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A succinct summary.

The young Team USA pulled together after their leader and 2010 World Champion on the Vault, Alicia Sacramone, was left off the team with an injured Achilles tendon. Headed by Jordyn Wieber, who qualified second for the Individual All-around Final on Thursday, the team impressed with solid performances on all apparatus and topped the rankings with a total of 234.253 …

The 2010 Youth Olympic Champion and first year senior, Victoria Komova, helped Team Russia to an overall 231.062 that ranked them second. Weakened by the absence of reigning All-around World Champion Aliya Mustafina, who is recovering from a torn ACL, the defending World Champions lost valuable points in the Floor event, when Anna Dementyeva fell and Komova stepped out of bounds. Apart from this mistake, the young Komova demonstrated great consistency, mastering routines of highly difficult with incredible precision. She leads the All-around ranking …

read more on FIG – Komova and Team USA prevail in Qualifications

As you can usually do on this site, click on the pic to see the original.

Funny. And entertaining.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (10min)

The ladies put on a terrific show over the past two days. Congratulations on your skill and perseverance in qualifying to one of the greatest World Championships ever.

Here’s the most important result — the list of those nations who qualify a team directly to the Olympics.

1. USA 234.253
2. Russia 231.062
3. China 230.370
4. Romania 227.228
5. Japan 223.543
6. Australia 221.846
7. Germany 221.163
8. Great Britain 220.553

CONGRATULATIONS TO HOST JAPAN. Well deserved!

I had predicted: USA, CHN, ROM, RUS …

Russia did a fantastic job in prelims, looking far better than they had all week. Congratulations.

Some have questioned whether or not Komova’s mother, Vera Kolesnikova, should be judging — but I don’t see her on the prelims assignments sheet (PDF) and assume she wasn’t drawn. In fact, there’s no Russian judge … unless you count Nellie Kim, who competed for the USSR, was born in what is now Tajikistan, judges for Belarus and who lives in the States.

Personally, I see no problem with a family member judging. It happens all the time, all over the world.

China did a great job on Vault — landing 4 DTYs. But then missed Bars, their best event.

I do feel badly for Olympic Champion He Kexin. To me it looked like she tried too hard — going too BIG on all 3 Jaegers. And falling on the layout.

It’s unlikely we’ll see her at Worlds or Olympics again. China can’t afford to carry a one apparatus gymnast — especially one that missed in both Rotterdam and Tokyo.

Instead of 6 gymnasts (Tokyo) only 5 will be sent compete in London. And gymnasts 1yr too young for this competition will be age eligible for the test meet.

Many teams will have a completely different line-up.

Next, the 8 teams that move on to London “test” event from January 10-18th, 2012. (With only 5 gymnasts — Olympic rules.) Buy your tickets here.

9. Italy 219.578
10. France 217.827
11. Canada 215.328
12. Spain 214.028
13. Netherlands 212.828
14. Brazil 212.497
15. Korea 211.930
16. Belgium 208.828

Four of these teams will there qualify for London. Four will not.

Here are the qualifiers from prelims to AA and Apparatus and Team Finals Tokyo.

VT QUALIFIERS
1. Maroney USA 15.083
2. Chusovitina GER 14.833
3. Pena DOM 14.466
4. Steingruber SUI 14.299
5. Barbosa BRA 14.266
6. Moreno MEX 14.249
7. Nabiyeva RUS 14.224
8. Phan VIE 14.216
R1. Jo KOR 14.149
R2. Maksyuta ISR 14.016
R3. Sheppard HUN 13.916

UB QUALIFIERS (Corrected)
1. Komova RUS 15.733
2. Dufournet FRA 15.066
3. Tsurumi JPN 14.933
4. Huang CHN 14.900
5. Nabiyeva RUS 14.883
6. Douglas USA 14.866
7. Wieber USA 14.800
8. Teramoto JPN 14.683
R1. Yao CHN 14.566
R2. Seitz GER 14.433
R3. Tweddle GBR 14.433

BB QUALIFIERS
1. Komova RUS 15.400
2. Sui CHN 15.400
3. Wieber USA 15.233
4. Yao CHN 15.066
5. Ponor ROM 15.000
6. Raisman USA 14.933
7. Racea ROM 14.733
8. Inshina RUS 14.566
R1. Millousi GRE 14.450
R2. Whelan GBR 14.400
R3. Teramoto 14.366

