Rafa Maciel

Would caution using world rankings as the predictor as qualification depends on performance since June last year. As of the end of December, Brazil are not in qualifying positions for Men's 60Kg or +100Kg. For the -60Kg class, it looks like Eric Takabatake is now fighting in the -66Kg division so Michel Augusto is the best place Brazilian with 206 points. He's about 200 points adrift of the 17th ranked nation. Augusto isn't listed as taking part in Grand Prix or Grand Slam events in January or February so he's likely to fall back a little over the next few weeks. In the +100Kg class, Rafael Silva is currently ranked 27 in the rankings and is outside of automatic qualification ranking. He is taking part in the Portugal Grand Prix and if he can finish 5th or above, should find himself moving into a qualifying position. On the women's side, Brazil are not currently qualifying in the -48Kg, or -70Kg weight classes The weakest weight class is -48Kg where they are currently ranked 45th for Alexia Nascimento and 48th with Amanda Lima. Both are around 300 points adrift of automatic qualification spot. Amanda Lima was taking part in Portugal Grand Prix but lost her first round match so won't have made much progress in closing the gap. in the -70Kg Maria Portela is currently ranked around 28th and is about 150 points short of the automatic qualifying spots. She isn't scheduled to compete in January or February so she could fall back in the rankings. My best guess at the moment is that Brazil likely to miss out on the Men's -60Kg class and the Women's -48Kg class.

BBC have announced that they have obtained the rights to show both summer and winter Olympic games through to 2032: Olympic Games to remain free to air on BBC up to 2032 - BBC Sport In the past, British viewers were spoiled by the BBC - particularly in London and Rio - with dedicated coverage for each individual sport so you didn't miss anything. Unfortunately, after the rights were sold to WB Discovery, the BBC coverage pretty much fell off a cliff and we were left with just 2 live streams and only one of them was on terrestrial TV whilst the other was online. For Tokyo, we had to endure hours of "talking heads" filling the time with inane chatter talking about sports that they hadn't bothered to research and didn't have a clue what was going on. So, whilst it's good news that the BBC will be continuing to show the games, if the terms are the same as they were for Tokyo, I think it is safe to say that true sports fans will be left wholly underwhelmed by their offering.

Will be interesting to see whether Max Whitlock is able to earn a spot on the team after his break post Tokyo. All things being equal and assuming no injuries in the intervening period, but it is difficult to see how they can drop Fraser. Tulloch and Regini-Moran as individual world medalists would also be difficult to displace. Jake Jarman gets a lot of media attention but not quite living up to the hype yet, but the expectation is that by Paris, he will have built in more difficulty and will be delivering more consistently. That would leave James Hall as potentially the most vulnerable.

Joe Fraser is having an absolute mare of an evening.

No - although he is strong on the floor, he doesn't have enough difficulty on the high bar to challenge for medal so the conspiracy theorists can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Whilst Gadirova had the highest execution score, you're wrong to suggest that nobody was within 0.4 of her - Four other athletes had an execution score in excess of 7.633 and therefore were within 0.4. In addition, Gadirova had a lower difficulty score than the rest of the top five - it's not that unusual for an easier routine to score higher execution score

I think GB benefitted from the fact that with the exception of China and to lesser extent Japan, all of the teams had terrible routines. Realistically, the bronze medal was always likely to be a fight between GBR, ITA and USA and fortunately for GBR they were able to limit the damage to Pommel and were decent on the rest whereas ITA and USA were off their game on 2 of the apparatus. This should definitely be a wake-up call for the GB team that they will be in a dog-fight if they are hoping to medal in Paris.

So finally, the IJF seem to have updated their website to include Olympic rankings. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be able to actually manage the process of updating the rankings correctly so here's my take on the position as at the end of October. This month's ranking update includes the World Champs, the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam and the Perth Continental Open: For the most part, nations were fairly flat in terms of their qualification numbers this month, either picking up or dropping one weight class. saw biggest movement on the downside, shedding 6 places whilst the unwinding of positions continues as they drop 4. were the biggest gainers this month, picking up 5 spots whilst picked up 4. In the team event, and now qualify whilst and would not.

Pupo didn't win a quota at the recent world championships - although he may well do so at next week's CAT XIII Championships - so I'm not following your logic here. Cuba haven't qualified any athletes as yet whereas Canada has. How can the sentence be incorrect?

