USAG still doesn't have the first clue how +1 spots work--Statement on Jade Carey

[rue_des_plantes]

I wouldn’t say Doha is likely to be held after Trials, or that it’s likely Carey doesn’t have to make a decision before Trials.

US Trials are June 24-27. Apparatus World Cups and Continentals technically have until June 29 to be completed. However, QAT is back under lockdown, neither Doha WC nor Asian Championships are on the FIG’s calendar, and FIG clarified the apparatus results will stand if Doha gets cancelled. I’d be surprised if Doha’s held.

Say Doha and AGC are cancelled, and PanAms goes forward (scary, considering BRA’s COVID situation) the first weekend in June. That would be the final Olympic qualification event, and NOCs would be notified upon its conclusion and have 2 weeks to confirm their +1s. This leaves enough time for US Championships, but not Trials. The US/Careys’ best bet is to hope Doha is held, or that it just kind of hangs out in limbo until officially getting the axe on June 13/14. I don’t think that’s very probable, though.

 

[Jack]

Can Jade accept the spot, complete at Trials, and then decline the spot if she makes the 4 person team? To decline outright seems like madness.

 

[rue_des_plantes]

The situation you’re describing would basically be like a “+1s can be alternates who can sub into the team” situation. Jade’s +1 would be permanently lost, and the US only gets 1 (the AAWC non-nominative). I don’t see how this happens unless she’s a fluke top 2 at Trials, so I agree it’s madness to decline outright. I say she accepts the spot if she must before Trials, and then tries to be top 2 there, should she make it. She probably won’t be top 2, but accepting the spot is the only logical course of action given the circumstances.

People and NOCs can “decline” +1 spots all they want. There’s just no way to get them back; there’s no mechanism to decline a +1 and still end up with 2, and there never has been. The FIG’s been clear from the jump that NOCs will not be able to pick and choose which +1 spots to use. Once you earn 4+2, you’re done and cannot be eligible for the third +1 event. If you want to use a +1 on your main team after the confirmation period, the +1 is lost and absorbed into the team.

Lots of confusion was sewn when Brian and certain gymternet pundits kept implying it was possible for Jade to withdraw from the apparatus Cup after completing 3-4 meets, or to turn down the spot before it was even allocated and US quota places would be unaffected. None of this is the case.

 

[nog]

Ok…may be a dumb question. But in all this talk I haven’t seen anyone say who she really competes for if she takes the +1 route? I assumed that she’d basically be competing for herself (with USA on her back). That USA could not claim her scores for a team score, that her scores would not mean anything to any team score at all. So in essence, USA gets 6 spots (4, and then the extra 2) but only the 4 “team” count for anything to USA as a team at all. If one of the +2 members (who would be individuals with USA as a sponsor basically) win a medal it will only count as an individual win and tally toward USA in the overall medal count.

Am I totally off base? Does the +2 individuals count toward anything else other than personal glory and an overall medal count?

 

[glamafonic]

I assumed that she’d basically be competing for herself (with USA on her back). That USA could not claim her scores for a team score, that her scores would not mean anything to any team score at all.

Exactly. The actual team for the team event is the 4. The +2 are individuals. So, no, none of their scores have anything to do with the team event.

A +1 goes to Tokyo, competes in qualifications on whatever events they want, competes in whatever individual finals they make (2 per country still applies to them), and that’s it.

 

[nog]

+1 goes to Tokyo, competes in qualifications on whatever events they want, competes in whatever individual finals they make (2 per country still applies to them), and that’s it.

So there is no way around the 2 per country rule using these +1 athletes…I did wonder about that

 

[QuietColours]

It’s going to make for delightful confusion for four year fans too, when the person they watched make finals yesterday isn’t in the team competition today.

 

[glamafonic]

It was such an awful idea from beginning to end. If you were going to send six then just LET THE TEAM BE SIX. Don’t go, “We’ll let you send six, but for no real reason, only four of them get to compete in the team competition.” Even letting them just choose FROM the whole delegation for prelims and team finals would’ve made more sense than having four team members and two diet team members over in a corner.

And that’s without even getting into the absolute incoherent clusterfuck the qualification for those + spots has been, even BEFORE the pandemic fucked it up more. Thank God they’re dropping all of that nonsense for Paris.

 

[Doug1233]

You can’t allow the best teams to choose from six but the worst teams choose from 4. That’s super unfair. The team size needs to be the same for all countries.

I feel bad for Jade. Unless Simone gets injured, she’s not going to be an Olympic Champion if she’s not on the team. But if she’s on the team, she’s almost guaranteed an Olympic Gold medal.

The idiots on Twitter are demonizing her for “stealing” a spot which 1. she hasn’t stolen yet 2. was based on rules that USAG fucked up on, and 3. which guarantees her Olympic Champion status for life.

She’s in a tough spot. The best thing to do is, what she’s currently doing - say nothing. Let the chips fall where they fall. But obviously don’t give up her +1 or her spot on the Team unless she’s forced to.

 

[cats]

And (4) had to give up 2018 team gold plus a plausible vault medal and (5) the US might not have 6 going if she hadn’t done this because of the situation with PanAms.

