thiago_simoes

The dismount killed Naidin's chances of a gold medal. With half a point more he would have won gold.

Very late turn in the dismount for Naidin. He's happy but this could be costly. At least 0.5 less just in his dismount.

Annnnd Iran got a medal!

Ohhh! Schwed is in third! Iran guaranteed a fourth place, at least. Brionnes hit and it will be interesting to see who will win gold now.

Kitazono also fell. This is going to be interesting.

The Iranian gymnast has amazing speed. Let's see if this is good enough for a medal.

Rough start for the first three gymnasts at the pommel horse final. This might be good for Iran.

And Canada has an Olympic medal in women's artistic gymnastics! Finally! Amazing feat!

Yes. Biles is not human. This is impossible.

It's ridiculous how Villa is much farther ahead than any other gymnast on vault.

The female gymnast from Hungary came with a double twisting Yurchenko out of nowhere. This is such a complex a difficult vault, and she nailed it. Amazing.

Naidin will compete today. He doesn't look injured.

It's funny that media in Honduras was celebrating like crazy the medal he earned in the mixed international team event, and now they're like "Oh, look, another medal". Somebody tell them that this is the moment to get all excited, since this is their first official Olympic medal ever.

Is she going to recover on time for the World Championships? And if I understood correctly, she was injured performing a Silivas (double twisting somersault), right?

I like the team on paper a lot, but Padurariu and Dénomée have not scored very high this year, Moors has not competed in international events in a long time (I can't even remember when) and Olsen's last international showing was over six months ago. If Black is in good shape (and I think she is) there's hope for good results. The problem is that this team is very different from the team that won the CWG. On paper, they are great, though -- based on quality alone, I'd say top 5 at Worlds -- but it's hard to predict how well they will perform.

Reigning world and Olympic champion Eleftherios Petrounias will not compete because of an injury. Poor guy. This improves the chance for Turkey to get a historical medal.

Sorry to reply to the same thing again, but I got curious about the last bit. One of my hobbies is to "study" about the history of gymnastics, and when I looked at the results from the previous World Championships, I eventually discovered that all of the (male) medalists from Yugoslavia were from the region where, nowadays, is Slovenia. But in 1950 Yugoslavia got their only medal with a female gymnast, and she's Tereza Kočiš who was born in Sombor (currently Serbia). Is she well known in Serbia? I mean, is she famous? I've visited some pages from Slovenia and it looks like they treat the medalists from the Yugoslavia era as Slovenians, but no mention about Kočiš, of couse. How is she seen in Serbia?

Well, if it's random, there's not much one can do. It must be frustrating to be paired up with a low level player, but I'd rather have a smaller number of athletes together (2, 3, maybe 4) than a huge number of athletes gathered together in a team. The reason is simple: in events with very large teams, this randomness might work in favor of the least skilled athletes, and this is bad. Really bad. For example, in gymnastics, one gymnast from South Africa got gold with the team, and one gymnast from Ecuador got silver. Both were terrible in the qualifying sessions and only earned medals because some members of the team were truly outstanding. I get it: it's important to share experiences and play together, but in gymnastics one artistic gymnast who finished last in a number of events (the guy from South Africa) eventually got gold because the top 2 rhythmic gymnasts of the competition were on his team. So, yeah, it might be frustrating to be paired up with a not-so-great player, but I hope they evolve and work well together, eventually.

Wait, what? What happened to him? Nice for Serbia to reach a historical final, but what a sad thing to happen with the gymnast. At least he has gotten a medal already.

4-1! Yeeees!!!

Iraq!

Overall, I'm disappointed with the women's competition. Villa is a great gymnast and deserved to win. Morgan had the meet of her life and scored very, very well. Bachynska has potential, but she needs a lot more training. This bronze medal was a huge present thrown on her lap. Tang had two falls, but if she had not fallen twice, she would have outscored Villa. On paper, Tang is the best gymnast of the competition and she will be a nice addition to the Chinese team next year, but she has to execute her routines perfectly to win a medal, and this was not what happened here. About Klimenko... Oh, Lord. Awful vault, two falls... Russia is really behind their glory days, for sure. Slevin did soooo well to finish sixth! Good surprise, if still very inexperienced. But she has natural talent and I hope she improves more and more. Now, I don't want to be mean, but Puiu is probably the last nail in Romania's coffin. She had poor technique, poor execution. I cannot even believe she represents Romania.

And Bachynska just edged out Tang and won the bronze medal. Okay, Tang had two falls, but she was better, in my opinion. Barely.

And Bachynska, in Ukrainian fashion, falls and loses the bronze medal. I'll pretend I'm shocked.

Villa deserves this gold medal more than any other competitor. Morgan had an exceptional day, and she was very consistent, but this was Villa's to lose. Now let's see if Bachynska hits.