thiago_simoes

What the hell! I didn't know Swaziland is now Eswatini!

It's so nice that a gymnast carried the flag of Canada!

EDIT: I'll write about my impressions once the ceremony is over. I spoke... wrote too soon.

Podium training in gymnastics is underway and I'm even more disappointed with the female athlete from Brazil than I've been before. I expected a less than stellar performance, but speaking about stars, she's as close to being one as Icarus is close to planet Earth (hint: it's the most distant star from Earth).

I'm still amazed they qualified a gymnast! Even semi-decent nations in this sport with good results in recent women's artistic gymnastics competitions like Kazakhstan, India, Chinese Taipei and Indonesia failed to qualify a girl for the YOG.

Well, he did win a medal at the World Championships, so the guy deserves some credit. Still, I have to say I laughed hard at your post.

Jesus Christ, you got to be kidding me...

Brazil Vinicius Lanza: 100m, 200m medley, 200m butterfly Caio Pumputis: 100m, 200m medley, 200m breast Luiz Altamir Melo: 200m butterfly e 200m freestyle Etiene Medeiros: 50m back Guilherme Guido: 50m, 100m back Felipe Lima: 50m breast Larissa Oliveira: 100m freestyle Nicholas Santos: 50m butterfly Breno Correia: 200m freestyle Cesar Cielo: 50m freestyle Matheus Santana: 50m freestyle João Gomes Júnior: 100m breast Guilherme Basseto: 100m back Manuella Lyrio: 200m freestyle Fernando Scheffer: 400m freestyle Daiene Dias: 100m butterfly Guilherme Costa: 1500m freestyle Marcelo Chierighini: 100m freestyle Leonardo Santos: 400m medley Brandonn Almeida: 400m medley

I have to say it's a bad thing for these nations to compete together in men's artistic gymnastics. I'll try to explain in detail. First, The 2012 Olympic vault champion is from South Korea, the 2016 Olympic vault champion is from North Korea. These gymnasts work great as individuals, but they could never compete together in the same team. At the 2020 Olympics, teams will be composed of four gymnasts, and these gymnasts have to perform 18 routines during the qualification stage: 2 gymnasts will perform 6 routines, and 2 other gymnasts will need to perform on three apparatus each. Vault specialists perform usually on one apparatus: vault (or maybe two, vault and floor) and it's virtually impossible for a team to have two vault specialists if they only perform on vault (or vault and floor). Second: there's a chance we can have one gymnast from and two gymnasts from competing in vault finals at the 2019 World Championships. I'd say there's a 10% chance for this to happen, but 10% still beats zero. However, If they compete in the same team, only 2 gymnasts per nation can advance to the finals, so one of them will have to sit out, which is bad for these nations. Third: has a real chance to qualify 4 gymnasts in a team and 1 gymnast as a specialist, and has the chance to qualify 1 gymnast as a specialist. The thing is: both and could qualify 1 gymnast each as a specialist, but if they join forces, they would only be able to qualify 1 specialist (I mean, there's still, technically, a chance for them to qualify 2 specialists, but this would be a lot harder if they work together instead of competing separately). It would slightly make a difference in women's artistic gymnastics, though. If North and South Korea join forces, they could realistically try to qualify a full women's team since major nations like Romania and Germany are struggling with their women's programs and will have trouble qualifying a full team for the 2020 Olympics. The problem for Korea is that there are many programs on the rise, especially Brazil, France, the Netherlands and Argentina.

Hamza Hossaini from earned the bronze medal on vault at the Paris World Challenge Cup. This is Morocco's first medal at an official FIG event. Morocco now joins Algeria, Egypt, South Africa and Tunisia as the only African nations to win a medal at the FIG World Cup.

Third world medal for Ana Sátila, and now a golden one! It's incredible how 5 years ago virtually no one in Brazil knew that canoeing was even a sport, and now we have 14 medals at the world championships and three Olympic medals when we count both sprint and slalom events.

Thank you Poland for winning gold and denying this awful Brazilian team that supports a misogynistic, racist and homophobic presidential candidate the world title. #EleNão

The Pan American Championships are underway. Yesterday, three sets of medals were awarded. finished 1-2-3 in the team event. Canada had the bronze medal in the bag, but disappointing routines with the ribbon killed their chances. This is pretty much what happened last year: stellar routines with hoop, ball and clubs, and then a total meltdown with the ribbon. It must be frustrating for Canadian gymnasts. Laura Zeng (USA), Marina Malpica (MEX) and Natália Gaudio (BRA) were the medalists in the all-around competition. In the group all-around event, took gold with a spectacular routine in 5 hoops (19.800) and a great routine with balls and ropes (18.400). had two great performances (19.000 and 18.400) and took silver. had a spectacular routine in 5 hoops (19.800) and a not quite spectacular routine with balls and ropes (16.500), earning the bronze medal. Today we'll have event finals.

