thiago_simoes

Argentina!

[hide] Knockout Round June 30th - July 15th, 2018 16 Nations, Round of 16, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, Third Place Match, Final Round of 16 Part #1 Date & Time Nation 1 T1 T2 Nation 2 June 30th 2018, h. 18:00 (GMT+3) Uruguay 2 2 Portugal July 1st 2018, h. 21:00 (GMT+3) Spain 3 1 Russia [/hide]

First gold medal ever in gymnastics as well.

In 2013 we had a different situation. Spain sent their best gymnasts while Italy and France struggled with young and inexperienced gymnasts. This year the difference was minimal and Spain, quite frankly, only has two world class gymnasts (Abad and Zapata). Take, for example, the execution scores of Spanish athletes on floor (8.5 to 8.7) and compare to the execution scores of the top scorers from other nations (8.4 or less). You'll see that Spanish gymnasts were slightly overscored here and there, and this makes a difference in the end. The same thing happened with the women's team, when Spanish gymnasts got slightly higher execution scores than the rest of the field. It's nice to see Spain winning international medals again, but home advantage was too big to ignore this time.

I suspect Spain was helped by the judges in both events. "Normally" it would be unthinkable to see Spain earning gold in men's artistic gymnastics, or any team medal at all in women's artistic gymnastics.

Congratulations! It's nice to see Argentina emerging as the champion of the continent again!

If this is frustrating for me, I can imagine how the Polish feel.

Stupid match for Poland. I can't believe it.

I love Japan (I can speak some Japanese, actually), but my heart was with Senegal (I am an African-Brazilian man). Tough match to follow. The draw was bittersweet.

Poor Panama... I'll write it again: we need a new system. My suggestion is: Europe: 14 quotas North America: 2 quotas South America: 4 quotas Africa: 4 quotas Asia: 4 quotas Oceania: 1 quota Host nation: 1 quota World Cup qualifying tournament (a kind of test event): 2 quotas (2 teams from Europe, 2 from South America, 1 from North America, 1 from Asia, 1 from Africa, 1 from Oceania)

From October 25 to November 3.

While we're here, any chance we'll have a prediction contest for Artistic Gymnastics Worlds this year?

I actually like this system and, as someone said, it makes for a nice consolation prize. Not everyone gets the goal difference right... For example, I predicted ENG-PAN as a +7 win for England, and now I can't even remember why I had such high hopes.

Qualified nations in men's artistic gymnastics are

Sad outcome. I was hoping for Germany to win, but Sweden had a chance to win and they made me believe they could do it... Really sad, especially after seeing the Swedish woman crying (probably out of happiness) when the match was tied.

Man, this is really sad.

Sweden!

Mexico is the best team in my opinion and I hope they win the World Cup now. Or maybe Senegal, who knows? One can dream.

But YOG qualification is based on preliminaries, and I don't think Argentina has a guaranteed quota in trampoline. I might be wrong, though. EDIT: I was wrong. Argentina has to choose whether to send a boy or a girl, so Mexico will lose one quota.

Here.

If I got everything right, European nations qualified in women's artistic gymnastics are

qualified in men's trampoline, qualified in women's trampoline.

Tunisia!

Poor guys. Two goals in 15 minutes. It will be nearly impossible to recover.

Not only on the field. This has been a historical problem in Brazil (Romário, Rivaldo, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho) and it's almost infuriating to see how influential they are. I teach English in a federal institute (basically a high school and a university in one single place). I asked my class of sophomore students to create a video in English about someone who they admire, and one group came up with a video of Ronaldinho Gaucho. In the end of their presentation, they showed a picture of Ronaldinho making a gesture with his hands that can be seen as a vagina, and one of the students then showed a picture of himself reproducing the gesture. I graded them zero (grades in Brazil go from 0 to 10). I don't care how hard they worked to improve their English if their behavior as human beings needs a lot of improvement. The thing is those kind of footballers are seen as role models, and young men often fail to see how offensive some of them are.