thiago_simoes

It was not so bad! 36.399 is more than Ukraine achieved on the uneven bars, so this is enough reason to celebrate! 153.763 in total is a very, very nice sum! No falls! This is a huge step towards rebuilding the team and I'm impressed and proud of Romania! Yes, time to celebrate!

Oh. For a moment I forgot about the uneven bars. But let's hope for at least three scores around 12 across the board.

China's floor performances are not quite what is expected for a team on their level. Decent scores, but not decent enough for a team that is supposed to earn a medal. What a shame.

Romania is surprisingly holding up! Ahead of South Korea and Australia midway through this subdivision! YES! Go, Romania!

But she's never been that good on the uneven bars, at least not enough to challenge for a medal at the World Championships. And now she's 0.2 behind the clear front runner for the title. Insane.

Germany is the biggest surprise thus far, scoring 161 and placing third ahead of the Netherlands and Belgium. With China, France, Brazil, Canada, Great Britain and Russia to go, they are not safe for a team final, but I'd say they are pretty damn close. Italy has an outside chance to make team finals, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Scoring over 161 is not easy for Italy, but who knows? Romania unfortunately has no chance at all. I don't want to be pessimistic, but with the great scores teams like Australia and Argentina achieved, even placing in the top 20 would be a good result for Romania.

Biles and Hurd with the top scores for the USA on the uneven bars was not expected at all. In fact, Biles with the second best score in this competition on the uneven bars, only behind Belgium's Derwael, is absolutely CRAZY.

Swimming in 2014. Check it off too.

I usually perform bad in these kind of contests, so don't get your hopes up. I bet on Saraiva for a medal on the balance beam. I'm kind of delusional.

Nooooo! She was going to nominate a vault never performed before. Nooooooo...

The start list for the first day of women's qualification is out. A meager 14 gymnasts will try to reach vault finals on the first day, only 6 of which have real chances of making the final. I'm not sure how many will try to reach the finals on the second day, but I believe this could be the weakest women's vault final in years, with Biles easily winning gold even with two falls. Real chances of medals to South Korea (it would be their first ever with the women), Canada and Uzbekistan. Probably Russia too, if their gymnasts survive (podium training was dangerous and scary, but the difficulty is there). The men's vault final, on the other hand, will be the most exciting in a long time. Virtually anyone can walk away with a medal.

Nailed it.

With all due respect, Hungary is a mostly conservative nation with some of the worst politicians in the world. Journalism there is seriously flawed as well, with very questionable news sources and decidedly anti-immigration sentiment fueled by yellow journalism. It's surprising that immigrants even consider going to a place like this. I imagine how desperate these people need to be in order to even consider living there. I would never. I've been going through more than enough shit in Brazil already, thank you.

Brazil scored 243 at the Pan Ams, but we had to count an abysmal score of 9.600 on the pommel horse, what is next to impossible to happen here, and Zanetti didn't compete there. The problem is that we'll rely on Arthur Nory on many events, and this is his first big competition since the 2016 Olympics, so I'm not sure about how he will react. I'd say it would be great for us to score around 246 here.

So, Petrounias did compete and scored 15.266 on rings, 0.4 better than the former leader. Easy gold medal for him and a total surprise for me that he even showed up.

He's currently in sixth place with Zanetti, Molinari, Dang Nam, Ng Kiu Chung and all of the Chinese gymnasts still to go. It will be really hard for him to make it.

Japan five points behind Russia, Uchimora not in all-around finals, Shirai in second place on floor, Armenia with real chances on rings and vault, Turkey probably not earning any medals, Ireland completely blew their chances, Larduet with abysmal scores and not making any finals, Chinese Taipei missing both pommel horse and rings final... It's 7:30 AM in Brazil but I need a cold beer right now.

Jesus Christ, what the hell happened? Çolak and Rhys will not make the finals? I'm in utter shock!

Pommel horse was a complete disaster. The performances on the other apparatus ranged from average to good. 8th place as a team is a nice result. There's hope for Cournoyer to qualify to the all-around final, and I don't think the team set other goals besides an eventual all-around final (and placing in the top 24 as a team, which has been achieved already).

https://live.fig-gymnastics.com/news.php?idevent=13335

Rings and pommel horse are the easiest apparatus to predict the medalists, in my opinion. Three gymnasts in the world are ahead of the pack in each apparatus, so there's a big chance they will be the medalists: Rhys, Whitlock and Chih-kai on the pommel horse, Zanetti, Çolak and Radivilov on rings. Of course there's always a Chinese or a Japanese who could come in and spoil our party, though.

This is the point. It's okay to send specialists, but when specialists like Ude and Seligman score so low on pommel horse, you have to wonder how unlucky the team is.

You realize outdoor winter sports cannot be played at all in tropical nations, still there's a whole Olympic event around them, don't you? As absurd as it may seem for some people, it kind of makes sense to me to have indoor Olympics and outdoor Olympics. Ice skating needs an indoor facility built only for the purpose of competing this sport. It's not like you can go outside to a frozen lake and expect people to compete at the Olympics there. Now we have even snow volleyball, ffs! Winter sports get weirder and weirder to me, and if we have beach volleyball in summer and snow volleyball in winter, where does indoor volleyball fit?

Team Netherlands ahead of Switzerland is a massive shock. And Croatia had probably their worst meet ever.