A. China’s team

The Chinese Olympic team will be Zhang Jin, Ou Yushan, Tang Xijing, and Lu Yufei, with Guan Chenchen joining Fan Yilin in the individual positions.

This team has left me both pleased and skeptical. Which is typical. This group of four makes a lot of sense. I thought the team would be way less reasonable than this, especially following yesterday’s men’s debacle.

I do obviously have some concerns, namely that this is not the mathematically highest-scoring team China could have produced, which may end up being significant in a tight race against Russia for silver. On the other hand, this is probably the “safest” of the good-scoring teams China could have come up with (as much as that is a thing that might exist), with the most believable routine options and backups as needed. We’ve seen that theme a lot this summer. Though in this case, China did not simply go, “Byep, that’s what the all-around rankings said,” so one can hope there was at least a single mote of strategy involved somewhere.

A. Li Shijia is out

On the eve of China’s final test, we have the news that world beam bronze medalist Li Shijia’s injury from the first test is severe enough that she will not be part of the final test or Olympic selection.

Upfront, this improves the chances of…well really everyone in the realistic picture because there’s one less person to compete against. And I would characterize everyone in the realistic picture as Ou Yushan, Lu Yufei, Tang Xijing, Zhang Jin, Qi Qi, Guan Chenchen, Liu Tingting, and Wei Xiaoyuan. With Fan Yilin already guaranteed one of the spots, those 8 are competing for 5 Olympic positions.

To me, the first 4—Ou, Lu, Tang, Zhang—should be the team. Which means it 100% will not happen.

Breaking it down further, I suppose the first 6 are the ones in actual contention for the 4 spots on the team team, Critically, no more than one of Zhang Jin, Qi Qi, and Guan Chenchen should ever be on the same team because of Bars Apocalypse. That will limit the realistic team combination options, of which there are still several. As for the other 2, there are permutations in which Wei Xiaoyuan and Liu Tingting do make up high-scoring teams—in fact, your peak best-scoring team based on 2021 would have Guan Chenchen’s VT/BB scores complemented by Wei Xiaoyuan’s UB, but that team would be risky and terrifying in a way I would be obsessed with…but don’t think will actually happen.

In reality, I imagine that Liu Tingting doing only UB/BB and Wei Xiaoyuan being mostly bars (with a low vault score) will be prohibitive for a team spot in this group. Their chances of getting the additional +1, however, have improved. Overkill on bars in the +1 spots may be an issue for China since they already have Fan Yilin there, but it wouldn’t be as egregious as the US going with Skinner and Carey for the +1s since Skinner and Carey are competing for one EF spot (because Biles), whereas both Chinese +1s could make the bars final if they choose to go that direction.

I’m definitely still partial to Guan Chenchen’s beam for that +1 spot—though that also could be characterized as overkill because the entire Chinese team is a medal threat on beam. The medal-threat holes on this team are vault and floor, but anyone with a good floor score (i.e., Ou Yushan and Lu Yufei) needs to be on the main team, and on vault, someone like Qi Qi could perhaps make the final but there are no actual vault medal threats in this group. So China is basically left with overkill as the only option for the +1.

This weekend’s team announcement won’t be boring.