Men Heath Thorpe Non-Selection

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I mean like 1998, where there are no Worlds or Olympics.

Or we could even use next year as an example, only a few countries will be picking teams for the Olympics. There are more countries sending zero athletes to do gymnastics at the Olympics than countries that are sending teams. Should every other country just cancel their Nationals?

The point is that National Championships don’t exist just for team selection to big events.
 
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Whatever. I just think it is wrong for a country (any country) to name someone a champion and then, for no good reason, exclude them. If they had defending world champions on 5 apparatus and wanted to send them to defend their titles instead of sending their AA gymnast, that might be an argument but that seems to not be the case here. I think I am allowed to have an opinion and obviously national championships are not just selection events but if you have them, maybe the results should mean something.
 
Not selecting a national champion would be justified if he peaked for nationals and didn’t contribute to Gymnastics Australia’s team selection goals. Neither of those applied to Heath Thorpe.
 

Ranked 1st in AA potential, ranked 2nd in actual AA.
Ranked 1st on SR, 2nd on FX, VT, HB, 3rd on PH.

So essentially in a 5-4-3 scenario, Heath is the guy you want.

Definitely not a closed story and I am sure more to come.

He had to pay $19,000 AUS in order to appeal. The appeal WAS granted. GA still selected the same team.
 
I read the report and I still can’t make sense of this. The appendix referenced is not included in what the NST published, so there’s no way to see the actual scores. But somehow the guy who won nationals and was the top Aussie AAer at worlds is only the 3rd best AA athlete? Okay.
GA prepared a document entitled 2023 WC Results IAA Comparison (listed as Appendix 4), which compared the three IAA athletes, namely Clay Stephens, James Hardy and the Applicant, Heath Thorpe. That comparison summary included a number of results within the selection period:

a. Best stand alone IAA result (Thorpe 2nd)
b. Average of the last 3 IAA results (Thorpe 3rd)
c. Best potential result (Thorpe 1st)
d. Best potential result based only on IAA events (Thorpe 2nd),

and the addition of the totals from these four results led to Clay Stephens having the greatest total amongst the three IAA athletes (ie ranked 1st) and the Applicant ranked 3rd.
 
This is not a level playing field, by any stretch of the imagination. When the appeals process comes with a price tag like that, they literally are closing down an athletes right to question the process.
 
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It’s unfortunate that he is not able to pursue this further due to finances. I’m sure that if he could he would have a strong case based on the statement re: “…the selection committee did not weight the selection activities.”

Since the selection committee was able to re-assess the process, it was quite simple for them to revise the process and tinker with the numbers to work in their favor and select their original team after the fact. Any decent arbitrator would take this fact and rip it (and the selection committee) to shreds!
 
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