes, constant dancing, this is normal." You know Bridget Sloan saw his land speed record for podium dancing and was like, "Puh. Child's play. I dance more than that before vault." But honestly, if you didn't compose a chair-based interpretive dance to the between-rotations music from Worlds, then I understand nothing about you. Mine is about the changing of the seasons and loss of innocence. You'll probably cry.

• Epke Zonderland used the applause-o-meter to win HB over Fabian Hambuechen. (Did you notice Fabian watching Sam Mikulak throughout the competition trying to pick up tips on how to be more hammy? Love it.) It's impossible to be mad at darling Epke because everything about him is a Dr. Seuss character: his face, his last name, his hair. He's basically a truffula tree. In fact, it's a little known truth that Oh, the Places You'll Go! was actually written about Epke's legs. "You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go."