What you need to know, in quick, easily digestible bullet points.
- So here’s the thing about tiebreaks
- I like them
- The goal is to decide who was the best one, so if you need a tiebreak procedure to do that, then do a tiebreak
- Everyone is most certainly not a winner
- I mean, have you seen people?
- BUT: the stupid-ass “drop the lowest score” all-around tiebreak that we became familiar with during the women’s AA final in London is just the worst possible tiebreak you could come up with
- It basically means that the person with the single worst routine is the winner
- How is that a thing?
- So, as you might have guessed, we had a tie
- Artur Dalaloyan and Xiao Ruoteng tied for first place, but since Dalaloyan’s pommel horse was the weakest event score between the two, he was the gold medalist
- ……….?
- Is this a satire?
- If they had used a sensible tiebreak, like highest cumulative E score, Dalaloyan still would have won, but that’s not the tiebreak they used. They used a stupid one, and it must be destroyed
- In “fight me” news: It shouldn’t have come down to a tiebreak in the first place because Dalaloyan was the better gymnast on the day
- He did the most fantastic double front pike vault and potentially even more fantastic PBars routine, and even looked good on his bad events, like pommel horse
- He had no mistakes
- Just…none
- Xiao had things, like struggling on his randi on floor again
- Really, the routine quality was quite exceptional from that lead group
- It could have been a splatfest (especially given the cast of characters and their histories), and it wasn’t. Mostly.
- Samuel
- We need to talk about Samuel
- Samuel was having a strong day through five events, equivalent to his performance in qualification.
- He was in third place going to high bar
- THIRD
- TO HIGH BAR
- HIS GOOD ONE…?
- Then…you know…it happened…
- …on a Tkatchev 1/2
- So, anyway, Samuel finished 5th
- “This is the saddest I’ve ever been. I don’t think I’ve ever been this pissed off in my life.”
- Basically same
- Empty chairrrrrsssssssss…at empty tabllllleeeeeeeesssssss
- Tim Daggett was trying to make “he could have won gold” happen, but that wasn’t going to happen. He would have needed the kind of E score that no one has received on HB in the entire meet, multiple tenths better than his fantastic qualification routine
- With any kind of hit routine, however, he would have won bronze
- Instead, the miss allowed Nikita Nagornyy to take third place
- Nagornyy performed close to but not as well as he did on the first day (a leg-silly on pommel horse, just little landings here and there), and that would have put him in medal danger the way everyone else was competing, but Samuel had the much larger mistake
- Sun Wei actually ended up only a few tenths behind Nagornyy after a hit meet in what would have truly been an upset had he won a medal. Sun Wei!
- Oleg tried to make a sudden and remarkable Oleg happen and was leading the competition after three events, but he’s still not quite ready yet
- High bar was a catastrophe for him, culminating in a dismount fall, and then it all turned to mush from there on the final three pieces
- I think someone might need a new witch doctor
- Kenzo also participated in the top group, winning floor and vault (stuck TTY nbd), but he didn’t have the remaining event scores and ultimately took 7th, behind his compatriot Kazuma Kaya
- No Japanese medalists for the first time since 2001, when Japan didn’t even go
- Yul Moldauer took 12th, a fall on pommel horse dashing his hopes at a top-10 finish
- Favorite new hummingbird Carlos Yulo had the most disastrous day overall, but he did get the 4th-best score on floor
- Our two final qualifiers into the final—Marios Georgiou and Artur Davtyan (who got in as the first reserve) ended up finishing in 9th and 10th place. So there
Artur was the better gymnast today, so no one should fight you.
Apropos of 2001, that was such a weird year. Didn’t China not send a women’s team? Also the men’s podium was Belarus, the US, and Ukraine AND Tasha Schwikert missed an AA medal by less than a tenth. So now I’m upset for both Tasha then and Samuel now. Ugh, today.
Omg the picture. Nikita kissing the gold medal. I love it. The Russians are so cute.
I know Nikita and Daria are dating, but I totally ship Nikita and Artur…? Just saying…
Yes! glad I’m not the only one. Can we start a fan club?
The right guy won the AA gold. No controversy. Yeah, yeah, yeah… they came to the right conclusion in the wrong way, but who cares? Dalaloyan is world champion. If he can hit when it counts, then anything is possible. Remember when Dalaloyan would implode during every important competition? Well, he went 6/6 when it counted.
Oleg ran out of gas on the final three events. He’s only been training for a few months, so I was hoping for a top 10 finish for him. It didn’t quite happen.
Sam, Sam, Sam… Well, it was fun to watch that rotation through 5 events. Great guys doing great gymnastics. And I’ll never watch that HB rotation again. Ever.
“The better gymnast on the day” counting a score in the 13s. Sure.
? That is just his pommel horse. He didn’t have any errors. It’s not his strongest event. It was still the 9th highest score overall.
i don’t know if you’ve been informed but the point of an all around competition is to have the biggest six event score and not the most even scores across six events. BREAKING NEWS.
WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BRING LES MIS INTO THIS.
I am now sobbing.
‘Arthur had no mistakes’
Excuse me? What you mean is visible mistakes to unprofessional eyes. Every deduction is a mistake. Cowboying and landing with big leg separation are also mistakes. Arthur could win by execution score (don’t want to argue if some scores were correct), but the true all-arounder is not him.
Obviously when he says “no mistakes” he is referring to major errors in which you would incur 0.5+ on execution scores or that change or d-score dramatically or something. Everyone has deduction mistakes. No gymnast is perfect. Are you the same person as above who is pointing out Arthur’s pommel horse score? And what makes someone a true all-arounder? Since you seem to know it all. The AA medal is not determined by “who has the most consistent average across all events”. It’s who is the best gymnast of the day overall total score across all events.
I don’t think errors as deductions and mistakes really are synonymous. Take Skinner’s block on her Cheng- it was incorrect, but I wouldn’t say she was making a mistake by only blocking off of one hand because that was her consistent approach. That didn’t make it not an error, but I would say it makes it not a mistake. A mistake is when something goes wrong, and having errors doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve deviated from your standard procedure.
But either way… Xiao had deductions too… I don’t se your point…
He had a bad landing on one of his fx passes. Low and lunged. Def fits your def of a mistake.
What a great meet! Artur finally coming into his own. Sad for Sam but we’re ised to it by now. Well done Nagorny too
Love this. But having mentioned the rest of the top 10 can you please write James Hall in for finishing 8th? Please and thank you.
So is Yul Muldauer ever going to upgrade his difficulty? I’d heard he was working on it last year, but he’s still way behind the top contenders, and the judges sure aren’t making big distinctions when the execution is much better. Those E scores stay compressed, so it’s advantage difficulty no matter how you slice it.