2024 Chinese National Championships + Trials

[Passion]

Trying to build a team around consistent medicore scores is not some sure way of getting on the podium. You can get outscored by other teams who do their best if you're not bringing your better routines, and you're hurting yourself for event finals when you select a team in this overly defensive manner. You also reduce your chance of actually winning the team event.

I have watched China walk away from too many podiums trying to reach for the moon. I prefer defense now.

Mainly because it's almost as weird to refer to Chinese people by only their last names as it is to refer to them by their first names.

Other skills named after Chinese athletes don't use the first name though. It's just a Cheng on vault, not a Cheng Fei vault. The Mo salto. Shang on UB.

The FIG is inconsistent, China probably just submitted it as the Yang Bo because of the reasons IratePanda explained upthread, and FIG went with it.

 

[IratePanda]

Zhang Qingying is a hot mess on beam. It's not a worthwhile gamble when Zhou Yaqin and Qiu Qiyuan are so much better there.

 

[IratePanda]

I really need China on the team podium in Paris. There, I said it.

 

[Aeris]

I have watched China walk away from too many podiums trying to reach for the moon. I prefer defense now.

They've been losing out on podiums because of falls on regular skills and having the worst vault rotation of any top country in the world. Continuing to only put yurchenko fulls on the team is not going to fix their problem. Someone is still going to fall regardless if it happens, and they'll be sitting in a huge deficit on vault the entire time instead being able to absorb a mistake.

The concept of Ou Yushan being the safe pick doesn't really track at this point either. She's had falls 3 years in a row at Worlds/Olympics, she is THE reason China didn't win a team medal at Worlds last year, and she had another fall this year internationally already.

Zhang Qingying is a hot mess on beam. It's not a worthwhile gamble when Zhou Yaqin and Qiu Qiyuan are so much better there.

That's a lie and doesn't even make sense, it's a question of who goes up for the 3rd beam slot in team finals. She doesn't have a worse hit record than anyone else and her top scores are higher than everyone else. This is a 2-time Silver National medalist who has multiple Gold international medals and beat Ou Yushan in qualifying at Worlds. Her one bad routine this year didn't score worse than Ou Yushan's bad routine, and it came while trying to do AA for the first time in a year.

 

[IratePanda]

I don't want whatever you're smoking. I don't do psychoactives, and I'm already maxed out on allergy meds.

 

[Passion]

The concept of Ou Yushan being the safe pick doesn't really track at this point either. She's had falls 3 years in a row at Worlds/Olympics, she is THE reason China didn't win a team medal at Worlds last year, and she had another fall this year internationally already.

Zhang Qingying lost a full point falling on BB in TF last year. Ou Yushan lost a full point falling on FX in TF. They both lost the team a point, how is Ou Yushan THE reason? If you recall, OYS injured her foot landing UB in the first rotation of that TF. It sure would have been great to have a backup on FX so that she didn't have to compete FX on a freshly injured foot, but China only put 3 up in prelims on FX, so OYS had to continue landing on the foot. She withdrew from AA finals due to the injury.

ZQY then fell on a leap in BB EF before missing the yuchenko loop a second time in a row. Her hands came completely off the beam to re-grab and catch herself both in TF and EF.

OYS hit beam 3 times at '23 Nationals, hit beam 3 times at University Games, then hit both BB routines she did at '23 Worlds. This year she's had one fall in Baku qualifying on BB, hit BB twice in qualifying and AA finals at '24 Nationals, 1 fall in EF at Nats, then hit beam at the internal test this week. That's 2 falls out of 13 routines over the past year on beam.

ZQY has a pretty good hit rate herself. She also hit beam 3 times at '23 Nationals, hit beam 3 times at Asian Champs, but then only hit once at Worlds in qualifying, falling in both TF and EF. This year she hit 2 beams at Baku, 2 beams at '24 Nationals, then fell on her back layout at the internal test. 3 falls out of 14 routines.

The problem is ZQY has the built in risk with the yurchenko loop, and her falls all came when it mattered the absolute most. When World medals were on the line and the last competition to determine the Olympic team.

