Artistic Gymnastics FIG World Championships 2018

[heywoodu 16,144]

I'm watching the vault final now and watching Elsabeth Black is pure torture.....she so much reminds me of someone from some TV show or series or something, but I can not for the life of my put the finger on who exactly and that is really frustrating. Any clues?

[OlympicsFan 860]

I agree that the level in artistic gymnastics currently is very bad:

On the women's side:

Russia used to have 2 great all-around athletes and now ... ?

What about Romania and China?

What about Ferrari, Steingruber and so on?

What about the british girls?

USA used to have 2 great all-around athletes and now? Hurd is a great talent, but until a couple of years ago her level would have never been good enough to be top 2 in the US in all-around.

The only "positive" trends are the improvements of the japanese/canadian girls and of Derwael.

 

On the men's side it's a bit better, but still not great:

The US has gotten clearly worse in my opinion. Japan has also gotten worse in my opinion. What happened to Larduet, Uchimura, Leyva and Verniaev?

I expected Whitlock to be much better in all-around by now. Does GB have any serious contender for an all-around medal in 2020?

The only nations that have improved or at least kept their level in the last couple of years are China and Russia.

 

The number of medals going to "exotic" nations is very surprising, normally most of the finals were made up by athletes from Japan/Russia/China/USA/GB, but now we have tons of finallists from small nations. Some might say that this is a sign of a higher level of competition, but in my opinion it isn't. I think we might see a similar development in other sports (figure skating, swimming) as well, every year it gets harder for western nations to "find" kids who are willing to train for hours every day.

[heywoodu 16,144]

Derwael  What a beauty of a routine 

[bestmen 2,909]

16 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Derwael  What a beauty of a routine 

Lol was 5 hours ago , busy by watching kabbadi i guess 

 

 

[heywoodu 16,144]

4 minutes ago, bestmen said:

Lol was 5 hours ago , busy by watching kabbadi i guess 

Speed skating finished around 20.30 and only after that I could start watching the 5 gymnastics finals 

[Dragon 2,059]

1 hour ago, OlympicsFan said:

I agree that the level in artistic gymnastics currently is very bad:

On the women's side:

Russia used to have 2 great all-around athletes and now ... ?

What about Romania and China?

What about Ferrari, Steingruber and so on?

What about the british girls?

USA used to have 2 great all-around athletes and now? Hurd is a great talent, but until a couple of years ago her level would have never been good enough to be top 2 in the US in all-around.

The only "positive" trends are the improvements of the japanese/canadian girls and of Derwael.

 

On the men's side it's a bit better, but still not great:

The US has gotten clearly worse in my opinion. Japan has also gotten worse in my opinion. What happened to Larduet, Uchimura, Leyva and Verniaev?

I expected Whitlock to be much better in all-around by now. Does GB have any serious contender for an all-around medal in 2020?

The only nations that have improved or at least kept their level in the last couple of years are China and Russia.

 

The number of medals going to "exotic" nations is very surprising, normally most of the finals were made up by athletes from Japan/Russia/China/USA/GB, but now we have tons of finallists from small nations. Some might say that this is a sign of a higher level of competition, but in my opinion it isn't. I think we might see a similar development in other sports (figure skating, swimming) as well, every year it gets harder for western nations to "find" kids who are willing to train for hours every day.

 

To answer the British questions:

Whitlock retired from the all-around earlier this year to concentrate on individual apparatus but it seems he may change his mind now,

The other GB men, Wilson, Cunningham, Hall are good but probably not quite good enough to win all-round medal. All could finish top 6 in the world on a good day but I can't see them breaking into the top 3

 

The women's performance this week was disappointing but understandable.

Fragapane and Tinkler are injured, the Downie sisters are only now returning after both being injured for more than a year,

And there were two 17 year olds making their world debut.

I think with all their best team available they should be slightly better than the Canadians who finished 4th but probably not good enough to challenge the big 3 nations.

[heywoodu 16,144]

15 hours ago, thiago_simoes said:

I'm not celebrating a medal for Zanetti because he's a homophobic piece of trash and supporter of our future fascist president. So, congratulations to Italy and Greece. Deserved medals.

Damn it, I hate discovering good athletes are like this 

[thiago_simoes 1,441]

Very ugly first vault from the North Korean guy. It's unbelievable that he was given 8.9 in execution for a vault with lots of glaring mistakes. Poor judging at its worst.

[thiago_simoes 1,441]

No medal for Armenia. 

[thiago_simoes 1,441]

Shirai was terribly overscored. The landing on his first vault alone was worth 0.6 less in his execution score, so a 9.150 E score is unrealistic since there are other deductions that should be applied.

Cunningham was robbed.