One month post-Tokyo, gymnastics is officially back for a competition with exactly equal significance to the Olympics: the Koper Slovenia World Challenge Cup. So let’s find out who earned eternal glory for themselves and their nations on the first day of finals.

Men’s Floor

Despite perpetually looking like he has just been sent to apologize for Chernobyl, Russia’s Kirill Prokopev earned the gold medal (or, at least, the clear circle assigned to the winner) on floor. Prokopev boasted the highest difficulty score in the final and matched that with among the strongest execution performances, showing off his flares-but-make-it-interesting, along with mostly solid landings and just one plate tectonics event on a double double.

That was enough to put him ahead of Canada’s resident Super Ball William Emard, whose relative control on landings earned him the best execution score in the final, though he ended up a tenth behind Prokopev overall. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Ilia Kovtun showed up going, “I’m an Olympian now suckkkassss” and stuck his first three passes. While he was a little hoppier after that, the strength of his early passes afforded him a comfortable margin in third place.

Riley Loos of the US (or “Riley LOOOO” according to our commentator who had a small seizure during his name apparently) took 4th. He was a little lower on both difficulty and execution than the medalists but nonetheless above the all-important 14 mark—and with an original element in tow, a back dive to planche, which was given B value because the FIG hates joy.

In the remaining spots, a human bull named Andrin Frey had some excellent passes but sadly lunged back to his home planet on a piked double Arabian, Krisztofer Mezaros suffered a momentary ice floe on a randi, Mario Macchiati had some OOB trouble of his own, and Lorenzo Casali had an odd mistake where he opened up early on one of his passes and did an accidental back 2.5 that destroyed his composition. The broadcast wasn’t really sure what to do with that because while everyone else got all their passes replayed, the first half of Casali’s was a replay of a crotch close-up while he chalked.

Women’s Vault

On vault, Slovenia’s own Tjasa Kysselef took the title, finishing the competition with the strongest vault of the entire final, a handspring front tuck full that was nearly stuck. The strength of that second vault put her a single tenth ahead of top qualifier Csenge Bacskay, who landed quite lock-legged on her Yurchenko 1.5 so didn’t score as well as she might have there (even though she still got the highest highest score of any vault in the final because nothing is real).

Those two were clearly the class of the vaulters, but Yana Fedorova did hang on for bronze from the first position with her vaults, highlighted by a perfectly acceptable Yurchenko full.

I’ll admit, this final was in danger of getting boring, so it was veteran Dorina Böczögo to the rescue with the most preposterous landing on her Yurchenko full, where everything except her spine tried to scream “LET’S CONNECT A BACK HANDSPRING OUT OF THIS” for some reason.

Canada’s Rachael Riley followed that up by revealing that you could do 50+25 for 75, then 5 plus 3 is 8, take that away for 67, 67 times 9 is 603, and then take away the 2 to get our target, 601. (Americans, please direct your IDGI texts to your assigned cultural liaison.) Also her 1/2 on front fling ended in a body slam.

Continue reading What Happened at the World Cup? Koper Day 1 Recap →

It’s over! Chinese nationals concluded over the weekend with event finals, which I wouldn’t say changed my overall impression of the hierarchy in any significant way (particularly on the men’s side because most of them were like, “Hi we’re done and tired”), but they did provide some noteworthy developments.

The women’s vault title went to Deng Yalan, who pulled out a very strong duo of DTT and rudi (5.6 and 5.8 Ds) and hit both. Silver medalist Liu Jinru made a laudable return to her early-quad level by showing the same vaults, though with somewhat less composed landings to drop behind Deng. Yu Linmin took the bronze, not performing the Cheng that helped her win two apparatus world cups (and spend a hot second as a challenger to Jade Carey’s position in the vault-spot standings), but she did hit a Lopez and a DTT well enough.

I was disappointed to see that this vault victory did not get Deng Yalan an invite to the Olympic selection competitions. I’m not saying I’d end up picking her, but I think she should have at least been in the consideration pool for a +1 spot. She could make the Olympic event final doing what she did today.

As for the bars final, it had a minor curse on it. Currently investigating local witches. The luck ran out for Lu Yufei there as she peeled off on a pirouette (and took it directly to elbow slide), while Tang Xijing had a grip malfunction mid-routine that got her a redo at the end of the rotation.

Unsurprisingly, the champion was Fan Yilin, though not without a little bit of controversy. Both Fan Yilin and co-silver medalist Wei Xiaoyuan had clear hesitation errors that did not seem to be reflected in their final scores—especially compared to the other silver medalist, Luo Rui, who went through quite cleanly with similar difficulty.

