The Last East German WAG Stan

WAG World's Qualifiers from the Asian Games

These are the last qualifiers.

Japan and China qualified teams from 2022 Worlds. They will be joined by Korea and Taiwan (who were also the teams that came out of Asia last year.

Individuals will be IRFANALUTHFI Rifda (INA), FINNEGAN Aleah (PHI), ELPITIYA BADALGE DONA Milka Gihani Devyanjala (SRI), ARIPOVA Dildora (UZB), BAUYRZHANOVA Aida (KAZ), NATHAN Nadine Joy (SGP), KVAMME Kylee Ann (PHI), and YAP Emma (SGP)

The Philippines came in 5th behind Kazakhstan. They were strong on vault beam and floor but had a disaster rotation on bars (which they already only put up 3 gymnasts). Emma Malabuyo has no path to 2023 Worlds and wouldn't have unless the Philippines qualified a full team.

Chuso also did not qualify as an AAer for Worlds. She however was already qualified as a specialist. This will narrow her chances for going to the Olympics because she is no longer able to do the AA at worlds and that is how she qualified the last time. She missed it by 2 spots.

This really highlights the pitfalls of recruiting NCAA/L10 athletes into elite. Despite having a full team of 5 for this 4 up, 3 count situation, the Philippines only put up 3 bars routines (the only full team not to put up 4 on every apparatus). They ended the subdivision there with a disastrous 5 falls. (Finnegan only dropped to the ground once but collapsing onto the bar after the first skill also counts as a fall.)

I believe Gutierrez does train in the Philippines but I included her for completion.

They all look exhausted, which is likely related to this being the last rotation, but an elite bars routine is a lot longer than NCAA or L10. It has more composition requirements. Getting a D score higher than 4 requires connecting more difficult elements. It requires a lot of endurance.

I would also suggest that it’s a reason the US elite program keeps running into a bars-shaped problem in building major teams. You’re much more likely to be able to reach into the developmental program to find a vault or floor that you can use in elite without a tremendous amount of tweaking (or to a lesser extent, beam). L10 bars being so radically different from elite means that the bars routine you need isn’t there.

I think this is actually one of the major drawbacks to the US development program sticking with the 10.0 system. Now they may have decided that the needs of the elite program shouldn't guide the developmental system which is an absolutely legitimate point of view. Most athletes in developmental wont come near an elite competition.

The problem is that FIG elite bars have now diverged/advanced pretty radically from pre-2006 bars so that they're almost different but related events. When gymnasts come out of the L10/NCAA system and into elite they seem to be missing CR more often then not. On floor and beam you can more often then not tweak or add onto these routines to get something usable in elite. But the average even "high level" NCAA bars routine would be missing CR and come with built in deductions (like squat ons as bars transitions). And just the act of replacing the squat ons makes the bars routine require more endurance even before you talk about the number of skills and connected elements just making the routines dramatically longer.

I'm deeply curious if the PHI gym fed will be putting the money into sending athletes to World Cups next year.

And if any NCAA gymnasts would be willing to travel internationally to meets that are in the middle of the NCAA season.

For reference, next year’s series:

And as is standard in order for a federation to send an athlete to a World Cup the federation would have to also send a judge or pay for a neutral judge replacement from somewhere else.

WAG World's Qualifiers from the Asian Games

These are the last qualifiers.

Japan and China qualified teams from 2022 Worlds. They will be joined by Korea and Taiwan (who were also the teams that came out of Asia last year.

Individuals will be IRFANALUTHFI Rifda (INA), FINNEGAN Aleah (PHI), ELPITIYA BADALGE DONA Milka Gihani Devyanjala (SRI), ARIPOVA Dildora (UZB), BAUYRZHANOVA Aida (KAZ), NATHAN Nadine Joy (SGP), KVAMME Kylee Ann (PHI), and YAP Emma (SGP)

The Philippines came in 5th behind Kazakhstan. They were strong on vault beam and floor but had a disaster rotation on bars (which they already only put up 3 gymnasts). Emma Malabuyo has no path to 2023 Worlds and wouldn't have unless the Philippines qualified a full team.

Chuso also did not qualify as an AAer for Worlds. She however was already qualified as a specialist. This will narrow her chances for going to the Olympics because she is no longer able to do the AA at worlds and that is how she qualified the last time. She missed it by 2 spots.