Sometimes I wish gymnastics was organized more like swimming, where there are team/relay events and solo events, and AA/medley events and specialties. It wouldn’t work, but it would be nice.

 

[glamafonic]

You can’t allow the best teams to choose from six but the worst teams choose from 4. That’s super unfair. The team size needs to be the same for all countries.

I thought about that a few minutes after I posted (I’d been thinking about every team having six to choose from), but didn’t feel like editing. That said, it’s also unfair for the best teams to get more opportunities to put specialists in finals and yet! And the people who made these decisions certainly had more time to think it over than the two minutes I put into writing an angry forum post.

I’ve seen both sides of the Twitter reaction to Jade and I fall somewhere in the middle.

I think it’s undeniably USAG’s fault for not just ensuring that they’d get two non-nomative spots (or definitively excluding nominative berths from the team selection) and at the end of the day if the US ends up sending fewer gymnasts than they could’ve it all goes back to them.

BUT I also do think you can’t ignore, on a personal level, the immediate agency Jade potentially has to decide whether the US sends 5 gymnasts or 6. And if her decision is 5 (provided she’s on the team of 4) then someone, most certainly someone she knows personally and might even be friends with, doesn’t get to go to the Olympics. And they don’t get to go because she made a self-interested decision. One that she is well within her rights to make, one that is certainly understandable (and indeed it would be crazy on her part to do anything else), but not one that I think is utterly beyond all criticism or consideration lest ye be sexist.

My criticism/consideration would be: that’s liable to make things on the team awkward as fuck.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I suppose if you think about it, in order for the specialist route to have any teeth, it would have to work as you describe here. If federations could decline an individual spot on behalf of an athlete, they become pretty pointless.

For all that it’s been a mess, some of which was unavoidable in a pandemic, I’m sorry in a way that we won’t be seeing this again. The reason being that so many federations are absolute cesspits and in no way to be trusted with athlete welfare or to play fair. There’s something to be said for a route that allows some gymnasts to redress that power imbalance, whatever the multiple other faults it has.

 

[RichardL]

I don’t think the FIG had a Jade Carey in mind when they invented this specialist route to the Olympics. By mandating that teams of four basically consist of AAers, they created a path to the Olympics for specialists from teams that would not be likely to choose these athletes to the main team. But Jade is the only AA gymnast qualifying this way with a chance to make the main team (and is the reason Ferrari began training the AA again) and thus is the only one in a position to make this decision. And, arguably, she was not in contention for the main team when she decided to go on the World Cup circuit, but has since dramatically improved on UB/BB.

I’d also argue that Carey is the only person qualifying via the World Cup circuit who is basically a lock to make her event final in her respective event, which is maybe another reason why this route to the Olympics is being eliminated in the future. No sense in glorifying specialists if they are all outside chances to make their respective finals in the end.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I’d argue Fan Yilin is up there too, which is no mean feat considering bars is the deepest EF. It’s true though, there’s a vast gulf between the winners of vault and bars and the winners of beam and floor. Obviously Carey won floor too, but the gulf between her and Ferrari/Mori is massive, much bigger than the gulf between her and the next vaulters down.

The EF route seems much more suited to MAG than WAG, and it’s not surprising that the winners of the men’s events are higher quality. It’s a lot more common in MAG to have a really strong specialist who’s going to struggle with the routes available, whether that’s because he’s from a strong country but doesn’t fit on a team, or a weaker programme but doesn’t do AA and for whatever reason couldn’t qualify as a finalist at 2019 worlds. So for example there was Pegan all those years, this route would’ve been made for someone like him. Berki in 2012 basically had to have the books cooked so he could make it. Petrounias is a plausible Olympic champion but didn’t qualify any other way and is only getting to Tokyo if he wins the world cup series. There’s just not the same pattern in WAG.

 

[makam]

I suppose if you think about it, in order for the specialist route to have any teeth, it would have to work as you describe here. If federations could decline an individual spot on behalf of an athlete, they become pretty pointless.

Yeah, I thought one of the reasons they came up with the “nominative” portion was so that a country couldn’t play games and take the spot from someone who earned it and give it to a more favored athlete. Like Flavia has her spot but if she gets injured or pisses off some federation official, it doesn’t let Brazil swap in Andrade or Barbosa or whoever. (of course, there really should be a way to swap in an athlete if the named athlete is truly injured so a country isn’t completely unrepresented, but it is easy to see how that could be abused so it isn’t strange that it is not there)

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Especially as with the men in particular, there are quite a few scenarios with a gymnast who comes from a strong team, is good enough on their one event that it’s better for the sport if they’re at the Olympics, but who doesn’t fit well on a four or even five person team. Louis Smith if he’d continued, for example, or Dan Keatings last quad. Possibly Epke now. Someone like Paseka if her back had held up.

 

[Doug1233]

Danusia is still going to Tokyo, right?

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

As far as I know. Why, have you heard something?

 

[Doug1233]

No. But I’ve not heard anything, either.

 

[glamafonic]

She tweeted/insta’d 100 Days Until Tokyo pic of herself, so I would assume that no news is good news.