Continue reading Chinese Nationals Event Finals →

The all-around final from Chinese Nationals proved that this competition was truly from another dimension, and I couldn’t be prouder. Here’s a rundown of the major Olympic contenders and how they fared in today’s all-around compared to the events of day 1. (Results)

Who was still great?

Lu Yufei – National Champion Lu Yufei (!). For someone who wasn’t even remotely close to the edge of the radar for the Olympic team pre-pandemic, Lu’s rise to a national championship has been remarkable. In the Before Times, the highest AA she had ever scored at an actual competition was 54.0 and her claim to fame was that time she was at the American Cup and NBC was like, “I mean no, though.” Here, her two scores were 56.932 and 56.735, going a full 8-for-8. We saw a gymnast with strong enough bars to stand out even among the Chinese team (with a truly stylish piked Jaeger), consistently high-scoring beam, and an increasingly undeniable floor routine that went 14.133 on day 2.

Zhang Jin – Also in the 8-for-8 club was Zhang Jin, who used an exceptionally composed two-day performance to snatch silver in the all-around. While her all-around beam wasn’t quite as secure as the first day, her floor remained at a team-final level reminiscent of 2018, and she was one of the very few gymnasts who successfully didn’t die while performing a competitively difficult vault on both days of competition. Zhang’s best path to a surprise Olympic bid seems to be if everyone else continues being kind of blah or downgraded on vault.

Based on this competition, it would seem she has regained her position from Qi Qi as the one you can go to for a 14 on vault.

Who recovered?

Tang Xijing – Not that Tang was bad on the first day. She was fine, but she clearly improved every event for the all-around final to record the #2 total on the day—behind only Lu Yufei. Her bars was extremely clean, and the shakiness that characterized her beam hit on the first day was gone. With a floor score today that also matched Zhang, Tang should consider this a successful nationals despite not finishing in the top 3 all-around or being on the very highest-scoring team permutations from this meet.

That’s mostly down to not having a high vault score given the FTY she was showing. If she adds that DTY back at the training camp competitions, I’d say that makes her a favorite for the team since the vault score is the only reason she ends up behind a gymnast like Zhang in the current team score dynamic. Even if she doesn’t upgrade back, I’d say she’s in contention with a good shot, especially if she manages to keep showing more consistency than someone like Li Shijia.

Continue reading Chinese Nationals All-Around →

Qualification is complete at Chinese Nationals, and as is tradition, we now know far less about this team than we did to start the competition because everything is [upside down face emoji x13].

Here’s a rundown of how the major team contenders (and also Shang Chunsong) looked today as China tries to come up with a team of four and a +1 to go to the Olympics along with the already-qualified Fan Yilin (who got the top bars score because of course she did).

Who had a good day?

Li Shijia – The darling of the Chinese program heading into 2019 worlds—who then sort of got overshadowed when Tang Xijing went “IT ME THOUGH” in the all-around final—had an excellent first day of competition and leads by a pretty comfortable margin heading into the AA final. Her stellar beam routine (6.7 D) earned the top score of the day, and her nearly-as-excellent bars has her in third position.

Li was also among the few top athletes to pull out a DTY today, though it was not her strongest with a short landing and a lunge forward.

Heading into this meet, I would have characterized Li’s position in the team hierarchy as borderline and in need a big nationals performance to show that she’s an actual necessity. So, Stage One complete. If she keeps this same level up through the AA and event finals, it would make an extremely compelling case for her as a team member with must-have scores on bars and beam who can also give you any event at any stage of the Olympics as needed.

Lu Yufei – Veteran Lu Yufei has been the revelation of the last six months in Chinese gymnastics. For the first four years of her senior elite career, she had settled into an “and also Lu Yufei” position where she would show plenty of talent but not the biggest D scores and then get a 52.300 and settle into the middle of the pack, not a major contender for team selection.

At last fall’s national championship, however, Lu busted out with “I’m having a pandemic to REMEMBIC” routines on bars, beam, and (probably most importantly) floor that made us all take notice. She expanded upon that thesis with today’s performance, looking stylish and composed in her difficulty on bars, beam, and floor—on a day when several significant people weren’t—and snatching a bunch of 2nd-place qualification spots in the AA as well as on bars and floor.

Zhang Jin – Not to be ignored. Lately, I had sort of written off Zhang Jin in terms of Olympic team chances because 1) she hadn’t looked quite as good as she did in 2018 when she was an essential part of the worlds team and 2) the relative strength of the newer seniors on vault and floor was dampening her necessity as the go-to, non-bad VT/FX score.

It’s still definitely an uphill battle for Zhang, but pulling out a DTT for one of the better vault scores of the day and qualifying top-3 into floor final and beam final (it was one of her good beam days) was really everything she could have done to keep herself in the mix.

Who had a medium day?

Continue reading Chinese Nationals Day 1 →