2023 World Championship Event Finals Day 1: MAG FX, PH, SR & WAG VT/UB (Saturday 10/07)

[Ginger]

Now see I knew that if I missed EFs today some shit would go down. Simone fell? I’m totally happy that Andrade won!

Simone sat down her YDP. Still got like 14.5 for it but then Rebeca out-executed her on Cheng with 15.1 IYRC. And her double twisting Y got 14.4 I believe. She totally deserved the gold and it looked like even Simone was genuinely happy for her.

 

[CameliasFingerpaint]

Assuming the FIG actually follow their rules now

WAG VT: Csenge Bacskay (Hungary)
UB: Ahtziri Sandoval (Mexico)
BB: Ana Perez (Spain)
FX: Sarah Voss (Germany)

Only VT and UB were impacted by the mess today, so Bacskay qualifies instead of her teammate Zoja Szekely. Sandoval would have qualified anyway but by vault. These should all be set now. (Well, Szekely should take it to court, but otherwise this is done)

MAG PH: Rhys McClenaghan (Ireland)
SR: Eleftherios Petrounias (Greece)

FX is probably Carlos Yulo but won’t be confirmed until after PB where he is a reserve for the final.

So the spot should have gone to Szekely if it wasn’t for the administrative fuck up? That is insane.

She has to take legal action.

 

[makam]

Simone sat down her YDP. Still got like 14.5 for it but then Rebeca out-executed her on Cheng with 15.1 IYRC. And her double twisting Y got 14.4 I believe. She totally deserved the gold and it looked like even Simone was genuinely happy for her.

I think Simone would even be the first to say she got beaten fair and square (though i would like to see the scores the judges here come up with.) She always took it with a smile when her perfect amanar and lopez combo lost.

 

[lovegymnasts]

Random thoughts from today:

1. Everyone is being too reaction with these ideas about “falling on vault should be more”. Simone is an outlier in terms of difficulty, no other gymnast in the past 10 years would prompt this conversation, I don’t think the rules need to be changed because of her doing a previously inconceivably difficulty vault. That said, I am glad that – only thanks to her spotting – she didn’t come away with the gold here.

This right here!
I was going to post this
The only time people bring up this idea is with Simone. She is held to a higher standard than everyone else. If she falls, she needs to be double penalized. If someone else falls, a point off is good enough or even too much.

 

[Aeris]

Everyone is being too reaction with these ideas about “falling on vault should be more”. Simone is an outlier in terms of difficulty, no other gymnast in the past 10 years would prompt this conversation, I don’t think the rules need to be changed because of her doing a previously inconceivably difficulty vault. That said, I am glad that – only thanks to her spotting – she didn’t come away with the gold here.

Like someone else said, there’s been outrage about it ever since 2008 when Cheng Fei got a medal while falling.

You agree Simone didn’t deserve to win. The only way to make that happen is increase the penalty for a clear fall on vault (not a 1 arm touch down or butt graze, a real fall). It makes sense because a vault “routine” has less possible times to fall than other routines, it’s a proportionally bigger error to fall here.

I also feel they’ve gone overboard in the evaluation of the YDP. For me it shouldn’t be rated higher than the Produnova. The Prod has only been done once in WAG history with a good landing. Every other attempt had a heavily deductible landing (plus more form deductions in the air), and most don’t even deserve to get full start value, since they land with the butt immediately touching down on the mat.

We should also take a minute to look at how the Triple Twisting Yurchenko, given the same start value as YDP in the MAG code and still yet to be done in WAG, is now worth .6 less than a YDP in the WAG code. It’s very wrong.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Complaints about medals with falls were happening before anyone had even heard of Simone. It’s not at all unique to her. It’s simply that it hasn’t happened as often lately, especially to people other than her.

 

[FrolovasDoubleLayout]

Didn’t the ‘outrage’ begin when Ferrari won the AA in '06 with a fall?

 

[RAFIKI]

Didn’t the ‘outrage’ begin when Ferrari won the AA in '06 with a fall?

Dykes winning AA bronze with four falls at 2006 CWG over Cairns was another one. Especially as that was the first big comp using the open ended COP.

 

[Passion]

Didn’t the ‘outrage’ begin when Ferrari won the AA in '06 with a fall?

I’d say it started when Hamm won in '04 with a fall and caused the collapse of the entire code of points as we knew it.

 

[tempest]

I’d say it started when Hamm won in '04 with a fall and caused the collapse of the entire code of points as we knew it.

Didn’t Ivankov fall in 97 as well? It’s much more distributed in the AA… Was there a lot of outrage for Ivan?

 

[YurchenkoLoop]

Like someone else said, there’s been outrage about it ever since 2008 when Cheng Fei got a medal while falling.

You agree Simone didn’t deserve to win. The only way to make that happen is increase the penalty for a clear fall on vault (not a 1 arm touch down or butt graze, a real fall). It makes sense because a vault “routine” has less possible times to fall than other routines, it’s a proportionally bigger error to fall here.