She was too injured to compete anything but BB at Nationals, and now she's crunching rudi's into the ground. If she's on the team you absolutely need a backup on her events, because if she breaks her foot in qualifying trying to land that vault, who is doing beam in TF on a team of QQY, ZYQ, ZQY, ZYH, and DSY? Zhou Yaqin is dealing with injuries as well, there's no backup here if she continues to struggle either. It's practically a team of 1 all arounder and 4 specialists, because they'd all score the same or lower than a FTY if they had to go up on an event they weren't planning on.

and beat Ou Yushan in qualifying at Worlds.

Qualifying BB at 2023 Worlds
Zhang Qingying - 14.100
Ou Yushan - 14.066

OYS was 5th in qualifying on beam at 2023 Worlds. She was 2per'd from the final by .034 hundredths.

and her top scores are higher than everyone else

QQY and ZYQ have both scored over 15 on beam, I don't think ZQY has?

 

[Passion]

I gave up trying to get this to work in a more high-tech way and just recorded it off my screen with my phone. Zhang Qingying's beam from the stream.

 

[Aeris]

QQY and ZYQ have both scored over 15 on beam, I don't think ZQY has?

I was talking about Zhang Qingying compared to the rest of the field (the 3rd beam slot).

As for her "fall" on the Yurchenko Loop at Worlds, the rules were clarified after the competition: it does not count as a fall, the judges got it wrong. But even if that routine had been scored correctly, China still loses the team medal.

Ou Yushan, on the other hand, lost more than a full point on floor. She was expected to go at least mid-13 and got 12.0 - this was by far the biggest blunder of the team. Everyone else performed reasonably.

If you recall, OYS injured her foot landing UB in the first rotation of that TF. It sure would have been great to have a backup on FX so that she didn't have to compete FX on a freshly injured foot, but China only put 3 up in prelims on FX, so OYS had to continue landing on the foot.

The only way to put more backup on the 2023 team for FX would be removing Huang Zhuofan from the team. If you do that, then the team now has a big deficit on UB instead of FX. It doesn't help anything. This is why it's usually bad to choose a team that doesn't have a "specialist" - you generally don't even gain anything when the backup is needed, because you've lost one of your highest scoring routines to bring that backup.

Zhou Yaqin is dealing with injuries as well, there's no backup here if she continues to struggle either.

China WAG will not win a team medal if their best gymnasts are unable to compete (barring other countries having meltdowns). It's really that simple. Watering the team down with "backup" AA'ers does not fix the problem. It's like a town trying to stop the damage of a tsunami by never building on coastlines. If you waste all that land because you're scared of a disaster happening, then you're never going to have a good tourism business anyway.

And where is your "backup" on vault if you don't bring the top 3 vaulters for this current team? There is none, you have no way to come close to recovering those points.

 

[MaryClare]

Mainly because it's almost as weird to refer to Chinese people by only their last names as it is to refer to them by their first names.

But that isn’t the case for any other element originated by a Chinese gymnast

 

[Denn]

But that isn’t the case for any other element originated by a Chinese gymnast

Other skills named after Chinese athletes don't use the first name though. It's just a Cheng on vault, not a Cheng Fei vault. The Mo salto. Shang on UB.

The FIG is inconsistent, China probably just submitted it as the Yang Bo because of the reasons IratePanda explained upthread, and FIG went with it.

This is simply not true.

First of all, for WAG, there are/were a few cases: Yang Bo, Li Li, Li Ya, and the oddly named "Wang W-G" (which was edited to say "Wang" more recently because they got her name wrong anyway). It's Korean, but in a similar vein, people also used to call the giant 1.5 a Kim Gwang-Suk (vs. the "Counter Kim"). Note that most of these are from before the year 2000. Even the Mo Salto was never just called the "Mo" — it was always the "Mo Salto". The only clear cut cases I can find of family name only were "Liu" and "Ma", but I've heard that called a "Ma Yanhong", too. The code also erroneously listed Zhang Wenning's elements as "Wenning", so there's also that.

