thiago_simoes

I'm completely disgusted with Israel. But, I mean, should I be surprised? What can you expect from them other than supporting a fascist leader again?

So, it looks like Dina Averina had a knot in her ribbon throughout her routine. According to FIG's guidelines, she should have been evaluated only through her throws and risks, what would severely limit her score to something around 12 or 13, instead of over 20 points. Let's see how FIG will handle the situation. The right thing to do would be promoting Taseva to gold, Harnasko to silver and Pazhava to bronze.

I have no idea how she is performing right now. Maybe she will lose some of her prestige after the doping sanction, I guess. Either way, in the all around, Griskenas and Uchida (Canada) outscored Feinberg in Pesaro, and both Mizuno and Gaudio (Brazil) came close. If Zeng is not up to the task, Griskenas and Generalova could easily win gold and silver without major mistakes at the Pan Ams. Add the Mexican gymnasts to the mix and we'll have a very interesting competition.

I wouldn't be surprised if FIG decides to remove trampoline from the Olympic program and replace it with Parkour. This is not gymnastics. FIG should be ashamed.

Pazhava in second warms my heart a little. She has a real chance of a medal, because I can only see both Averinas outscoring her if she doesn't have any serious mistake. The last time she won a World Cup medal was in 2016.

What the hell happened with Argentina? Their gymnasts scored 11 or 12 until last year, but now they have a gymnast scoring 17.9 on hoop and 68.650 in the all-around. This is absolutely insane! She is going to medal in every single event at the Pan Am Games if she repeats this performance! @konig, do you know where Sol Fainberg trains?

Yes. Jamaica qualified three girls, and she's by far the best in the team. She didn't have much success when she represented Great Britain, but I hope she still has some juice left to represent Jamaica for a couple more years.

So, we're doomed, and it's all basically thanks to the scumbag that was elected as the president.

I know that she's just having fun, but some elements are quite difficult. I like it a lot.

Time to revive this thread. Malawi won a bronze medal at the 2016 Fast5 Netball World Series. Not a gold medal, I know, and not quite the World Championships, but a huge achievement for Malawi nonetheless.

Why are the SEA Games staged every two years? It looks weird to me that the Olympic council of Asia allows this competition to be staged every two years.

Surprising result for Lithuania at the Corbeil-Essonnes tournament in France. Brigita Budginas won a bronze medal on ribbon ahead of gymnasts from USA, Belarus, Russia, France, and Italy.

We had two World Cup events this weekend, Doha (apparatus) and Birmingham (all-around).

Very nice and unexpected result for Thais Fidelis at the Birmingham World Cup. It's the first time a Brazilian gymnast earns a medal in the all-around at the World Cup.

What about Western Sahara?

Rank Flag #1 #2 #3 #4 #5

About gymnastics commentators, I have to say that my favorite Brazilian commentator is Andrea João. She is a former gymnast who never had much success, but as a commentator she is a standout. Her personality is over the top and she often makes funny remarks (sometimes unintentionally) that crack me up. Her one liners when gymnasts fail sound hilarious for us: "the witch broke loose" (something only old people would say), "he/she was not happy" (with a strong accent typical from people from Rio de Janeiro), "he/she is very bad" (very unorthodox for commentators in Brazil to speak their minds like this). She fits the "it's so bad it's good" category very well, and by now (she's been commenting for more than 15 years) we're all used to her style and craziness. Pure gold. Oh, and once she was asked to comment after an emotional piece of video recounting the hardships faced by canoeist Izaquias Queiroz. He was very poor and he lived in a stilt house over a swamp, or something like this, and the video was very touching. When Andrea João was asked to comment, she missed the mark completely: she smiled to the camera and said "Oh, he's a canoeist, so it is so good for him that he lived up there. He had plenty of space to train." The news anchor by her side was extremely embarrassed and she kept smiling like a crazy person afterward. Hilarious.

Nope. I've never watched a biathlon event in my life, and I don't know who this commentator is. But since no one knows what biathlon is in Brazil, I believe they would choose their worst commentator to do the job and still no one would notice.

I almost forgot: Carlos Yulo made history for the Philippines by earning a gold medal at the World Cup series for the first time ever.

Nope. Extra gymnasts will not be considered part of the team and cannot take part in the team competition.

I believe he has to win gold at the World Championships to qualify or become the best all-arounder in Netherlands and place high enough to qualify (around 40th place among all competitors, I believe, will be enough) or win the most points at the World Cup circuit in one apparatus or the Netherlands must place on the podium in the all-around at the 2020 European Championships. The message is clear: if you want to go to the Olympics, you either have to be the best of the best in one apparatus, or at least be a decent all-arounder. Zonderland is definitely not an all-arounder, so he has to be the best either at the World Cup or at the World Championships. I'm not too happy with this either, but I believe this issue should not be pegged on FIG because it was a choice of the Dutch program not to prepare him to be an all-arounder, despite all the signs in the last 15 years pointing out to FIG favoring all-arounders over specialists. Besides, the Olympic quotas favor the best and most complete programs, not the best gymnast in one apparatus. Yes, not many people like it, but programs affected by this have their coaches to blame as much as they want to blame FIG. About gymnasts not competing at Worlds, yes, this is true. Gymnasts from nations that hope to qualify a full team deliberately skipped the World Championships because if you compete at Worlds, you can only qualify for the Olympics if your team qualifies, or if you are the best all-arounder in your nation. Gymnasts who did not compete at the World Championships can compete at World Cup events and try to qualify as the best athlete in one apparatus, so even if the nation has qualified a team, up to two extra gymnasts can qualify at the World Cup. I can see only China, Japan, Russia and the US benefiting from this, actually. Yes, this is stupid and unnecessary.

Well, if the US send their second rate team in women's artistic gymnastics, I wonder how much Canada and Brazil could benefit from it in 2019. I mean, no country in the world can stop the A-Team from the US, but the B-Team? There's a chance. A small chance, but a chance nevertheless.

The first big event of the year, the Moscow Grand Prix, is over. To no one's surprise, Russian gymnasts dominated the individual competition, winning gold and silver in everything (and bronze in the all-around). The bronze medalists were fortunately from a wide range of nations: Japan, Bulgaria, Belarus and Georgia. Ukrainian and Italian gymnasts were not present, but at least it is very exciting to see Salome Pazhava of Georgia (my favorite gymnast) presenting competitive performances (and earning a medal!) after so many injuries. The group competition had weird results. On the first day, Russia received unbelievably high scores for a couple of half-baked routines with lots of tiny mistakes. Uzbekistan surprisingly won a bronze medal. This is probably the first time the country won a medal in a group competition with some of the best groups on the planet present. Very surprising. On the second day Japan killed it and earned two gold medals, and Russia finally received lower scores for the hot messes they showed (but still got two bronze medals, ugh). Israel won two silver medals.

Thank you! I hope you guys had a great holiday. As a bonus note, Valentine's Day in Brazil is not celebrated today. It is celebrated on June 12.

How come he's not banned for life after doing it? I know ice hockey is famous for brawls, but are these even allowed?