As far as I know, nations that finished 1-6 in the team event qualify 2 gymnasts, and the 4 best gymnasts from non-qualified nations in the individual all-around event qualify as an individual (1 per nation). The host nation, according to the Spanish version of the official qualification document, will receive additional quotas (in the plural) if not qualified otherwise, so I'm pretty sure they qualified at least one individual gymnast, but I'm still not sure whether the plural means that they qualified a full group or they can qualify a second individual gymnast.

In rhythmic gymnastics, qualified nations are: Individual: (2) (2) (2) (2) (2) (2) (1) (1) (1) (1) Groups: and three other groups (complete results are nowhere to be found at the moment). I believe will also receive one quota in individual and maybe one for the group event as well.

I'm so sorry. I'm sure he/she had a good life with you and your family.

[hide] Third Round September 26th - September 28th, 2018 6 Nations, 2 Groups, the 1st and 2nd Nations from each Group will qualify for Semifinals Group I Date & Time (GMT +2) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 September 26th 2018, h. 17:00 Brazil 3 1 Russia September 27th 2018, h. 17:00 United States 2 3 Russia September 28th 2018, h. 17:00 Brazil 2 3 United States Group J Date & Time (GMT +2) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 September 26th 2018, h. 21:15 Italy 1 3 Serbia September 27th 2018, h. 20:30 Poland 2 3 Serbia September 28th 2018, h. 21:15 Italy 1 3 Poland [/hide]

This is exactly my point. I'm always confused when people consider that surnames are more important than living everyday in the country. In my opinion, blood ties mean nothing if you don't care about the history of a given nation, or if you don't even live there. Here where I live many Haitians have arrived in the last few years. To put it simply, they are considered foreigners even though they live here everyday (i.e, Brazilians believe that someday they will "go away", which I find quite unsettling because I see them the same way I see other Brazilian people and they should not just go away). The thing is: even though they are seen by most people as foreigners, their kids are indeed Brazilians, and I wonder what will happen in 20 years, when these kids will be old enough to challenge for medals at the Olympics or at the World Championships.

There are two thoughts I'd like to share about this opinion: 1) Having an Italian surname doesn't really make anyone related to the culture and traditions of Italy, at least not if they simply don't care about it; 2) Of course I understand you can only speak for yourself (i.e., you consider how Italian people see people from other parts of the world with an Italian surname), but I can't help but wonder about how those people with Italian surnames feel about their origins. I will try to summarize these points with my own story here: I have three surnames -- one from Spanish origins, one from Portuguese origins and one "generic" surname I was told was given by the church in the 1600s-1700s to people who were poor and did not know about their origins. So, I know that my father's family comes from Europe (Spain and Portugal) but my mother's surname indicates nothing about her family's origin. When I was a child, I was told stories of one of my great-grandmothers being Dutch and another one being a native Brazilian (indigenous) person. One of my great-grandfathers was a black man, I'm sure, since I'm a mixed-race person with dark skin, so I have African origins too. Now, I had absolutely no contact with Spanish and Portuguese customs, and even if I have European surnames, I don't care in the slightest about Spanish/Portuguese culture. I know my example is about Spain and Portugal, but there are many examples in Brazil about people with Italian surnames -- so, it's funny to see that there are still people in Italy who care about surnames and whatnot, since in Brazil most of us couldn't care less, to be honest. Of course there are people who try to find about their origins so they can try to earn an European passport and live in Europe, but we're talking about 1-2% of the people who have European surnames really caring about their origins here.

[hide] Second Round September 21st - September 23rd, 2018 16 Nations, 4 Groups, the 1st Nation from each Group and 2 best 2nd placed Nations between all Groups will qualify for the Third Round Group E Date & Time (GMT +2) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 September 21st 2018, h. 17:00 Netherlands 2 3 Russia September 21st 2018, h. 21:15 Italy 3 1 Finland September 22nd 2018, h. 17:00 Netherlands 3 0 Finland September 22nd 2018, h. 21:15 Russia 3 2 Italy September 23rd 2018, h. 17:00 Russia 3 0 Finland September 23rd 2018, h. 21:15 Italy 3 2 Netherlands Group F Date & Time (GMT +2) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 September 21st 2018, h. 17:00 Brazil 3 1 Australia September 21st 2018, h. 20:30 Belgium 1 3 Slovenia September 22nd 2018, h. 17:00 Australia 2 3 Belgium September 22nd 2018, h. 20:30 Slovenia 2 3 Brazil September 23rd 2018, h. 17:00 Slovenia 3 2 Australia September 23rd 2018, h. 20:30 Belgium 1 3 Brazil Group G Date & Time (GMT +3) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 September 21st 2018, h. 17:00 United States 3 1 Canada September 21st 2018, h. 20:40 Bulgaria 2 3 Iran September 22nd 2018, h. 17:00 Iran 3 0 Canada September 22nd 2018, h. 20:40 Bulgaria 1 3 United States September 23rd 2018, h. 17:00 United States 3 2 Iran September 23rd 2018, h. 20:40 Bulgaria 3 1 Canada Group H Date & Time (GMT +3) Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 September 21st 2018, h. 17:00 Serbia 2 3 France September 21st 2018, h. 20:40 Poland 3 0 Argentina September 22nd 2018, h. 17:00 Serbia 3 1 Argentina September 22nd 2018, h. 20:40 Poland 3 2 France September 23rd 2018, h. 17:00 France 3 1 Argentina September 23rd 2018, h. 20:40 Poland 2 3 Serbia [/hide]