This really highlights the pitfalls of recruiting NCAA/L10 athletes into elite. Despite having a full team of 5 for this 4 up, 3 count situation, the Philippines only put up 3 bars routines (the only full team not to put up 4 on every apparatus). They ended the subdivision there with a disastrous 5 falls. (Finnegan only dropped to the ground once but collapsing onto the bar after the first skill also counts as a fall.)

I believe Gutierrez does train in the Philippines but I included her for completion.

They all look exhausted, which is likely related to this being the last rotation, but an elite bars routine is a lot longer than NCAA or L10. It has more composition requirements. Getting a D score higher than 4 requires connecting more difficult elements. It requires a lot of endurance.

I would also suggest that it’s a reason the US elite program keeps running into a bars-shaped problem in building major teams. You’re much more likely to be able to reach into the developmental program to find a vault or floor that you can use in elite without a tremendous amount of tweaking (or to a lesser extent, beam). L10 bars being so radically different from elite means that the bars routine you need isn’t there.

Asian Championships WAG schedule: June 16

These times are local. If you’re in the western hemisphere and planning to pull an all-nighter, be advised that Singapore is 12 hours ahead of US Eastern.

1992 Cottbus Turnier der Meister AA - German Commentary

This is another video from the OLGA German archive diving youtube channel. We didn't have anything from 1992 Cottbus prior to this. It was held a week before 1992 Worlds in Paris in mid April.

The among notable names her are Onodi, Galieva, Hadarean, and Hristova. There is also an Ellen Berger interview at the 12.00 time stamp which is both rare and potentially the last one she gave as WTC president.

There is also footage from 1966 Worlds of Erika Zuchold doing the first back handspring on beam at worlds.

This is what we had from 1966 Worlds before this small clip and it did not include Zuchold's important beam...

A reminder that beam this is an uncovered hunk of wood.

what would happen if an olympic medal was stripped long after the medals had already been awarded and distributed and the IOC was like "you have to give it back" and the athlete(s) were like "no 🫶"

i mean i know the Official Rules say they have to give them back and the NOC is supposed to be responsible for hunting down the medalists and retrieving the medals but as we know certain NOCs are not really beacons of integrity in compliance to official rules as they are written especially not when theyre handed down from entities with no real teeth

A friend of mine who has been in positions to know such things has told me in the past that failure to return a medal will result in the NOC being suspended and there is no wiggle room about it. You don't return it you don't get to play.

jordyn's hero-to-villain arc sure has been interesting to watch lmao

re notes (for those of you not on twitter very much): nothing terribly juicy (yet.....), just that shes miss val's protégée and also a flop ass head coach leading a major ncaa program to *checks notes* zero results, and several of the arkansas gymnasts (upperclassmen particularly) have expressed disappointment in how their college careers played out and have shaded her in particular (bailey lovett most recently) lol

Agreed on all of this but it's also amusing to see a few people not understand that Jordyn's results wont matter for her job. Arkansas hired her for her gold medal and the power it as a prestige element for their athletic department. I doubt their AD cares about their record.

every time theres an elite gymnast who i think is quite mature and smart i always want them to go to cal no matter what their gymnastics looks like lmfaooooo

So funny story about that. When @darthmelyanna was writing her novel about the Athens quad one of her fictional gymnasts ends up at Cal because there is more to college than gymnastics.

1992 Cottbus Turnier der Meister AA - German Commentary

This is another video from the OLGA German archive diving youtube channel. We didn't have anything from 1992 Cottbus prior to this. It was held a week before 1992 Worlds in Paris in mid April.

The among notable names her are Onodi, Galieva, Hadarean, and Hristova. There is also an Ellen Berger interview at the 12.00 time stamp which is both rare and potentially the last one she gave as WTC president.

There is also footage from 1966 Worlds of Erika Zuchold doing the first back handspring on beam at worlds.

This is what we had from 1966 Worlds before this small clip and it did not include Zuchold's important beam...

Yeah, this is a case of an athlete not knowing the rules well enough to improvise as needed. McCallum knew she’d broken the connection on the leap+turn and that she needed a leap connection, but didn’t realize/remember that she couldn’t repeat a leap she’d already done and get any kind of credit for it. It’s absolutely something that she and her coach should have discussed and trained in advance so she didn’t have to remember the rules in the middle of the routine.

(And that’s leaving aside the problem of her not connecting the improvised leaps either, because that wouldn’t have gotten credit even if she hadn’t repeated an element.)

I'm just glad that they were using a non-active athlete for the judges conference for once. Grace's beam from Tokyo is a great practice for this purpose.