As we near the summer meets and twiddle our thumbs waiting for the next interesting thing to happen, it seems a ripe time for a look at the general state of the 8 national teams that reached the worlds team final last year.

United States

The world champion US women have spent the first half of 2023 in a state of TBD as they await the intended returns of Tokyo Olympians Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, as well as a cavalcade of other stars, potentially even including certain other Olympic all-around champions. The presence of those athletes will, um, sort of change the makeup of the US team rather dramatically.

Within the confines of the current roster, the US women had their best performance of the year in the Pan Am final, when the squad of Roberson, Matthews, Sumanasekera, Fatta, and Johnson put up a 163.700, which compares pretty well to the 164.428 the British team scored to win the European Championship.

In trying to develop a reasonable team score expectation for this current group, this is the average score for each of the Pam Ams athletes over the two days of competition—but adding back intended team member Zoe Miller (who was out with a concussion) and using her averages from Stuttgart earlier in the year as a substitute.  

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Joscelyn Roberson	13.767	0	13.500	14.084
Tiana Sumanasekera	14.083	12.633	13.867	13.634
Zoe Miller	12.900	14.742	12.900	10.850
Nola Matthews	12.900	14.034	12.700	12.884
Addison Fatta	13.500	13.684	0	12.167
	41.350	42.460	40.267	40.602	164.679

This is a very competitive score compared to what other top nations are averaging at their most recent meets, though the question will be whether any of these team positions can hold up through the next three months.

If the standard is 2022 worlds, these athletes are hardly miles off. That bars score from Miller and that beam from Sumanasekera would have been the highest of those rotations for the US in last year’s team final, and Roberson’s floor would nearly have been the top floor score. Skye Blakely was on that team predominantly for beam and Leanne Wong predominantly for bars, spots that Sumanasekera and Miller would be at least very reasonable contenders for with these scores.

But, you know, things are supposed to get a lot deeper, and it should be a lot harder to make the worlds team in 2023 than it was in 2022. When Suni Lee is around, your “what the team needs on bars” expectations change.

China

When it comes to the straight-up scores, China might not be quite as far into the grave as it would have seemed based on watching vault at nationals.

Using the same approach as with the US—but with average scores from Chinese Nationals instead of average scores from Pan Ams—you get a very similar total for China’s best team option.

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Qiu Qiyuan	12.675	14.778	14.183	12.875
Ou Yushan	12.925	13.525	14.167	13.083
Zhang Qingying	13.094	12.800	14.378	13.283
Wei Xiaoyuan	12.850	14.483	13.200	12.650
Huang Zhuofan	0	14.500	0	0
	38.869	43.671	42.728	39.241	164.599

Even if we assume that the US score zooms up when adding all the people back this summer, this team score for China compares very favorably against the other top contending teams in the world right now, and China will hope to augment this group with increased difficulty or health from some of the top veterans later in the year. (A person can dream?)

The problem for China is that we have seen this play so many times before. A super-amazing bars and beam team that looks like it should have the scores to overcome somewhat anemic vault and floor rotations, and then they show up to worlds, someone falls on beam, and the whole house of cards comes down because the entire plan was beam. 

The lone competitive vaulter from nationals was Yu Linmin—who won the vault title easily thanks to her Tsuk double full—and she would make up a team score almost identical to the one above if put in place of Huang or Wei, which is something to consider seriously. But that does not solve the familiar travail of, how many gymnasts with unusable floors can you put on the same team without inviting apocalypse?

Italy

The Italians are currently grappling with the question of how competitive they can remain for a team medal this year given Asia D’Amato’s ACL tear, as well as the foot surgery for Martina Maggio that is also expected to keep her out of worlds. Both would have been locks for this year’s team if healthy.

That leaves Italy with exactly four healthy gymnasts remaining in the core group—Alice D’Amato, Giorgia Villa, Angela Andreoli, and Manila Esposito—since we also haven’t seen Veronica Mandriota from the 2022 worlds team yet in 2023.

Elisa Iorio, 2019 world team member, has been working the all-around domestically this year for the first time since that 2019 worlds, and while I still would be fairly petrified by the prospect of her and Villa on the same team and what that means for vault and floor, having those events as options could be what gets her back on a worlds team since Italy would absolutely want her bars score right now.

If we put together this team’s average scores from competitions this year besides Serie A (which has both an actual spoken bonus and an unspoken loose-E-score bonus), the team would look like this:

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Giorgia Villa	0	14.129	13.193	0
Angela Andreoli	13.217	13.000	13.200	12.900
Alice D’Amato	13.956	14.550	13.075	13.258
Manila Esposito	13.624	12.911	13.083	13.053
Elisa Iorio	0	13.766	0	0
	40.797	42.445	39.476	39.211	161.929

Using scores from all of 2023 instead of just Euros paints a bit more favorable (but also more realistic) picture for Italy, though it’s clear nonetheless that Italy is going to feel those injuries in the team total. They did get some preparation for that in 2022 when Asia D’Amato and Andreoli both missed worlds and the team still ended up just a point out of bronze, all while counting multiple scores in the 11s. What a meet that was. Now, Andreoli just needs to become Martina Maggio over the next three months, and it’ll be fine. 

I’m keeping an eye on a few new seniors as well. Chiara Barzasi had a nice AA result at Jesolo that could be appealing, and Viola Pierazzini and Arianna Belardelli went with Villa to the Baku World Cup in a rare competition opportunity for gymnasts not in The Group, though we haven’t seen the big team final scores from any of those gymnasts yet.

Great Britain

The British team set the initial high-water mark this year at Euros with that 164.428, a comfortable victory over the rival Italian team (which at that point had Asia D’Amato) that still stands as the top team score across the continental championships with only the Asian Championship to come.

