Category Archives: World Championships

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Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Judges

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One more day of qualification action still to come, when the US men will be taking us to pretty-boy rehab to try to teach us that we don’t need Sam Mikulak to have a good time. I’m not convinced yet.

DAY 1:
-The men opened qualification today, and I must begin with a confession. I did not watch Great Britain’s session, even though USAGym is lovely and made it available to us. I freely admit that I bit that hand that feeds me. I don’t feel good about it, but I needs my sleeps. Spending two whole days watching people pirouette themselves right off the uneven bars like a cow in a tornado takes a lot out of a person. As the NCAA coaches have taught me, time spent not watching gymnastics is just as significant as time spent watching gymnastics. You’ve got to take care of your body.

-But, that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to marry all of them simultaneously and keep them for myself on a secret polyandrous pleasure island. (Or, I mean, something legal…) I absolutely do. Trust me. Really, all relationships go through these rough patches, but we can get through it if we’re strong enough. I believe in us. The question is, do you Louis?
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Meet Recap, Worlds 2015

Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Aly Raisman

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Can I break some news to you? There are guys in this competition. I know. Weird, right? Here are the scoresheets for tomorrow’s (tonight’s) opening day of Koheichella 2015.

The women’s qualification finished today, and I’m still slightly unclear about whether it was a fever dream or real life. Aly Raisman is inconsistent now, or something, and I don’t really understand what to do with that. At least no one tried to perform a Dirty Romania on us, so that’s always a positive.

DAY 2:
-Welp, the US went today. As expected, the Pink Eagles are leading by roughly a googol. That said, it didn’t go super awesomely awesome. They had three falls, which according to the Martha Rules, is six falls too many. When a third of the team is having a near emotional breakdown in the post-meet interview, you know it wasn’t an ideal day.

-The biggest news was that Carmen Sandiego stole Aly Raisman and replaced her with some nervous, erratic hot pink replica. Aly threw herself out of bounds on her opening floor pass, won the gold medal in the triple jump on her vault landing, and then 2010-2011ed her bars routine. Fortunately, in true “Here’s my beam-ah! NEXT BEAM-AH!” fashion, she came back and was solid enough to be useful on beam, although she did not get D panel credit for…really anything. The judges were just like, “No skills here…”  The US filed a petition on the D score, which Nellie Kim threw immediately into the round circular filing system in the corner of the room. Raisman won’t advance to any event finals or the all-around, though she will advance to an awesome narrative for next Trials season, so that’s something. I’M FULL OF REDEMPTION.

-Aren’t you really impressed that I got through two whole paragraphs before turning into a barrel of slime about the Maggie Nichols AA qualification situation? Because I am. I’ll just say this: Maggie would have needed a 12.985 on bars to take the second US AA final spot. And after that, I’m just going to stare straight ahead and blink a whole lot. Once Martha is done yelling at the team, she needs to buy Maggie an apology alpaca or something. Whatever they use for currency in Karolyiopolis. Because Maggie got hosed by the system here. Fight the power!
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Worlds 2015 – You Guys, I Think We Broke the Romania

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Before we get to the nonsense, the scoresheets for day 2 of WAG action.

And now, brace yourselves, because Romania.

DAY 1:
-Obviously, Romania’s performance is the big talking point because it was the worst thing ever to happen in the history of time. It was like the black death, but with more poor hip circles. I think we all felt it would be a mess going in (I may have used the words “garbage fire”), but I still firmly believed that Iordache would be able to pull them through to the TF anyway. I was wrong. Romania currently sits in 8th after the first day, and will drop pretty deep into the test event field when it’s all over since there are legitimately six more teams with a chance to pass them yet to perform. Something needs to be done. We can’t let Romania go the way of Ukraine. Nadia needs to throw some Nadia money at the problem, like now.

