thiago_simoes

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?

So, more of the same: Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan and Sweden as the semifinalists. What a surprise. Yay.

An Olympian in 2016, Polish gymnast Katarzyna Jurkowska-Kowalska retired. Her biggest achievement was earning a gold medal on beam at the 2016 Cottbus World Cup. She is also the originator of a skill on floor.

I am somewhat bewildered about the existence of the Aurora Games Festival. Apparently, this will be a women-only competition with a whooping six-sport program (including two winter sports). The only reason why I'm slightly interested is because gymnastics is part of the program (though no discipline has been mentioned as of yet, even though I'm 99% sure it will be artistic gymnastics). My question is: does the world need a competition like this? Tennis, ice skating and artistic gymnastics are sports in which women are as successful and well-known as the men. Why even add these sports to the program? I don't get it at all. http://auroragamesfestival.com/

Bestmen, I get it that you live in a country with no freedom of religion and very little freedom concerning how one lives one's life. I live in a country where I am free to practice any (or no) religion, where I can marry anybody (man or woman), where women are free to choose who they marry and where they can choose to work and have a career. When I go out in the morning, I see the streets brimming with multiracial people, and people live their lives to the fullest the best way they can. When one is able to see how beautiful diversity is, it is hard to go back to a miserable life where you have no freedom and where everyone is controlled by a greater force, may it be religion, or the state, or both. After this, you can never look back to a despicable life where everyone is the same and where you look in the mirror and see that you are just one more. Maybe this is why you spend so much time on this forum. For this reason, I do not wish you get banned anymore; I wish you stay here and contemplate diversity. There is always room for everyone.

Only 8 teams for each gender? It looks weird to see Cuba and Mexico with both men's and women's teams, but not Uruguay.

Preview: 2019 will be the year when China will try hard to regain the top spot in important competitions. 2018 was an important year for Canada, Russia, Belarus and Portugal, and these nations should keep strong in 2018. For the first time ever we will have double mini trampoline events at the World Cup circuit, so it's good news for smaller nations like Sweden, Argentina, South Africa and Spain. Mexico and New Zealand could be the nations that will surprise us this year.

Preview: 2019 can be a very important year for rhythmic gymnastics. In 2018, countries like France, Finland and especially Estonia and Mexico showed that there's a new era in rhythmic gymnastics where non-powerhouse nations can finally achieve success with the open ended code of points introduced last year. These nations should keep momentum in 2019 and we might see some interesting results at the World Championships. Still, Russia, Italy, Bulgaria and Israel are the nations to watch, with Belarus, Japan and Ukraine trying hard to keep in the mix for important medals. Slovenia can realistically snatch a medal at the World Cup/World Challenge Cup circuit for the first time ever, and nations like China, Canada, the United States, Brazil, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Spain will also try hard to snatch medals in important meets. Greece and Cyprus are big question marks: there's hope for improvement in their programs, but it's not going to be easy to earn medals in important events since the rest of the world keeps improving more and more. The European Games, Pan American Games, Universiade, Asian Championships, Grand Prix and World Cup circuit should offer enough excitement before the World Championships. Could this be the year for smaller nations to shine? We shall see.

Preview: 2019 is supposed to be a great year for artistic gymnastics. In 2018, a bigger number of nations showed they are in the mix for a medal at the 2020 Olympic Games, including some surprising countries like the Philippines, Ireland and Chinese Taipei. This year, the World Cup circuit will be interesting to watch because it will give out quotas for the 2020 Olympics; please note that only World Cup stages will offer quotas, not World Challenge Cup stages. Italy is the country which should benefit the most with new gymnasts this year, and France, Germany, Brazil and Canada will work hard to keep momentum after improving in 2018. Romania might surprise on the women's side, though they will still probably have a hard time qualifying a full team for the 2020 Olympics at the World Championships. South Korea, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan might finally achieve some success again this year if everything goes right. USA, Russia, China and Japan should have no problems to be on the top. Ukraine is a big question mark: after a bad year in 2018, they might struggle again in 2019, though their women's team should improve considerably. The Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, Australia and Cyprus are also nations to keep an eye on.