As expected, the US dominated the women's team final, even with a B team. The real surprise was Brazil posting a big score. We were just a couple of tenths below the score Russia achieved at the European Championships, and that means we might even challenge for a medal at Worlds (one can dream, I guess). Mexico got bronze, but we didn't get to see how the girls performed because the broadcast mostly showed Brazil and the US. Overall, i'm very pleased with the results. This might very well have been the best ever performance by a Brazilian team in international competition. Not even our 5th place at the 2007 Worlds or our 1st place at the 2016 Olympics Test Event had such brilliant performances. I'm also surprised because we had live streaming during the whole meet. This happened in 2014, but in 2016 and 2017 there was virtually no coverage at all of the Pan American Championships, so I was a little worried that we would not get to see the performances. I'm hopeful for full coverage at the Pan American Games now.

The men's team final was surprising. The US youngsters won gold with solid routines, and no one expected that because this was the C team from the United States. For them to walk away with the gold medal ahead of the solid team from Cuba and the experienced team from Colombia was a big upset. Speaking of which, Colombia moved from sixth place from qualifications to the silver medal position. Brazil won bronze even after a disastrous rotation on pommel horse. I expected bad results on this apparatus, but not THIS bad. Lucas Bittencourt scored 9.6 (this is pretty much like receiving an F in gymnastics) and another Brazilian gymnast fell from the apparatus. All of the other routines were rock solid, which is good for us, but they need to improve their scores on the pommel horse as soon as possible. Cuba had a very disappointing finish, placing fourth, after placing first in qualifications. They had to count fall and a big hop in their last routine, and that made them lose the bronze medal by 0.134. Poor guys.

Out of curiosity, I decided to research about when nations got medals at the World Championships for the first time and these are the results: 1963: and Soviet Union 1965: Czechoslovakia 1967: East Germany 1971: 1973: 1975: and West Germany 1987: 1992: 1997: 1999: 2007: 2011: 2014: In comparison, the World Cup series shows a lot more variety, especially in recent years. This is the timeline showing when nations earned medals for the first time at the World Cup: 1983: and Soviet Union 1986: 1990: 2000: 2002: 2004: 2006: 2008: 2009: 2010: 2011: 2012: 2013: 2015: 2016: 2018:

I'm somewhat torn about what to think about the World Championships. In a way, we had a big number of surprises and it made the sport feel a little bit exciting again, but when we look at the list of nations that earned medals, nothing is new under the sun. I really thought Estonia had a chance of getting a medal, or maybe even France, China or Finland on a very crazy day. But nope. All of the unexpected things that happened here only favored the same old nations. Nice to see Belarus getting a medal, nice to see Ukraine showing they are not dead, nice to see Japan getting a medal for the third WCh in a row, nice to see Bulgaria and Italy with gold, nice to see Italy also with a team medal and two individual medals... But these are all traditional nations in this sport, and when only athletes from traditional nations achieve medal results, even though these results were not really expected, I feel like the sport is not actually moving forward as it should. Oh, well. As a final note: HUGE kudos to Mexico for finishing 9th in the group all-around and 9th on the mixed apparatus routine. This is the best result of a Latin American nation since 2002. Congratulations to the medalists and let's hope for more surprises next year.

Colombia not qualifying a team is the biggest shock of the competition so far. Kind of a bad day for Brazil, despite Flávia being amazing on beam and floor, and the team finishing second. Canada seemed to be underscored, especially on floor. Mexico was a big surprise because I expected virtually nothing from them, and they walked away with a bronze medal on bars and a nice chance to earn a team medal tomorrow (though I'd bet in Canada for the bronze medal). Kudos to Argentina (fourth place is an spectacular result), Puerto Rico (they qualified a full team, yay) and Costa Rica (very good gymnasts). Medalists: