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To be fair to Alice, if GB hadn’t qualified a team in 2019, she’d have had a nominative spot anyway from the AA.
Although so would Becky, so that’s a fairly depressing thought.
 
Ugh that is a depressing thought. Crazy world when it would have been better for her and Ellie (vault bronze) if GB had not qualified a team.

I’ve been trying to get my thoughts together since Monday when I was so angry and upset but I’m still not particularly coherent.

I think Becky should be on the team. Mathematically it makes sense and using the individual medal potential criterion it makes sense. I think somewhere upthread I argued that Becky is in almost the best possible position to make a four person team as a specialist. She’s a world medallist, has the equal highest D in training, has the highest bar score on the team and is still top three even when she falls. Her beam is also top three although she’s always a worry on beam. The only better argument around is Max on the MAG side. I’d say GB WAG have a better chance at team bronze than MAG so Max is a little less risky despite the extra pressure of six events that need to be covered. Even though the chosen team has a Stuttgart bronze medal team score (fwiw, insert cross-competition disclaimer here), it could be even better with Becky. I think the risk of not have four AAders was worth all the other gains and going for team bronze and individual bars medal. I’m probably preaching to the choir here.

I’m curious to know what Jenn’s injury status is. If that is more of a worry than we know then prioritising AAders might make sense. The chosen foursome has the potential for a fantastic beam score. Given the world sucks at staying on beam these days they could plausibly come out with the second highest beam score (of course now I’ve said that no doubt we’ll get the traditional multiple fall GB rotation) and could even end up benching a European beam champion in TF. I wonder how spooked the selection committee was/is by Ellie’s partial floor routine in Rio? Another question is if there’s any chance of Morgan getting her FX and VT difficulty back. If she does then GB would have some tricky TF line up decisions to make. Would a full difficulty Morgan make this team feel better?

In Stuttgart podium training (should specify 2019 as Becky was also in Stuttgart 2007 😉) Becky trained floor and it was good enough for prelims. I forget if she had another foot injury since or if she held off training floor because there was so much else to get back after pandemic shutdowns. Training floor in 2019 said to me that she knew more events would help her for Tokyo. What changed? Helen Downie said they were not told that they were prioritising AAders until the rejection phone call. This quote hacked me off:

"In terms of Becky and the additional opportunity we put on for her due to tragic circumstances, we worked with Becky to offer that opportunity, and it was not a forced opportunity.

"At that point we hadn’t decided on the [prioritisation] of the team [event] because that was for the panel to do at the point of nomination.
James Thomas, British Gymnastics’ performance director (from BBC article)

Now to some extent you can only completely decide strategy when you know which gymnasts are definitely in the mix, but you can definitely have an idea that you can and should communicate to gymnasts earlier. It’s insane that our most successful gymnast at the last worlds did not know how much a reserve floor and vault would be valued. Perhaps she did and took the UB/BB gamble anyway, will probably be years before we know. I want to know what the communication was and the justification for such an early selection process. The fact that other teams can change their thinking based on this decision (I think Riley’s and Russia’s chances on bars have just gone up) shows up the flaws and is something to add to the more time for Becky (well all gymnasts) to get ready argument. Do we think she’d have been selected if she’d competed her 6.8 routine?

I don’t know where I stand on the “punishment for speaking out” theory. I certainly don’t want to believe it but BG haven’t earned the benefit of the doubt.

I’m still devastated, angry and it has dampened my enthusiasm for Tokyo, especially UB EF. I wish our team the best and I have nothing against Morgan. However if unicorns manifest and this strategy pays off with a team bronze, it will always be tinged with sadness for me.

I would love to see Becky go to Doha and score a 15.2 with her 6.8 routine and then win 2021 worlds.
 
If Jenn’s injury is worse than we know, wouldn’t it have been nice to be able to make a decision a bit closer to the time…

It also raises the point that maybe in that scenario, the answer might be to deprioritise Jenn. I know that would be gut wrenching.
 
RAFIKI said:
"At that point we hadn’t decided on the [prioritisation] of the team [event] because that was for the panel to do at the point of nomination.
James Thomas, British Gymnastics’ performance director (from BBC article)
Click to expand...
This is the point that baffles me the most. Surely in the selection process ir should be clearly started what the priorities should be - I.e. performance of the team and possibility of a team podium placing over the performance of the individual and the possibility of a podium finish. Deciding this after the trials have been completed and the scores are all in seems suspect.