I also feel they’ve gone overboard in the evaluation of the YDP. For me it shouldn’t be rated higher than the Produnova. The Prod has only been done once in WAG history with a good landing. Every other attempt had a heavily deductible landing (plus more form deductions in the air), and most don’t even deserve to get full start value, since they land with the butt immediately touching down on the mat.

We should also take a minute to look at how the Triple Twisting Yurchenko, given the same start value as YDP in the MAG code and still yet to be done in WAG, is now worth .6 less than a YDP in the WAG code. It’s very wrong.

Agreed, the Biles II difficulty is an anomaly relative to all other vaults. I was happy to see it get the 6.4 because that meant Biles would actually compete it, but realistically it should probably be a 6.0… Front handspring front tuck is a 3.6 (-2.4 from Prod) and a Yurchenko back pike is a 3.2 (-3.2 from Biles II)…

 

[FrolovasDoubleLayout]

So by FIG WTC principle, the Tsukahara Double Pike should come in at 6,6.

Who knows, with new VT bonus in the proposed COP for 2025-28 we might see a Tsuk Double Pike and a Produnova pairing - that extra 0,2 you know…

 

[MaryClare]

Lovely interview with Nemour

 

[Passion]

Ellie Black talks about being stuck at the arena last night after the AA until midnight waiting for drug testing to finish, not having enough time to eat or recover, then having to get back to the arena early this morning for the event finals. She says a lot of the girls felt it was not an ideal situation. More thought should be put into athlete safety at competitions.



Then at the 2:30 mark she talks about how things have been this year with Gymnastics Canada. Canada brought in Christian Gallardo to be the National Team Lead for the WAG program this year. I’ve typed that part out out for those who can’t listen:

Gymnastics Canada has been under a lot of criticism and scrutiny, how do you feel that it’s going?

With Gymnastics Canada we’ve been really working towards having it be an athlete centered environment… having communication, having transparency, and I feel like this year it kind of stalled and we really haven’t seen a lot of action in that department.

At least for me, I was working really hard speaking on behalf of the athletes to try and have those conversations, get that information, do it in a way that’s putting the athletes first, and I feel like that’s still a step behind.

So I’m really hoping that conversations can be had, we can make change, and there IS going to be transparency and communication as to what is happening with the program, and where the goals are. What’s… you know those conversations can happen between the coaches, athletes, staff, and lead.

So I think that’s something that’s really big moving forward I want to be able to have those conversations and you know… I do gymnastics because I love it and I want to represent Canada but if I don’t get the support representing Canada I don’t know how I’m going to be able to do it.

So I think that’s just something that weighs on me is you know I want to feel valued, I want to feel supported, and some days it just doesn’t feel like that.

 

[RAFIKI]

FIG should also thank their lucky stars that the same athlete (Sandoval) was next on VT and UB.

 

[Hatsumomo]

Watching the replay now. Finished VT and love the podium. I’m so stoked for Andrade. She’s a star. I hope she takes a long rest after these championships and gives those knees a break before working on upgrades for Paris.

I’m rooting for Jones and Nemour to battle for gold next year. Both of them are so pretty on the event. I’m so looking forward to UB finals next year. I’m always amazed that Biles sneaks into UB EFs when any medal would require a splatfest of epic proportions.

Also, does Lorette Charpy look like Florence Pugh to anyone else?

 

[J175]

FIG should also thank their lucky stars that the same athlete (Sandoval) was next on VT and UB.

Yeah, this whole thing might end up being swept under the carpet if the Hungarian federation don’t want to take it any further, if there was another federation or more involved they definitely wouldn’t be letting it go.

The FIG have apparently answered the question of who qualifies with “refer to the qualification process”, so it looks like they’re just going to say the Olympic qualification rules are the rules and not acknowledge any error prior to that. And they are correct - the fact is, Bacskay competed in the VT final, the rules do not consider the possibility that someone might mistakenly compete in a final.

 

[cats]

I would be pretty sad on behalf of both Hungarian athletes if they didn’t feel their Olympic qualification was worth fighting for. The opinion of the federation is irrelevant. Both athletes have a strong case - Csenge’s weaker IMO as I think her results should be invalidated since she was not qualified for the EF but still legit! - and deserve to be heard. This is such a big deal in their lives and just letting it go because the fed is scared of politics or views athletes as interchangeable isn’t okay.

 

[cftmoonlight79]

Seems unfair to the women who competed all around less than 24 hours before event finals started. There should have been a day off in between.

 

[YurchenkoLoop]

Watching the replay now. Finished VT and love the podium. I’m so stoked for Andrade. She’s a star. I hope she takes a long rest after these championships and gives those knees a break before working on upgrades for Paris.

I’m rooting for Jones and Nemour to battle for gold next year. Both of them are so pretty on the event. I’m so looking forward to UB finals next year. I’m always amazed that Biles sneaks into UB EFs when any medal would require a splatfest of epic proportions.

Also, does Lorette Charpy look like Florence Pugh to anyone else?

You didn’t enjoy QQY?
I think Ruby Evans looks more like Pugh