-It started out not completely disastrous, just sort of meh. Floor was OK, no major errors, just uninspiring (and I thought a little harshly scored). Vault was perfectly fine. And then bars was even worse than last year. Somehow. Jurca hit, and then the covered wagon fell into the gully, and everyone drowned while getting dysentery and losing all the cattle and children. It was very “How many times, Alyssa?” How many times, Romania? Even beam was wobbly and emotionally scarring, featuring yet another fall from Iordache. The rest of the world is too good right now for Romania to have one event be that weak. This will continue to happen, though the Romanians will still be a favorite to get out of the test event. They just need to cut up some old mats and wrap them around Ponor, resurrect Izbasa, commission Interpol to find Ana Porgras, and hurl Nadia into a time machine. It’ll be fine.
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World Championships

2015 US World Championship Team

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You might have heard, but some big, earth-rattling news came out today: Norah Flatley has announced for UCLA.

I can’t think of anything else that happened.

I guess there was the other tiny matter of the US World Championship team. We’ll have to muster the energy to distract ourselves from National Norah Flatley Day to think about that for a moment. In what would certainly have been a surprise earlier in the summer and would have been a pretty big surprise after nationals as well, the team is Biles, Raisman, Nichols, Douglas, Kocian, Dowell, and Skinner, with the alternate to be named as late as humanly possible. It comes as less of a surprise now after the withdrawal of Ross, the apparent natural-disaster implosion of Key, and the Spoiler Alert Roster from the end of September that told us this was the way things were leaning, though I’m still scheduling time for a sad-nap about Alyssa Baumann.

Unlike normal, it isn’t immediately clear which gymnast will be the alternate in this group, but it looks likely to be Dowell or Skinner, with Skinner making the most sense to me. I won’t entertain the blasphemy that it might be Nichols. I won’t. Skinner is usable on vault and floor, but she wasn’t top three on those events at nationals, which kept her out of all the highest-scoring team permutations as she came in behind Raisman’s Junkanar on vault and variously behind Douglas and Nichols on floor. We can hope Raisman’s Junkanar has become slightly less junky in the intervening months. Floor will be the closest battle on this team through training, and I’m sure that third TF spot won’t be decided until after qualifications.

At the same time, Dowell also didn’t make a mark on the highest-scoring team permutations at nationals either because, even on her one bars hit during the summer competition season, she scored the same as Biles and wasn’t in the top 5 on the day. The main lesson, once again, is that camp matters and Nationals…not so much. Honestly, this is as US team that probably won’t need its alternate even if an injury occurs. There will be strong, likely backups already in the 6. 

It’s a huge accomplishment for Dowell even to make the seven, a prospect I thought was iffy when she announced she was deferring (which I still question because even with making this team, the Olympics remain a very tough ask), but it ended up being a perfect confluence of events for her with Locklear not able to get her difficulty back and Kyla pulling out. Suddenly, a bars door was open and she walked right through it.

As for Bailie Key, has anyone ever gone from pre-summer lock to not-even-the-alternate so quickly without an injury? I do have to say, it was always work to try to shoehorn her into teams with a “maybe she can do bars?” argument. What became apparent at Nationals is that she isn’t necessary to the team on any event, and if consistency has become a problem, that seals it. If she’s going to have any hope for 2016 at all (dreams that were pretty much just decapitated), she needs an Amanar and they need to go back to the drawing board with that beam routine. To me, it’s a tear down. Start from scratch. She was a beam star as a junior, and she should be a top three beamer for this team right now. The fact that she isn’t close to that is a problem.

Beam. I’m hoping this roster indicates that Gabby Douglas is doing another one of her late-season beam renaissances because otherwise this team is looking a little light on beam. Maybe not light, but questionable compared to its potential score. Baumann seemed to have a chance at a beam spot because she’s capable of gaining a solid five tenths over the scores Douglas, Nichols, and Kocian were getting at nationals. To see her not among the seven tells me that a third high-14s beam score must have emerged during the camps to make any Baumann benefit negligible. Or Martha just really likes MyKayla Skinner’s company. 

If Skinner is indeed the alternate, the conversation about who goes on which events in qualification gets very interesting. Especially for Aly “I’m coming back because of unfinished business in the AA” Raisman. Watch that space in the coming weeks. It’ll be fun. Also, the US competes in qualification at a totally reasonable time for us this year. Mid-late morning (depending on where you are)! On a Saturday! What is this exciting witchcraft?