“Oh, you’ve only competed two apparatuses and we have now prioritized the team so therefore we want only athletes who have produced scores on all events.”

That should have clearly been stated in the document so that athletes/coaches could make a more informed decision/plan as to how to approach the entire process.
 
@RAFIKI this is such an excellent well thought out post. I found myself nodding along all the way through.

Playing devils advocate - let’s assume good faith on BG’s part (hear me out).

The selection criteria say “one WAG medal”.

So is it unfair to not tell the gymnasts in advance what TYPE of medal (TF or EF) they’re shooting for, before all the Trials scores have been collected?

My answer to that is: no.

You simply can’t know whether you’re more likely to get a TF or a EF medal until all the scores are in and you can do a comparison. Unless you’re going on hunch. Which isn’t a bad strategy (Marta did it successfully for decades). But there IS a legitimate argument to ignore hunch and go on numbers alone.

Which brings us to Becky. Numbers alone DID put Becky on the team. But only just. Becky’s best trials bars score was 14.45. Amelie was scoring high 13 (I think??) at Euros.

I’m sure Amelie’s coach (perfectly within her rights to argue in favor of her gymnast) would have said that a 14.45 won’t even make EF. And she would have been right. Becky’s SCORES didn’t show EF potential. And she had multiple chances to get those scores and she failed to do so. Yea she posted a 15+ routine on Twitter, but that flies in the face of a formal Trials procedure.

So essentially, if you eliminate Becky’s chance at an EF medal, it becomes a straight choice between Amelie and Becky for the TF slots only. And given Jen’s injury, which makes her a risk on the leg events, which Becky isn’t showing, the argument to take Amelie, who excelled at Euros, AND won a bars medal, is becomes pretty low hanging fruit.

I truly think that if Becky hadn’t fallen in that Day 1 Trials bar routine, and had stuck the landing, she would have gotten a 15, and they would have taken her. The argument to ignore an UB medal potential would have been apparent on hunch AND on paper.

Which SUCKS.
 
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Wasn’t there a major discrepancy between your score and the score she received?

Also, how can her performance on the day of her own brother’s funeral (on Gymnova bars!!!) even be taken as an indication as to how she will perform?
 
I had 14.1 and 14.8

She got 13.95 (fine) and 14.45 (IMO underscored but others might disagree).
 
The Gymnova bars aren’t even the half of what Becky went through at that Trial, if her IG post is anything to go by.

I can only imagine what “replicating the Trial as close as possible” could have entailed… Alone in an empty sports hall…
 
It was a valiant attempt, but with such a batshit suspect selection process, the whole concept of trying to puzzle out any good faith motives is like trying to herd cats. On Mars. The fundamentals are entirely absent.
 
My personal thoughts are - the chance of Becky getting an individual bars medal - I’d say 40-50%.

The chance of Jen, Jess, Alice and Amelie getting a TF medal: probably about 20%. No higher.

So go with Becky.

The problem is that her Trials scores put that first percentage at 0%. Which changes the calculus.
 
And the problem with using the BG scores is, well, they’re the BG scores. We haven’t seen any of the routines from the first few rounds and not all from the last, and what we have seen of Becky’s you disagreed with. So it’s just not something any conclusions can be drawn from, even if we weren’t selecting based on competitions months before the Games while one of the key players is carrying an injury. It’s like trying to solve a puzzle where half the pieces aren’t there, because the person who set the game up has shoved them up their arse.
 
There’s an interview in the Telegraph with Becky here

Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, so if anyone has access or hasn’t used their free article views this month and could summarise, that would be great!
 
Becky Downie has missed out on an Olympics before. In a 13-year gymnastics career, which has seen her win 14 major medals, she felt the heartbreak of watching a home Games from the sidelines in 2012. But this time is different, she says.

On Monday, her shock omission from the Tokyo 2020 team was announced, and she now says she can “never forget” the turmoil she endured from British Gymnastics during the selection process. She also hints that her treatment was influenced by her decision to speak out at the culture of abuse within gymnastics, suggesting she was “made to feel not welcome” at the sport’s training hub at Lilleshall after going public.