Yes, since then, in WAG, most other elements named after Chinese gymnasts list family name only, but most of these were in the last 25 years, and it's been just two people controlling the books — Nelli Kim and Donatella Sacchi.

But you are ignoring half of gymnastics. In MAG, a lot of skills named after Chinese and, for that matter, Korean gymnasts are listed using the full name: Wu Guonian, Li Ning, Ri Jong Song, Ri Se Gwang, Li Xiaoshuang, Zou Li Min, Yan Mingyoung, Huang Liping, etc. Off the top of my head.

Gymnasts themselves sometimes cut the name down, but often say the full name. People ALWAYS says Ri Se Gwang and Zou Li Min, for example.

 

[Passion]

I just went to bed last night instead of staying up reading news, so I know nothing about this, but here is some gossip from someone else:

 

[makam]

So, if China had 5 Simone equivalent gymnasts (able to score 59-60 points) who were strong across all events and the next tier of gymnasts were at Dulcy Caylor level (51-52 points) but they were all from say, Beijing, would all five make the team or would politics leave some of them at home?

 

[MaryClare]

So, if China had 5 Simone equivalent gymnasts (able to score 59-60 points) who were strong across all events and the next tier of gymnasts were at Dulcy Caylor level (51-52 points) but they were all from say, Beijing, would all five make the team or would politics leave some of them at home?

Isn’t China’s problem, and indeed what seems to enable the politicking is that they have no Simone Biles but 20 Dulcy Caylor’s, spread out in various provinces?

 

[IratePanda]

I just went to bed last night instead of staying up reading news, so I know nothing about this, but here is some gossip from someone else:

If this is true, it's a step in the right direction. It just makes sense to choose a proven veteran over a jittery youngster. Luo Huan can step in anywhere she's needed in both QF and TF.

 

[IratePanda]

Isn’t China’s problem, and indeed what seems to enable the politicking is that they have no Simone Biles but 20 Dulcy Caylor’s, spread out in various provinces?

The problem is that provincial politics shouldn't be a factor at all. The gymnasts' results should speak for themselves. But that's never been the case, and it probably never will be.

 

[Passion]

Taking all the politics out of it, it’s still a discussion of trying to slot the same five athletes into three open spots. Qiu Qiyuan and Zhou Yaqin are named to the team already from meeting criteria at Nationals.

Ou Yushan
Zhang Yihan
Du Siyu
Luo Huan
Zhang Qingying

Three of these gymnasts will make the team. The selectors are going to use half performance / half politics to decide. But even without politics, you can see just in this thread there’s disagreement on who should go. There’s not one right answer because there’s multiple strategies.

To compare to Team USA, you have a handful of gymnasts scoring similarly bunched together. If Chiles and DiCello put up all the same scores at Trials, who’s the right pick? If Jones falls on UB both nights and Rivera ends up 3rd AA, who’s the right pick? It’s not clear cut even without the politics. There’s going to be disagreement on what the right team should have been.

If people had hit their main events in the test this would have been more clear cut. DSY/ZYH falling on UB and ZQY falling on BB/having a scrappy rudi opens things up. OYS/LH tying for 2nd AA opens things up. ZYQ struggling opens things up.

 

[Aeris]

Why are they only doing 1 day of competition to decide the team? Does not seem wise, and haven't they always done multiple rounds in the past?

I think this team selection is more interesting than USA's, because none of the gymnasts here are true AA'ers. They all have at least one weak event. Zhang Yihan has 99% chance probably, everyone seems to like her and she has 3 good events, the most of the vault-squad.

Hopefully they take a long look at the numbers. A selection of Ou Yushan + Luo Huan leaves 2 points on the table compared to Du Siyu + Zhang Qingying. The highest potential team doesn't mean everything, but usually when we debate about these things it's like .5 difference for WAG teams. 2 whole points is not something that should be thrown away, and Du Siyu has been consistent on her vault. It's actually so bizarre how she suddenly became China's best vaulter.

 

[Rich]

 

[Passion]

 

[RedBirdie]

I read elsewhere that Luo Huan will be the oldest Chinese WAG Olympian ever.