Like any self-respecting host nation, Brazil has amassed its best squad in a decade heading into the Olympics. A reliable team-final qualifier in the 2008 quad when Daiane Dos Santos bounced around the floor and Jade Barbosa cried her way through an Amanar, Brazil has not made it back to a team final since those 2008 Olympics.
Last year’s worlds adventure finished in a heartbreaking 9th-place result following a gargantuan bars implosion in qualification (Brazil was top-8 on the other three pieces), but with the talent on this year’s Olympic team, 2016 looks like Brazil’s most realistic chance yet to break the ignominious streak.
The infusion of long-anticipated routines from Saraiva and Andrade has certainly provided Brazil with the tools to make it back, but so much of Brazil’s ultimate Olympic prospects will be defined by how well the team manages the nerves and adrenaline of competing in front of a ravenous home crowd.
Their performance at the test event did provide an encouraging preview of how Brazil might handle the moment, with the team winning handily over the second-place Germans.
If adjusted to a 3-count format, that test event total would have been 171.485, much lower than the 174s being thrown around for other teams, but that’s to be expected given the real judging from the test event compared to domestic trials. If we also take into account more recent meets like Anadia (and the Dutch trials that some of the Brazilians competed at for reasons like ????? and INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIPS), Brazil’s scores look quite competitive with those other borderline, in-the-mix teams.
The Brazilians are one of the main reasons it might not be such a cakewalk for Japan and Italy this year. They’re right there and basically the same.
Team
Rebeca Andrade – 2016 Test Event bars bronze, 2014 Brazilian junior champion, back from 2015 ACL tear, best vault and bars on the team, those training videos of her doing an Amanar
Jade Barbosa – 2007 World AA bronze, 2010 World vault bronze, totally back and everything, please hit bars though, pronounced Zhadje
Daniele Hypolito – Was casually Brazilian national champion 9 consecutive times from 1998-2006, still killing it on beam, I woefully omitted her 9 total AA final appearances when praising Ferrari yesterday, you’d be reading a hundred articles about her longevity if it weren’t for Chuso
Lorrane Oliveira – 2015 Brazilian champion, if you don’t enjoy watching her there’s something wrong with you, did we hear that she was injured?
Flavia Saraiva – 2016 Test Event silver, 2015 Pan Ams bronze, enchanted woodland nymph, first gymnast who is also a part-time firefly, the Brazilian crowd will just lose it
Projected Olympic Lineups
Vault – (Saraiva) Oliveira, Barbosa, Andrade
Bars – (Saraiva) Oliveira, Barbosa, Andrade
Beam – (Andrade) Barbosa, Hypolito, Saraiva
Floor – (Barbosa) Hypolito, Andrade, Saraiva
Brazil is among the teams best poised to handle an injury should something arise since every event has at least one very usable backup with largely similar scoring potential, if not two. Martha would be proud.
On vault, Brazil is doing just fine with four DTYs and an Amanar Rumor (Amanar Rumor is getting upgraded to 6.2 D for the next quad). Saraiva’s is newer and tends to be a little closer to the table and shorter, so I have ranked her 4th, though that could change.
On any given day, all five of Brazil’s beam and floor routines could end up in whatever order, so qualification will be telling. The only really sure thing is that Saraiva reigns as queen of beam. Normally, I’d want Oliveira in that floor lineup, but she fell on a double pike at Dutch trials and hasn’t looked all there this season, peaking at 13.400. Continue reading Olympic Preview — Team Brazil