In an exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport, Downie describes the last few weeks as “the hardest of her life”. She had thought things could not get worse than 2020: Olympic postponement, the fallout after she joined whistleblowers to speak publicly about what she described as “normalised” abusive training environments, and her father’s time in intensive care battling Covid-19.

But last month tragedy struck when her brother Josh, 24, died suddenly from an undiagnosed heart condition while playing cricket. It was news Downie says “you never imagine receiving”. To make things worse, she received the devastating call on the eve of the final Olympic team trial, while apart from her family at a hotel in Cardiff.

“I got a knock on the door after midnight, and my first thought was it must be drug testers,” Downie says of that night. “I was half asleep, completely dazed. The coaches came in and when they told me [that Josh had died], I thought, am I actually dreaming this? There are really no words to really describe it. There were a lot of tears. It was the longest journey of my life, getting back to be with my family in Nottingham.”

Sat in her living room in Nottingham now, Downie still has a look of disbelief on her face as she describes the events of the last few weeks. Condolence cards are placed around the room to mark how raw and recent her family’s grief remains. Mounting more pain on top of that seems unimaginable, but the blows have kept coming.

Just two months ago, she was on top of the world after executing what she believes is a world leading uneven bars routine. At 29, she felt in the form of her life. When she posted a video of her routine online, major champions were applauding her in the comments, even the legendary Nadia Comaneci. Downie believes the routine put her in contention for a gold medal.

But last Friday her appeal was denied, and British Gymnastics confirmed she would not go to Tokyo. It is less than two years since she won a stunning silver medal at the World Championships - a competition that counted as a trial for the Olympic squad - but somehow she has failed to make even the three reserve spots for Tokyo. Though Downie has wished all of the gymnasts selected the best, she remains baffled by her exclusion - especially because she “met all the criteria” and her trials scores put her top of the rankings in bars.

British Gymnastics have defended the decision, saying they are focusing on medals in the team event, and that Downie’s specialism in bars posed a “risk” to this strategy. But it has caused uproar, with a petition calling for an independent review of the selection process receiving 25,000 signatures in the last five days. Beyond selection though, Downie says what hurts the most is the way she believes the decision was made and how she was treated in the process.

After missing the final trial due to bereavement, Downie and sister Ellie were given another opportunity by British Gymnastics to compete for their spot on the team 10 days later. Though Ellie elected not to do so, Downie made the brave decision to take up the offer.

“I know that Josh would want me to, he wouldn’t want me not to try,” she says. What followed though, was a process where she alleges British Gymnastics lacked “any element of compassion”.

They did not allow her to compete at her home gym in Nottingham or at the national centre at Lilleshall. British Gymnastics then rejected a venue she and her coach proposed and instead suggested she return to Cardiff - a six-hour round trip from her home and the very place she had learned of her brother’s passing.

“That’s the part that hurt me most. I refused. Why would I want to go back there? I don’t think that should have been asked of me at all.”

Another venue was confirmed instead, and though British Gymnastics emphasised their intention to replicate as closely as possible the environment that the other gymnasts had competed in in Cardiff - for the benefit of fairness - Downie says it was her that was put at the disadvantage.

New obstacles included British Gymnastics failing to book her training slot at the chosen venue - a basic thing that all of the athletes had for their trial - which saw her make a 90-minute trip and have to plead with the Leisure Centre to remain open. She also had an existing dispute with the governing body because they refused to allow her to use equipment at the trial which more closely resembled that being used in Tokyo. As a bars specialist, this meant she couldn’t perform her highest difficulty routine. “It’s like telling Lewis Hamilton to get in a Ferrari and drive - in a sport of small margins, and high performance, equipment is always a factor.”

Actually competing in the trial, while still reeling from the death of her brother, was “the hardest thing I ever had to do”, and she describes national coaches walking past her wordlessly while she “sobbed uncontrollably”. But afterwards, she and Ellie walked out of the gym with “not a doubt in our mind” that she had done enough.

“If I can perform in that environment, which was harder than any Olympic final would ever be, I’m really proud,” she says.

But, according to British Gymnastics, it was not enough. Knowing now that the team event was the priority in selection, she believes her exclusion from the team was already a foregone conclusion before her trial.

