All posts by balancebeamsituation

U.S. Championships

2018 US Nationals – Junior Preview

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Junior nationals! It’s like senior nationals, but doesn’t matter as much.

Reinforced by, well, everything has been the emergence of a junior Big Four—sort of like the Russia, USA, China, Romania version of the Big Four, except no one is Romania, may she rest in peace. Sunisa Lee, Jordan Bowers, Leanne Wong, and Kayla DiCello have created some real distance from the rest of the pack and every expectation is that they will fight it out among themselves to see who is the 2018 junior national champion.

Juniors compete on Friday and Sunday at 1:30 ET, streaming online.

For the win

What’s exciting is that each of the four looks just as realistic as any other to win the title. A convincing argument can be made for all.

Scoring Potential – This is where Sunisa Lee has the advantage. When she is hitting her intended D scores on all four pieces, she cannot be caught. Her potential bars difficulty is worlds ahead of the other juniors right now, but she also boasts the top floor score of the group with 13.800. I wouldn’t have guessed that without looking, but it proves that it’s not all about the bars and beam for Lee. The big test for her will be bringing all that difficulty back (she did not show full D at US Classic) and doing it in hit routines across two full days of competition, therefore not rendering herself vulnerable to the Sturdy Gurdys who don’t have such big routines.

Winning Pedigree – The best way to figure out who’s going to win is to look at who has won before. The top juniors have ventured to a couple major international competitions already this year—Pacific Rims and the Junior Pan American Championships—and on each occasion Jordan Bowers has come home with the all-around gold medal, outscoring the very people she’ll be expected to outscore to win a junior national championship this week, and doing it in front of the discerning judging panels of international competitions. Continue reading 2018 US Nationals – Junior Preview →

Guy Stuff

Dude Week 2018: Euros Event Finals

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FLOOR EXERCISE

The host nation couldn’t have started the final day of competition any better as Dom Cunningham pulled out the upset victory on floor exercise to take gold ahead of a number of his higher-D colleagues.

Cunningham’s 6.1 D may have seemed to put him at a disadvantage, but his routine was noticeably free of the major OOB errors that befell the medal favorites and their 6.4 Ds. Top qualifier Artem Dolgopyat went out with both feet on his first pass, a 0.3 neutral deduction that took him down to second place, with Nikita Nagornyy suffering the exact same result on his opening triple back, putting him in 4th place. Both finished less than three tenths behind Cunningham.

Artur Dalaloyan did not go OOB but did have a major stumble back on a front double pike that gave him the lowest E score of the top four finishers, nonetheless still good enough for bronze based on difficulty and lack-of-OOB-ness.

Alex Shatilov went through cleanly but wasn’t quite as crisp in the landings to take fifth place, which obviously should have been first place because Shatilov. He and Nguyen had to settle for 5th and 6th, while the two who fell, Zapata and Onder, occupied the bottom positions.

POMMEL HORSE

We can officially crown our new king of pommel horse as Rhys McClenaghan hit his super-difficult routine for 15.300 to pretty much bury the rest of the field, deservedly receiving both the highest D score and highest E score of the final. It wasn’t close.

The big surprise of the final was the mistake from Max Whitlock, who didn’t so much fall at first, just lost his rhythm and had to stand atop the pommel horse looking down at it like a stern father who isn’t mad at the pommel horse, just disappointed.

“Sigh. I just thought we taught you better than that.”

Also I’m pretty sure there’s a statue of that exact image in a Florentine piazza somewhere. Continue reading Dude Week 2018: Euros Event Finals →

Guy Stuff

Dude Week 2018: Euros Team Final

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Sheesh. Phew. Other sound effects.

Well…we knew a team would count three falls on high bar in the final. We just didn’t necessarily have the right team in mind.

The ultimate standings of the men’s European final informing us that Russia won gold and Great Britain took silver may look like a normal, ho-hum result, exactly as expected coming into the championship, but the sack of crazy that was this final took us on many strange and mind-altering journeys before arriving at its anticipated ending.

Through five events, a Russian performance squarely in the OK-not-great category had opened the door to a somewhat unanticipated challenge from the Brits. Now, there were still highlights from Russia on those first five events, mostly involving Dalaloyan and Belvavskiy, but a seat drop (bad kind) from Nagornyy on floor, Lankin getting caught in a dust devil on his rings dismount for some reason, and Nagornyy having an intimate moment with the left rail on PBars took the Russians somewhat off track. Continue reading Dude Week 2018: Euros Team Final →

Stuff and Nonsense

Things Are Happening – August 10, 2018

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A. EVO

EVO Athletics—the gym in Florida where Aimee Boorman works now—announced today that it will be the temporary home of US women’s national team while a permanent training facility is constructed/discovered/wished upon.

That means that EVO will host events like the worlds selection camp and the prep camps this year (developmental camps are still scheduled to be held at the Flip Fest location as of the latest calendar).

Of course, the cynical part of me is going, “You just wanted to be vaguely associated with Aimee Boorman so that no one would criticize this decision because everyone loves her,” even though it’s not like Aimee is suddenly running the camps. She’s not going to be storming in with a cape yelling, “By your powers combined, I’m AIMEE BOORMAN!”

But, USAG did have to find a temporary location that’s free of NCAA conflicts of interest, current elite conflicts of interest, and being-just-someone’s-house conflicts of interest, with the necessary facilities and without a history of being terrible. EVO seems to fit those requirements well.

B. The deal with the nationals roster

As we discuss on this week’s GymCastic, the mystery of Deanne Soza’s qualification to nationals has been solved. Sort of.

The word on the street is that following US Classic, the International Elite Committee met and decided to lower the three-event qualifying score from 39.750 to 39.500, allowing Soza to get in with her performance from Classic. You know, like how you change the rules after a competition? And don’t even bother to tell anyone? How that’s a thing that happens? Continue reading Things Are Happening – August 10, 2018 →