Just to inject a note of caution for Team GB after what was a great result with a strong performance however, I do think the team needs to be consistently hitting 165 if they are to challenge for podium place in Paris. We were fortunate that Italy and Brazil didn't have their strongest team whilst China underperformed this weekend.

Canada squeezed into the final by just 0.3 points and look set to walk away with a medal and an Olympic quota spot

So by my calculations, if each team matches the score from qualification for their final rotation, USA would win with a 166. GBR would take silver on 162.5. The all important bronze and final Olympic quota would go to JPN on 161.5.

In rotation 3 On the Balance Beam both teams carried a fall resulting in USA dropping 0.667 against qualification whilst GBR were able to advance 0.334 On the Floor, BRA shed 2.501 points against qualification with ITA dropping by 1.866 On Vault, JPN have picked up 0.567 whilst CHN are up 0.366 Finally on Uneven Bars, FRA have fallen back by 1.634 whilst CAN dropped 0.166

Should just say that although Brazil lost a lot of points against qualification on the balance beam, when you adjust to take into account the athletes who participated in the final, they actually improved their score by 0.1 point and not many of the teams have so far been able to improve their score on any of the apparatus.

In rotation 2: On the uneven bars, USA have picked up 0.234 points compared to qualification whilst GBR have dropped 0.932. On beam, BRA fell back by 1.434 whilst ITA have picked up 2.433 points On the floor, CHN have lost 1.201 against their qualification and JPN picked up 0.167 On vault, FRA dropped 0.732 whilst CAN gained 0.500

After uneven bars, Brazil have gained 0.394 on qualification, ITA have lost 3.4 On beam, CHN have lost 1.833 whilst JPN have dropped 1.767 Finally on floor, FRA are down 1.233 whilst CAN are down 0.699

After vault, USA are down by 0.133 on qualification. GBR have given up 0.433

5 minutes into the competition and already seen a couple of falls from China on the balance beam and an Italian hitting the deck twice on the uneven bars

A bit of an underwhelming qualification score from . 252.793 is less than they achieved in both the Europeans 255.827/254.295 and at the Commonwealths 254.55. On the upside, GBR did finish ahead of both USA and China and hopefully there is room for improvement in the final.

Any reason why Canada only fielded 3 gymnasts on the floor? Means they're carrying Dolci's relatively poor 12.433

Pleasantly surprised by the performance although possibly disappointed by the number of individual finals achieved. Over the summer they have struggled to break out of the 161 range so they've got to be pleased to finish with 164.595 and they've got to believe they have genuine chance of securing Olympic quota at the first opportunity.

41.465 for on the uneven bars - 1 point up on their European score but flat against what they achieved at the Commonwealths. Will soon discover if they can avoid the curse of the balance beam.

Balance Beam misery strikes again, this time for Italy who score 37.333 compared to the 40.166 achieved in Munich.

Really strong performance from the French team with a qualifying score of 161.428 compared to 155.162 at this year's Europeans. The Dutch team also improved since Munich scoring 159.396 compared to 156.464 but I'm not sure that is going to be enough to qualify for the final. For the Commonwealth nations, Canada scored 152.7 in Birmingham and have progressed to 159.661 in Liverpool. Australia however have fallen back since the commonwealths - dropping from 158 at the Commies to 156.095 today and they are unlikely to make the final. It's been a strong start from Brazil who look to be heading towards a score in excess of 160 while Germany are currently running around 2 points ahead of their European performance so should end up on a score around 159/160. With GBR and Italy still to come, it looks like it may come down to Canada and Germany for that final spot in the final.

It's difficult to say too much given the lack of teams to complete so far, but I'm not sure that will be all that pleased with their score. They complete qualification with a score of 167.263 which is significantly down on their score from qualifying in Tokyo (170.562), qualifying at 2019 World Champs (174.205) and the 2019 World Final (172.330) where they took gold. However, it is in line with their score from the Tokyo final (166.096) where they took silver. Whilst I'm not saying that they won't make the team final, 167 is a beatable score - particularly when you factor in the fact that they have a tendency to post a lower score in the final compared to qualifying. If the same pattern persists, USA could post 164/165 in the final which is well within the capability of the teams from China, Italy, Great Britain and France to achieve. Will be interesting to see what the results look like tomorrow after all the subdivisions have completed. From the competitions I have seen so far this year, I get the impression that the scores have been generally lower than in previous years so it could well be that 164-167 range is still enough for an Olympic quota, but it is not impossible that USA could miss out on a top 3 finish in the final.