British Gymnastics “categorically” denies the suggestion that the trial was a “tick box” exercise, and say they trust that selection was decided purely on merit, but Downie is unconvinced. To add insult to injury, she was given a 48-hour deadline to appeal the decision, falling on the day of her brother’s funeral.

“It makes me feel sick that they treated me like that,” she says. "It hurts me to know the things I had to miss. Picking the flowers for the funeral whilst I was away trialling, a tribute for my brother at his cricket club, which happened when I wasn’t even given a proper training slot. I missed that, for what? There’s so much that was hurtful.

“I’ll never forget that. And no amount of apologies will ever make that okay.”

Downie and her sister were two of the only current British gymnasts to speak out about abuse in the sport last year, which triggered an independent review commissioned by UK Sport and Sport England. When she was left out of the squad on Monday, lobbying group Gymnasts for Change called it a “sinister warning” being sent by British Gymnastics to whistleblowers.

Does Downie think this outcome is a result of her speaking out? "It’s very hard to say… But I definitely know that there has been a big behavioural shift towards me and Ellie, since that point, from certain individuals, decision makers. We’ve gone down to Lilleshall and been made to feel not welcome.

“I have been told by a person of significant importance - in the national team environment - that a lot of coaches do not agree with what we’ve done. Maybe I did open my mouth a year too soon, I’m not sure. If this is the sacrifice [an Olympics] then this is the sacrifice, change needs to happen. I’m proud of what I did and I don’t regret it.”

Tokyo was meant to be her final bow, but now Downie has spent her first week in months out of the gym.

Downie is adamant though that she is not done with gymnastics. Despite the heartache and hurt caused, her love for the sport remains strong.

“It’s hard for me to think, can I be selected for a team ever again? I do know I want to carry on, because I want to show that routine. I haven’t done two years of work to sit on the sofa. There’s a World Championships this year. They certainly don’t have control over my final chapter. I know I want to compete again on my terms.”

But the dream of Olympic gold is gone: “I genuinely believe that we could have done it. I think I had a shot at being the first female Olympic champion Britain has had in gymnastics.”
 
This was posted on Reddit earlier.
Speculation of course, but possible that funding for the next cycle isn’t as dependent on medal success as it has been previously.
 
Yes, if the COVID-19 pandemic has played havoc with analytics for successful medal possibility predictions it is understandable - but how then do you justify making predictions for an OG that is three years out (Paris 2024), and more so, building it in to your selection procedure?
 
Thanks Doug. I think your devils advocate analysis is well argued and is the likely thought process they went through to leave Becky out.

I’m with Spencer’s argument that when you’re not the favourite you need to take the odd risk to maximise your score and that you shouldn’t plan for the worst case scenario of someone getting injured and/or not completing a routine (again this is going off imperfect injury status knowledge). Going with (back up) scores in such an unusual situation has lead to a team with lower than its maximum potential. Isn’t the point of having a committee to take account of intangibles that can’t be encapsulated in the scores? There are just so many painful what ifs and coulda/woulda/shouldas here.
  • I’m assuming Becky’s plan was to compete her 6.8 bars at least on day two of the original final trial (probably if the 6.4 routines went well on day one). It’s not surprising that with lost training time after a tragedy and all the shenanigans in the Torygraph article she didn’t want to risk the 6.8 routine. I think the final trial should have been at a neutral venue but failing to book training time for her is ridiculous.
  • A dismount mistake that we’ve never seen before costing her a world class score in the current season. Even her 14.45 would have placed second at Euros.
  • The selection procedures had the engaged with individual training plan criterion. I’d love to see those. That’s the formal place for BG to state their desire for back up VT/FX, it’s unconscionable that Becky didn’t know about this.
Imagine a parallel non-pandemic world where GB didn’t qualify a team… Alice (AA), Ellie (VT) and Becky (UB) made it from Stuttgart and Jenn/Jess made it from the AA series and Euros respectively. Even if I wasn’t British, I’d rather see Becky as a +1 than Russia’s candidates.

It’s going to be interesting to see how the beeb deal with this in commentary, especially Christine. The Downie’s are well known and when they go through event finalists they often say who the current world medallists are.
 
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