A hallmark of the annual competition circuit and perennial lesson in Hungarian pronunciation, this year’s Szombathely World Cup acted as the final official FIG competition before the world championship.

The overall field was much sparser than at the Paris World Cup two weeks ago, not helped by the concurrent domestic trials and national championships happening all around Europe—as well as the “if I compete and get injured this close to worlds, I’m going to stab a cantaloupe with a carving knife” of it all. But we don’t come to this place for celebrities, anyway. That’s not the Challenge Cup life. Let’s break it down.

VAULT

GOLD Charlize Mörz – AUT

SILVER Greta Mayer – HUN

BRONZE Tijana Korent – CRO

The victory for Austria’s Charlize Mörz in the vault final was also a victory for gymnastics commentators everywhere, as it proved the old maxim that it’s better to have too much power than too little. (Team “falls are contagious” also had a great day.)

In a final full of short landings, Mörz competed a high handspring layout 1/2 (4.6) and a Tsukahara full (4.4), both with large landing corrections backward but also leaving no doubt that she could comfortably execute both vaults without toppling head-first into the River Styx. A win for us all.

In the silver position, Hungary’s Great Mayer landed the single best vault of the final with her stuck-with-a-lean Tsukahara full (4.4) second vault, but the lower difficulty of her Podkopayeva (4.2) first vault, as well as a side step out of bounds, saw her drop just behind Mörz in the final standings.

Challenge Cup Vault Priestess™ Tijana Korent, now at the age of 36, won yet another vault medal with a bronze here, showing landing stability on a handspring pike 1/2 (4.0), then surviving a Yurchenko full (4.2) with a little more stepping, but it was fine. Her performance was enough to stay ahead of Bilge Tarhan, the only other vaulter to hit in the final, who performed the same two vaults as Korent but with more deductions for amplitude and control.

With men’s and women’s events running back-to-back and the competitors having to sit together to get their scores, Korent and Dmitriy Patanin also executed the “first session of couples therapy” tableau with by far the best accuracy of the day. 9.500 E.

The 0.2 vault bonus drama of the Paris World Cup did not come into play this week for pre-meet favorite Valentina Georgieva. A fall on her Tsukahara 1.5 second vault, following a downgraded Yurchenko 1.5 first vault, took her out of the running without making her lack of a 0.2 direction bonus A Thing. This time.

I feel this in my bones.

Meanwhile, Spain’s Marina Escudero landed the most difficult vault of the final, a DTY (5.0), but fell on a handspring front tuck (3.6) second vault, the vault that also took down co-Challenge Cup Vault Priestess™ Tjasa Kysselef. She intended a handspring front tuck full as her second vault but had to bail on it, just performing a regular front tuck and sitting it down.

BARS

GOLD Zoja Szekely – HUN

SILVER Romane Hamelin – FRA

BRONZE Ana Luiza Lima – BRA

The bars competition in Szombathely was open and shut in a ripe 33 seconds. Homestar Swinger Zoja Szekely went up first and solidly hit her 6.1-D routine, holding onto the stick on her full-twisting double tuck to go 13.650, a score that was always going to be tough for the others in the final to match.

With D scores in the low-mid 5s, her challengers would have needed E scores well into the 8s to catch Szekely, but the free flowing of E scores in the 8s was more of a We Love You At Italian Nationals phenomenon than a Szombathely World Cup phenomenon this weekend.

Coming closest was silver medalist and worlds alternate Romane Hamelin of France on 13.250. Hamelin has the makings of a world class bars routine with her inbar full + Stalder Shap 1/2 opening, overall comfort with inbars, well executed Van Leeuwen, etc. Competing just a flyaway dismount kept her out of gold here since it meant she had to use an A and didn’t get the 0.2 bonus for dismount difficulty, easily accounting for the 4-tenth deficit between her and Szekely.

But we can’t really blame Hamelin for the flyaway dismount after what happened at Euros this year (and yes, I was just looking for any excuse to use this GIF.)

Hungarian bars legend Zsofia Kovacs qualified in 2nd and would have been right in the mix given a hit, but she fell at exactly the same time the stream froze, very helpfully. So, officially, she fell on an FIG. Watanabe’s eponymous skill? A paywall stream that doesn’t work?

Ana Luiza Lima, who just won the Brazilian title on bars, followed that result with another 13+ score here, capping her 5.3 routine with a lovely, high DLO to take the bronze medal. Overall, she had the leg form and handstand edge over GB’s Shanna-Kae Grant, who showed a nonetheless solid routine with an equivalent 5.3 D to place 4th.

Lacking the D but excelling in transition form and amplitude was another French worlds alternate, Astria Nelo. At 4.7 D, even an exceptional routine wasn’t going to get her onto the podium here, but she won the Pak and Van Leeuwen Trophy in this final.