What do you guys usually eat and drink during Christmas and end of the year celebrations? In Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro, we are influenced by Portuguese traditions, so we eat rabanada (sliced bread dipped in milk, scrambled eggs, then deep fried and covered with sugar and cinnamon) and bacalhoada (salted cod served with boiled eggs, tomatoes, olives and potatoes). We also eat panettone (sweet bread loaf with fruits, or in some cases chocolate chips) and some families prepare rice, farofa (cassava flour mixture), roasted turkey and, my favorite, salpicão (salad mix with chicken meat, ham, mayo and shoestring potatoes). There's always some debate about adding raisins to salpicão, and it can cause fights and spoil the celebrations, lol. By the way, I'm always on the "NO RAISINS" side. There's also a very infamous sweet, pavê (a sort of pie made of ladyfingers/sweet crackers and a mix of heavy cream and condensed milk, usually covered with chocolate or strawberries). The name pavê sounds like the expression "pra ver" (to see, look), and the biggest dad joke in Brazil is when someone asks "Can we eat it or just look at it?". Here are some pictures for those who are interested.

You can't really compare our "less than optimal" teams in the past with this absolute train wreck of a team, really. The fact is that they got lucky at the Worlds and, as we say in Brazil, lightning does not strike twice on the same spot, so we should just ignore their dim chances for 2020 unless a miracle happens.

Now I'm curious. I've always thought that one of the reasons the IOC keeps badminton at the Olympics is because it's one of the few medal chances for Indonesia (besides weightlifting) so I thought badminton was THE sport to follow in the country. How come Indonesians enjoy football? Are you talking about national leagues or national teams?

Because you can't seriously consider that horrible men's team as the second best in the world, really.

Both teams finished fourth at the World League.

Male sportsman of the year: Carlos Yulo (artistic gymnastics) Female sportsman of the year: Simone Biles (artistic gymnastics) Team of the year: Croatia men's football team Junior sportsman of the year (under 20 years old at 1/1/2018): Takeru Kitazono (artistic gymnastics) Junior sportswoman of the year (under 20 years old at 1/1/2018): Giorgia Villa (artistic gymnastics) Greatest moment of the year: Hugo Calderano beating Fan Zhendong at the ITTF Grand Tour Finals (table tennis) Biggest idiot of the year: tie between Neymar and Kylian Mbappé (football)

As a Brazilian, it was an good year. First, I always follow closely results of the "big three" sports (athletics, swimming and gymnastics) because together they award a huge number of medals at the Olympics. In 2018 Brazil got medals in each of the World Championships for the big three, something that doesn't happen very often -- this only happened before in 2011 and 2014; at the Olympics this happened in 2016; at the Youth Olympics, in 2014 and 2018. I'm aware that indoor athletics and short course swimming are hardly comparable to the "true" Olympic events, but there's no other basis for comparison this year, so we have to go with what we have. This year, summing the results of the WCh for the big three, we had 10 medals overall, 7 of which were in Olympic events. In 2014 we had 13 medals overall, 7 of which were earned in Olympic events, and at the 2016 Olympics we had 5 medals in all these sports. I hope we can keep consistency and earn 5 or more medals at the 2020 Olympics in athletics, swimming and gymnastics. Moving on to other results, for the first time ever we had a world champion in slalom canoeing -- not in an Olympic event, though. Also, it was only the second time we had a world champion in a UCI event, but not in an Olympic event as well. At least we got a medal at an Olympic event at the UCI Championships, and the medal was won in a very Steven Bradbury way, so it was quite funny (video below, race starts at 2:38). Our other big sports, volleyball and judo, were very disappointing. Indoor volleyball teams finished fourth, and Judo only brought one medal at the World Championships (and the judoka retired after the event), so we might be in trouble for 2020. The best moment of the year was Hugo Calderano defearing Fan Zhendong in table tennis. I hope he blossoms nicely next year. He deserves a medal at the World Championships. And that's it. Not a terrible year, but also not a spectacular one. It was good, overall.

Wow, I'm surprised you like it. I hate churrasco, barbecue or meat in general. Not a vegetarian, but I avoid eating meat as much as I can. And pleeeease don't invite me to a barbecue. Ever. And I hate bacon as well (yes, I'm a weird guy). I'm in for the baked potatoes and salad, though, and now I'm curious about how bell pepper soup tastes like. Edit: I was going to ask if you've had sopa de ervilha (pea soup). I thought it was a typical Brazilian dish, but according to Wikipedia it is actually a typical Dutch dish! Color me surprised! You guys have very good taste. One of the few times I eat bacon is when it is added to pea soup (and the sliced sausages that go with it are delicious as well).

And there was also an acrobat gymnast from Ukraine who was found cheating, Anastasiya Melnychenko. Quite an extensive list, now that I can see it.