thiago_simoes

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.

Well, in 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2013 Bulgaria was not all that hot. No medals at the 2008 Olympics or at the 2008 World Cup Final, no medals at the 2009 and 2013 World Championships, no medals at the 2012 Olympics. This might have been a sad moment for Bulgarians, but the group came back stronger in 2016 after not winning medals in gymnastics in 2008 and 2012. It's important to break traditions because when countries like Bulgaria don't win medals that they were expected to win, they work hard to remain relevant. Look at what happened to Spain: they spent 20 years without an Olympic medal and they finally got one again in 2016. They never quit, never gave up. Italy has also worked hard and this year the routines are much better than they were in the period from 2013 to 2016. No medal in 2016, but I just can't see Italy not winning a medal in 2020. It's important to break traditions. Other nations joined the top ranks and contributed to a major shift in balance in this sport: Israel has had many big results since 2009, Japan has had huge success since 2015. The world will not stop if smaller nations start winning medals. A good example is the World Cup: when you have countries like Estonia, Switzerland or Brazil winning medals at the World Cup series, this attracts more attention to the sport in these nations. Of course this has only happened once for each of these countries, but the fact that it did happen is amazing, since these are "exotic" nations in a sport that has always been dominated by the same old countries.

Wow, this is mindblowing. Thanks for reminding me of this post. I'm sad that we saw another case of doping, but it would be incredible for this sport in Brazil if Fernando got a medal.

Nikolchenko had a knot in the ribbon during her routine and received a score of 11.700. Dina Averina had the exact same problem last week and she received a score of over 20 points. Now, we know that they applied the correct deductions for Nikolchenko's routine, but my question is why the hell Dina did not have the decency to admit the judges made a mistake with her routine and gave back the gold medal she received last week? It's good that the judges FINALLY got this deduction right, but Dina should not sit with a gold medal for a routine that deserved to finish last place.

The girls had a mistake in the 5 balls routine, but the scores would still have been lower than the US's scores even if they had hit the routine. But of course it's still too early to say. The US had a fantastic first half last year, but their group did not earn any gold medals at the Pan Am Championships. It's all about timing, so the US might be a little bit too far ahead now, but who knows what will happen when Mexico, Brazil and Canada peak?

Oh, this is and old peeve of mine. I don't like her antiquate mind and the way she treats the gymnasts, but this could be a problem with Russian coaches in general, especially very old Russian coaches. Again: I'm cautiously optimistic, but with Rebeca you never know. She is the unluckiest gymnast I've seen. She always gets injured right before Worlds. I hope she can keep her level of performance and stay healthy this year. I've heard rumors of a Cheng and an Amanar for her, but I really doubt this is part of the plan this year. Maybe in 2020.

So, Mexico scored 16.600 (5 balls), 17.200 (3 hoops and 2 pais of clubs) for 33.900 total all-around score with their group. Not terrible scores, but not exactly good scores too. The US scored 20.650 and 18.750 (39.400 in total). Now let's see what Canada and Brazil can do.

I understand why you support Yamilet Peña. I also cheered for her and I always cheer for India and even Iran (even though I have a million reasons to dislike their government) whenever gymnasts from these nations compete. But Paseka comes from Russia, which in my opinion is THE place for gymnastics in the world, and she's clearly a favorite of Rodionenko, so I'm not really impressed when she throws huge difficulty (and when she's forgiven by Rodionenko when she doesn't perform too well). I know nothing about her story, though. Now, we have a long way until the World Championships but I really hope gymnasts start throwing more difficult vaults, or else Paseka is going to get away with poor execution every single time she performs the Cheng. As far as I know, Andrade is not training a second vault and she probably will not upgrade her first vault to an Amanar this year. I hope I'm proven wrong, though, but I'm hopeless for anything but an all-around medal for her (and, even so, not that hopeful, lol).

I got it. All I wanted to say is that I'm not emotionally invested in her story and she does not impress me, even though she goes for high difficulty when nobody else is really messing with huge D vaults. Even so, compared to what the other girls presented, Paseka's first vault should not have scored so high. My rant is more about how biased judges allow this to happen and how the code of points is so bad when it comes to scoring vaults that an atrocity like this could be seen as passable and everybody just kind of played along. Same thing with Chusovitina winning the European vault title in 2008 after counting a fall. Terrible. We should not allow things like this to happen.

There's a difference between "it's fair" and "she can get away with this vault only because she's Russian". With all due respect, when she vaults, I don't care about whether she almost died or not. She should be judged on what she presents, and what she did present was something pathetic that should never EVER have received 8.5 in execution. This is everything but fair.