We haven’t seen the British athletes compete as much at international meets this year, but if we take their average scores across the competition at Euros, we have this (with some beam falls at later points taking down this total compared to the team competition day).

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Ondine Achampong	13.966	0	13.450	13.166
Becky Downie	0	14.300	0	0
Georgia-Mae Fenton	12.900	13.867	12.715	12.467
Jessica Gadirova	14.150	13.666	13.100	13.944
Alice Kinsella	13.833	12.466	12.766	13.566
	41.949	41.833	39.316	40.676	163.774

All in all, the Brits should feel pretty comfortable in their new status as presumed team medalists as we’ve seen nothing yet this year from anyone else that would disrupt that expectation.

There’s not too much selection nuance for the British team since there just aren’t that many worlds-level athletes in the picture now—save for the big question of whether a full-strength Jennifer Gadirova would displace any of these five. And that’s where things could get dicey. Is the Euros group too bars heavy, with both Downie and Fenton only expected to deliver counting bars? We haven’t seen competitive vaulting from Jennifer Gadirova since the Olympics, but she did compete for counting floor scores at worlds last year.

Japan

The Japanese women’s team has done most of the work for us by already naming four members of the team ahead of this weekend’s final decider.

Their averages from All-Japan/NHK—joined by Ashikawa, whose scores add the most to the team total—look like this.

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Watanabe Hazuki	13.388	13.322	13.222	12.844
Miyata Shoko	14.311	13.033	13.222	13.122
Kishi Rina	14.400	12.877	12.955	13.422
Fukasawa Kokoro	13.678	13.855	12.700	12.922
Ashikawa Urara	12.667	11.522	14.011	12.744
	42.389	40.210	40.455	39.466	162.520

It’s a competitive setup, especially considering how much higher those counting beamers scored on beam at worlds last year. I don’t see a lot of wild domestic elevation here.

Canada

Our 2022 worlds bronze medalists haven’t yet produced the scores this year to look competitive against the top teams, but just as with the US, most of Canada’s worlds team has not competed—or has barely competed—in elite this year.

Using average scores from Pan Ams alone would have Canada sitting on a team score of 153, though if we give them the national championships scores from silver medalist Ava Stewart, as well as all four events from Cassie Lee, the team looks like this.

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Aurelie Tran	13.250	13.267	12.350	13.083
Ava Stewart	13.450	13.700	11.000	12.933
Sydney Turner	12.850	12.767	12.200	12.700
Jenna Lalonde	12.800	12.567	11.917	12.333
Cassie Lee	12.983	11.458	13.133	12.850
	39.683	39.734	37.683	38.866	155.966

And then if you add in Ellie Black’s scores from the worlds team final last year, the total goes up a casual 4.366 points, which is, let’s be honest, Canada’s entire strategy anyway.

France & Brazil

In pretty much the same boat as Canada, France has seen a couple of its top contenders perform this year, but there has been none of Melanie De Jesus Dos Santos or Carolann Heduit and barely any Aline Friess. That’s a pretty big set of absences, with the gymnasts who competed at Euros averaging out to a team total of 154.9 there. Unlike Canada, however, France is yet to conduct its national championship, which should give us a better sense of who is in the mix later this month.

Brazil gets a full incomplete at this point because we have not seen Rebeca Andrade or Flavia Saraiva compete this year, and the available athletes struggled through Pan Ams for a competition average team score in the 149s. That team performance indicated that there could still be a place for Jade Barbosa, who returned to competition this weekend in Osijek. In fact, a theoretical worlds team of Andrade, Saraiva, Barbosa, Oliveira, and Soares has the potential to provide exceptional coverage of the four events while complementing each other well. Which means it will never happen.

Top Challengers

Among the teams that did not make the worlds team final last year, Australia has enjoyed the best start to the year, at least domestically, with an average team score from nationals that compares very favorably with what we’re seeing from the top countries.

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Georgia Godwin	13.917	13.017	14.083	13.450
Ruby Pass	13.950	13.900	13.366	13.067
Lucy Stewart	12.400	11.700	13.067	12.450
Annabelle Burrows	13.467	11.233	12.050	12.750
Kate McDonald	0	13.033	12.950	12.966
	41.334	39.950	40.516	39.483	161.283

Scores from Australian Nationals tend to be a few tenths elevated compared to what we see those same routines receiving at international competitions, but this is nonetheless an excellent marker for an Australian team that is farther along at this point in the year than several teams that reached the team final last year.

The Netherlands has also started well, taking the team bronze at Euros behind Great Britain and Italy, with an average score from that competition that looks pretty solid for right now—and shows obvious areas for increase, like the top bars scores and all non-Sanne beams. An actual hit for this team (I know…) would be right up there.

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Sanna Veerman	13.066	13.100	0	12.133
Naomi Visser	13.200	13.433	12.433	13.444
Sanne Wevers	0	0	13.617	0
Eythora Thorsdottir	13.900	13.367	12.450	12.650
Vera Van Pol	13.600	13.066	11.066	12.733
	40.700	39.900	38.500	38.827	157.927

South Korea’s first-choice team, meanwhile, put up solid numbers in April across the one-day national championship and two-day national team selection competition, with an average team score that looks like this.

	VT	UB	BB	FX
Shin Solyi	13.433	13.117	13.450	13.367
Lee Yunseo	12.925	13.017	12.825	12.900
Eom Dohyun	12.917	13.133	13.050	12.833
Yeo Seojeong	14.567	11.783	13.100	11.867
Lee Dayeong	13.325	12.525	12.150	13.050
	41.325	39.267	39.600	39.317	159.509