thiago_simoes

I know Eurovision is all about diversity, but it looks fake to me when Sweden chooses one black male singer and four black female backing vocals to represent the nation. It looks like a desperate attempt to say: "LOOK, WE HAVE DIVERSITY. LOOK! LOOK HERE! DIVERSITY!"

I kind of like San Marino's song. Yes, the lyrics are dull and it looks like the singer is dead inside, but it's almost on par with the winning song from last year. Not that any of them is any good, though, but both are still catchy.

Yes, I had a lot of trouble to find all of the results from the previous Pan American championships. Even PAGU is completely lost and I'm not sure they even know when the first Pan Am championships was staged (according to my research, 1997). Consugi is also terrible and they only had the results from South American championships from 2011 onward, but at least they've always replied and tried to help. The problem is that the first South American championships was held in 1959, so there was a lot to cover and I had to buy a couple of rare and expensive books myself to find some results from previous events so I could upload them to Wikipedia. I know nothing about COPACI, but I seriously fear for cycling fans if COPACI is any worse than PAGU.

They could add Aerobic Gymnastics, then. Just wishful thinking, of course. Aerobics was supposed to be part of the program and all of the countries agreed with its inclusion. but the president of PAGU (Pan American Gymnastics Union) denied the inclusion of the discipline with no further explanation. This is baffling because: 1) Mexico would have had a HUGE chance of a gold medal in the men's event, and the president of the federation is Mexican; and 2) Peru had a 99% chance of a medal in the women's event, and this would have been only Peru's second medal in gymnastics. PAGU is by far the worst sports federation in the continent, and I wonder how they even have control of the sport in the Americas. There's even a separate South American federation (Consugi) even though they are nearly as bad as PAGU. Anyway, PAGU is very unprofessional and run by complete idiots. They don't even have a proper website, and their PR on Facebook is abysmal. I asked for results of the latest Pan American Championships and I got blocked on Facebook. Seriously, WTF?

I didn't listen to many songs, but Albania, Italy and Slovenia are some of my favorites. I wish Albania could win, though.

I hate it. It looks like a child who always gets a C in arts had to draw this.

Portuguese and Spanish are so similar I thought this image was written in Portuguese, but then I noticed "Puerto Rico" and "Perú"; in Portuguese the names of the countries are written as Porto Rico and Peru, with no diacritic.

What a shock to see Brazil as the winner of men's 4 x 100 m! Amazing result!

Sagi Muki should have been punished with a third shido against the Belgian judoka, but the referee kept giving him extra chances and he eventually beat the Belgian guy. Now he has a gold medal. Come on, this is ridiculous.

I've updated my pet project about major medals earned by gymnasts from different nations in gymnastics. You can check it on Wikipedia here. I was finally able to find all of the results from all of the World Cup events in artistic and rhythmic gymnastics since 1983. It took me, like, 5 years, but it's finally done. I'm slowly updating the corresponding articles about the World Cup series with all of the results. The one about rhythmic gymnastics is complete, but I still have to upload some results for the artistic gymnastics one. Probably the most surprising information about the World Cup series are medals for Serbia, Algeria, Panama, Syria, Jordan and Thailand. These are not countries you usually associate with gymnastics. Serbia, in special, is very nice to have on this list, since they earned a single bronze medal at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in 2006, and I'm not quite sure people in the country know about it at all.

Diego Hypólito came out as a proud gay man. For those who want to read his coming out story, here's the link (in Portuguese);

The fact that Anahí Sosa never qualified for the Olympics is infuriating. She's probably the best rhythmic gymnast South America has ever had. I have three wishes for the Pan Ams: 1 - Easy: a medal for Sol Fainberg. She's doing great so far, so she should get one. I'm sure the Americans will go 1-2 in every individual event, but I don't bet my money on the Canadians sweeping all the bronze medals. 2 - Medium: a medal for Natália Gáudio. She deserves one. Her best chance will be getting a bronze medal on hoop, but this will still not be easy. At all. 3 - Hard: a medal for Federico Molinari (artistic gymnastics). With Zanetti, Caio Souza, two Americans, Larduet and Fabian Luna, it will be hard for Federico. Bummer.

@mrv86, please post the final result on the first page in this thread.

I'm somewhat disappointed with the results of the Brazilian group. The scores were decent considering they had lots of mistakes, but I'm not holding my breath expecting a gold medal at the Pan Ams. Mexico got their game together now and it's amazing to see this group performing very well again. The US is a bit irregular, but they are scoring high enough to safely stay on the podium at the Pan Ams. Canada had a very bad day yesterday and a complete disaster today, with the lowest execution score I've seen in my life. On paper, the group is fantastic, but they have a lot of work ahead of them. Cuba was not as bad as I thought they would be, and Australia probably got their highest score ever (14.000, which is not fantastic, but much better than 8 and 9 from the last stage). I'm also impressed with Egypt, Turkey and Finland.

Do you want statistics? Of course you do. For you guys to understand how hard it is for a nation to get a medal at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup series, I created these two tables. They refer to what year nations got a medal for the first time at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Cup series and at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup series. The difference is very substantial.

For some reason there's a bug that won't let me quote the previous post. Israel finished third, actually, not Estonia.

I absolutely agree. I was surprised with her ribbon score. Her clubs routine was also fantastic, probably the best I've seen her performing. Of course the strongest Belarusian and Israeli gymnasts did not perform here, so I'm not expecting medals at the European or World Championships for Vedeneeva, but a World Cup medal is a fantastic achievement and one that will go down in history. God knows we need more diversity in this sport.

Yes, this is huge. And, yes, she competed for Russia. I mean, she was born in Russia but as far as I know she only competed in domestic meets in Russia. They never sent her to a World Cup event or even the Grand Prix, so she got fed up and decided to change countries. Her chances for a medal at the World Cup circuit were slim at best, so this is a total surprise.

This is history for Slovenia! Ekaterina Vedeneeva got a medal!

I didn't expect much from him because he lost a lot of steam in the last few years, but it's sad news nonetheless.

I made a mess out of my previous reply, so I'll just make things clear here. Sanne Wevers was 24 when she got her first major medal and 25 when she was Olympic champion. Usually female gymnasts reach their peak from 18 to 20, and very few of them remain a threat for major medals after 23. You have to be a very special kind of gymnast to keep fighting for medals as late as 27 (she was just one month shy of turning 27 when she became European champion). This is incredible. I'm even more impressed after learning that she probably focused on her education first.

Too bad. But I can't say they were wrong. I mean, Sanne Wevers became a world-silver medalist, European champion and Olympic champion. And, quite frankly, she was nobody just three or four years ago. This is the most surprising case I've seen in my life of an older gymnast blossoming very late in her career and winning almost everything. I'm not sure she can still fight for medals, but you never know.

I know this question is kind of off topic, but what happened to the Netherlands? The Dutch group was very active in the late 90s and earsly 00s, and from 1995 to 2007 Deventer hosted one stage of the Grand Prix series. The group even won a bronze medal at the 2000 Grand Prix Final. What happened that rhythmic gymnastics basically vanished from the country?

I'm worried about rhythmic gymnastics now. Peru has a decent shot at a medal in artistic gymnastics on men's vault and a very outside chance on men's floor, so I guess everything will be broadcasted. But in rhythmic gymnastics they have zero chance of a medal, so I hope they don't simply skip most of it.

The lyrics are corny but the rhythm is catchy. I'm baffled the video shows literally two seconds of rhythmic gymnastics and no footage from the trampoline competition at all.