In total, we had five hits and three misses (Lucy Stewart started cleanly but wasn’t close on her double Arabian dismount and dropped to 7th), but the real bummer of the day came when Laura Casabuena fell awkwardly on a Church attempt. She got up right away and seemed normal when she re-chalked, but when she jumped back up to grab the bar it was clear her shoulder was not OK, requiring a painful-looking and lengthy medical delay.

BEAM

GOLD Flavia Saraiva – BRA

SILVER Alba Petisco – ESP

BRONZE Greta Mayer – HUN

Let’s dispense with all this “official results” business because the true beam champion was Philippa Busuttil of Malta. She was already poised to be a Balance Beam Situation all-star because of Malta (the rules are that if your national population is 750,000 or lower and you have pretty beam execution, you are awarded 4.2 Olympics), but then this happened.

Perfect. Hitting a wolf turn and then immediately stepping to nowhere on nothing is the true purpose of the sport. The club welcomes you, I welcome you, and Flavia 2017 welcomes you.

Speaking of Flavia, she was the actual champion today.

Saraiva won gold with her usual excellent execution, which was always going to see her sail to first place with a hit routine here. She only had one real wobble on a split ring jump (and a couple hesitant connections), but then she held onto a basically-stuck double pike dismount to seal the deal.

In addition to the beam gold, her version of the couples-therapy score wait with Eddie Penev won the Longines Prize for Vibes.

The silver medal belonged to Spain’s Alba Petisco, who survived a minor nuclear meltdown warning on a double wolf turn to hit a lovely routine with a particularly exquisite split jump 1/2 from side position. Most people don’t do the split 1/2 from side anymore now that you have to show the actual split perpendicular to the beam, but Petisco still does it, and it’s because hers makes everyone else’s look like a pile of diapers.

Meanwhile, Greta Mayer had another Szombathely World Cup to remember with a second medal of the meet, taking bronze on beam and bringing her career Szombathely medal count to 8. Mayer delivered the most secure routine of the final with nary a wobble in sight, just lacking the difficulty/form convergence of Saraiva and Petisco. But a very strong routine for bronze.

In fact, it was a high-level final overall, the clear star of the whole women’s competition here. Isabella Ajalla showed pretty execution, just in a very tentative routine, Diana Lobok got through a difficult 5.6 set with some wobbles and foot position, and Julia Soares hit well but looked like she was going to balk twice. All three ended up out of the medals here with scores that would have won gold in plenty of Challenge Cup finals.

In the injury bummer of this final, GB’s Alia Leat missed a foot punching for her dismount and twisted off to the side, landing right next to the mat and directly on the hard floor. We saw her being examined by medical in the background of the next several routines. If only there was some way to have a soft surface covering the floor around where people might dismount. But I can’t think of one. We don’t have the technology.

FLOOR

GOLD Denisa Golgota – ROU

SILVER Julia Soares – BRA

BRONZE Julia Coutinho – BRA

If the Szombathely World Cup is supposed to act as a demonstration of what the judging will be like at worlds in a few weeks, then the E judges on floor are ready to suck your life force out through a straw and feed it to a bat.

The highest execution score of the final belonged to the gold and silver medalists Denisa Golgota and Julia Soares, both on just 7.250 for solid hits. Really, I guess everyone needs to interview Lucy Stewart to find out the secret because she fell and still got 6.950 E, not that far away from the best E of the entire final. With a fall.

Despite their equal execution numbers, Golgota ended up taking the crown over Soares thanks to her stalwart commitment to the “in Romania, we do punch fronts out of our double lays” mission. That 0.2 bonus for a direct F+A gave her a 5.5 D score, exactly enough to go ahead of Soares’s 5.3. Soares was excellent on her double Arabian today, with pointed toes and legs together, but she had no connection bonus in any of her passes, and if I’m reading the code correctly, that means she is not gymnastics.

The same scenario played out in the race for bronze. Brazil’s Julia Coutinho and GB’s Shanna-Kae Grant both got 7.150 execution, but Coutinho’s whip + double Arabian brought her the 0.2 bonus that put her exactly two tenths ahead of Grant, who did not have connection bonus. But also did a double Arabian. If nothing else, we can all get behind everyone suddenly doing double Arabians. Nature is healing.

Shanna-Kae Grant finished out of the medals in both of her finals in Szombathely but made a pretty solid statement that she’s doing the best gymnastics of her career right now.

Commiserations for this final go to Emilia Acosta of Argentina, who ended up in 6th after a lovely routine (her leaps are an absolute yes), where she merely got grumpy in the middle of her wolf turn and had to slap the floor about it. Something I’m surprised to learn we suddenly care about.

So that’s that, we all successfully Szombathelyed for another year.