thiago_simoes

The fact that Paseka won the gold medal with the ugliest first vault I have seen in my life speaks a lot about how poor the state of women's artistic gymnastics in Europe is right now. I know it's all about difficulty with her, but her first vault is beyond ugly. It was pathetic.

Is there a streaming or live scores anywhere?

To be honest, I'm somewhat disappointed with the overall level of performance of the girls. Only three gymnasts fighting for medals in the all-around, and none of them scored even remotely close to what I expected. The top 3 all-around scores of the year are: Simone Biles (USA) - 58.800 (Stuttgart World Cup) Rebeca Andrade (BRA) - 56.932 (DTB Pokal) Leanne Wong (USA) - 56.765 (American Cup) Now, Melanie de Jesus dos Santos posted the best score for an European gymnast this year, 55.433, only 0.001 better than Melnikova at the DTB Pokal, but still more than one point behind Wong. And, surprise, Biles is nearly two points ahead of her best rival so far. She will be unbeatable this year once again.

What a historic moment for Cyprus! This is the first medal ever for the nation at the European Championships. It was about time! Most surprising medal since Vladimir Cojoc (Moldova) won a medal at the 2000 Trampoline European Championships.

Of course, because if you ask politely maybe the leaders of the country that invaded your territory could change their minds and return it to you as if nothing happened, right? Look at how Great Britain responded so nicely when asked to return the Falkland Islands to Argentina. I mean, I don't want to be sarcastic, but I cannot help it. This whole situation with Israel and Palestine is insane. I don't support the Hezbollah, but I'm utterly disgusted (and have always been) by Israel and the Zionists, so I don't judge the Palestinians for getting tired of being tortured, killed and expelled from their territory, so they had to choose a radical approach to combat the fascist state that invaded their territory. Nobody wins, of course.

Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Canada and the United States will send groups to the Baku World Cup. Now, this will be very interesting! All of the medal contenders at the upcoming Pan Am Games up against one another.

And this is exactly the reason why, though it is my favorite sport right now, rhythmic gymnastics cannot be taken seriously. We all know this sport is not known for diversity among medalists, but when Russian gymnasts receive scores that should never be awarded to them, this is outrageous. The Code of Points implemented since 2017 increases the dominance of individual gymnasts from powerhouse nations (Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus and, in recent years, Israel). It's like FIG wants the sport never to grow beyond the same old group of nations. It's still Bulgaria and former Soviet nations against the rest of the world, and this is frustrating. In group events, the only real surprises since 2017 were Mexico and Estonia, but surprise: Estonia is still a former Soviet nation. Lithuania has improved a lot in junior events as well, but then again, another former Soviet nation.

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?

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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.