After four subdivisions of thrilling qualification action at the European Championships, we now know exactly who has earned the final Olympic spots out of Europe. Confirming what had previously been her cult-favorite status, Error Code 232404 had a tremendous day, setting the standard from the first subdivision and never looking back. Her buffering circle was so extended and pristine, and while I would have liked to see a little more closure in that ring position, that’s being picky.

After EC Dubs annihilated the competition early, there was really only ever going to be one Olympic spot left. To the surprise of no one, Error 502 Bad Gateway—honestly the stronger of the Bad Gateway sisters, especially these days—performed like the rock she is to take the spot, with the shocking complexity of her movements truly standing out, even among this esteemed field. When Error 502 is at a competition, you absolutely can’t watch anyone else.

With only two Olympic spots on offer, there were always going to be some heartbreaking moments, and the most gut-wrenching of all had to belong to Problem Providing Access To Protected Content, a new senior who couldn’t have done more throughout the entire third subdivision. Yet, with such established stars in this group, she simply never had a chance to make her mark or get the scores she needed. To be quite honest, I think she has an argument for being underscored because the judges were anticipating having to save their highest numbers for defending champion Video File Cannot Be Played in the final subdivision.

As for Cannot Be Played, I was shocked that she had such a poor competition. She brought everything we expect from her at her best—the error codes, the stuttering, the crashing—but it suddenly felt like there was no place for the staccato finality and predictability of her style in this year’s competition. where leaving the door open for interpretation and vacillation and the pure uncertainty of not knowing what would come next clearly won the day.

Continue reading European Championships Women’s Olympic Qualification →

Well it didn’t go great!

Following a fairly dominant qualification performance in which Romania outscored Ukraine by 4.600, the Romanian team looked to be resting on a cloud of chocolates heading into a European team final that was theirs for the winning.

That favorite status, however, ignored Romania’s virtuosic ability to find new and creative ways to fall apart on bars. Ioana Stanciulescu led off Romania’s bars rotation with a 9.800 that eliminated Romania’s entire potential advantage in one fell swoop. Fell being the operative word. The 9.800 (and 4.600 execution score) looks a bit harsh for what was basically your run-of-the-mill two-fall routine, but the second fall (after a missed Ray) was handstand based, with Stanciulescu repeatedly going over on a handstand and trying to correct before ultimately deciding it was a lost cause and hopping off. It was that avalanche of handstand deductions PLUS the subsequent fall that made the score look even worse than the routine actually was.

Sfiringu also had problems on bars, throwing in a rarely seen accidental tucked Jaeger that ended up torpedoing her execution score and giving her an even lower total than she received in qualification when she actually fell (scoring here was also much tighter on bars and floor than it was on the first day).

Ukraine didn’t try to do a ton on bars—Varinska and Bachynska both dismounted with double tucks and Varinska went for only a 5.1 D score, the lowest for any of the Ukrainian or Romanian athletes despite being Varinska. That not trying to do a lot strategy was quite effective compared to Romania’s light-the-toilet-on-fire strategy and gave Ukraine an advantage of more than 4 points because of bars alone.

Continue reading Ukraine Defeats Romania: A Postmortem →

So close. So close that it cuts all the deeper.

I am, of course, speaking of the most important competition at this year’s European Championships—Luxembourg’s quest to advance to the team final.

It started so beautifully, with our valiant queens hitting 3-for-3 on both bars and beam while the Czech Republic, Croatia, and Latvia played a little game of “the beam is COVID.” But as is typical of life, it got bad almost immediately, and a fall on a final-routine Yurchenko full (a vault fall!) was enough to drop our 3-member Luxembourg team a mere 0.6 behind Croatia for the final spot in the team final. You had it. You HAD it. You were one vault away.

Truly, I blame us most of all. I mean, we couldn’t find EVEN ONE family-money American Level 9 whose parents hide their gold bars under a Luxembourg chateau to join this team and give them the luxury of dropping falls? We should have tried harder.

Luxembourg ended up with the #3 team score on beam in the entire competition, behind only Romania and Ukraine, and—to add to our pain—Lola Schleich jussssst missed the beam final on a tiebreak. But seriously, they’re all pretty legit on beam, as is Celeste Mordenti on bars. Buy a ticket for this bandwagon, because I’m driving and will immediately get too scared and stop.

On the bright side, Croatia’s sixth-place qualification finish means that Tina Zelcic will be performing her 1.1 D score bars routine, where she basically just shoots to the high bar and jumps off, in the team final. One must always find a reason to keep going, and Tina Zelcic’s bars routine is my new reason to keep going.

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Anyway, up at the “top places” with the “good teams,” the preliminary fight between Romania and Ukraine turned out to be the Romania show. The Romanians looked quite a bit more secure in their routines and better prepared—and didn’t even have to count a score in the 11s on bars! (Let’s be honest, Carol made the trip to Turkey to judge bars and floor, but still…) Only Sfiringu fell during the bars rotation, which counts as a Romanian hit.

Continue reading Euros Day 1 Recap →

So, the live blog didn’t go as planned this morning, and I blame the Olympic Channel’s website, mostly because it was the Olympic Channel’s website’s fault. They’re having trouble with the authentication from the cable provider and keep spitting most of us back to the authentication page even after we authenticate.

To the competition itself, most of the coaches seemed to have a bit of a White House understanding of the mask-wearing guidelines published by the FIG, so if this turns out to be a superspreading event, I have 38 culprits in mind.

Women’s Vault

The women’s vault competition proved a triumphant return for Boglarka Devai, who cemented her first-place performance from qualification by doing exactly the same in the final, hitting a DTY with just a bit of soup-legs on landing to provoke a lunge and following that up with a Lopez that showed nice initial flare before piking down to find the landing.

It was not a waltz for Devai, however, as she was nearly caught by Anastasia Motak, competing in the final position. Motak brought the stronger DTY to the duel, but ultimately lost out to Devai on second-vault difficulty, performing a Podkopayeva to Devai’s Lopez. The difference in difficulty between those two vaults accounted for the entire margin of victory.

Continue reading Szombathely Finals Day 1 →