FX QUALIFIERS
1. Raisman USA 14.833
2. Sui CHN 14.600
3. Wieber USA 14.566
4. Yao CHN 14.533
5. Komova RUS 14.491
6. Ferrari ITA 14.466
7. Bulimar ROM 14.400
8. Tweddle GBR 14.433
R1. Mitchell AUS 14.391
R2. Afanasyeva RUS 14.325
R3. Chelaru ROM 14.233

ALL-AROUND

Komova, Wieber, Yao, Raisman, Afanasyeva, Huang
Seitz, Haidu, Tsurumi, Mitchell, Ferrari, Jarosch
Whelan, Van Gerner, Tanaka, Porgras, Little, Lopez
Izurieta, Lee, Hypolito, Steingruber, Malaussena, & Ferlito.

Reserves: Brevet, Francis, Heo, Barbosa

I had predicted Wieber would be far ahead of the rest. Yet Komova was able to gain a slight points advantage despite not competing her Amanar. (Some say she’s only done one in Tokyo.)

Komova’s wonderful. But unreliable. I’d bet on Wieber in the showdown. 🙂

Sadly, Beth Tweddle made an error on Bars and will not defend her title. In fact, none of our individual World Champions will defend.

It’s great to see Peng Peng on the world stage.

A candidate for Longines Elegance Award?

Of 243 female gymnasts registered, most did compete. We don’t have the stats yet, but I’m quite sure the number of injuries will be fewer than Rotterdam 2010.

c/o Double Front — here is one girl injured in the first flight, first day.

It’s a dangerous sport. Absolutely.

Despite my loud criticisms of the WAG Code of Points being partly responsible, most girls are strapped up, but still walking following the prelim competition.

In fact, I was very happily surprised how much better the girls looked in competition than in training.

Judges track “hit” and “stick” percentages. I wish we could get a copy of those stats.

Overall, Bars was the most impressive apparatus. The gap between CHN/RUS and the rest of the world is shrinking. Teams like Korea and Italy do similar routines now, for example.

Vault is still astonishingly weak, in my opinion, compared with MAG. When 36yr-old crazy legs Chusovitina can still make finals, there aren’t enough McKayla Maroney’s coming up to take her place.

Here are the best links from women’s prelims:

• ESPNw – Memorable moments from prelims

• FIG – Haidu puts Romania in pole position
(odd headline as Sher says)

• Andy Thornton – Women’s Team Qualifications…Themes From The Top Three

• FIG – Komova and Team USA prevail in Qualifications

Gritty details on what happened via LIVE blogs: Examiner and TAA.

There was plenty of good stuff on Facebook and Twitter at the time … but the river of news has washed away now.

Jessica is blogging for Double Front and has quite a different perspective of the meet than we do in the well-fed media sections:

Follow her posts over the week on Double Front.

@officialFIG during the women’s AA Final.

Click PLAY or watch her on YouTube.

It’s a lot of FUN following twitter LIVE during the competition. If you don’t have an account you might want to try it for BIG MEETS only.

FIG Official … The young Russian was impressive today. First of the All-Around Qualifications (60.157) and best score of the competition : 15.733 on the Uneven Bars.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

… At this time, Liukin doesn’t plan to do the All-around, but rather will focus on uneven bars and balance beam, once again teaming with father Valeri as her coach.

“Trainings been going well, just basically taking things a day at a time,” Liukin says. “I’ve been trying to go out of my way to train here [in Tokyo]. It’s been hard. I have to be here for every single session as the FIG Athlete Representative, so it makes it a little bit difficult with my schedule. I’m definitely going to go out of my way to find time to train, if it’s waking up at 5 a.m. just to go for a run or driving an hour to get to the gymnastics gym. …

Inside Gymnastics

Excellent.

Next step is to give up all the distractions of celebrity. As Shawn has.

Read more details on Nancy Armour’s AP release.

Click PLAY or watch the Inside Gymnastics interview on YouTube.

Is this correct?

Click through and you’ll see the votes don’t add up.

GymInfo – 2012 Men’s Gymnastics Pre-Season Coaches Poll

RANK

1 Oklahoma
2 Illinois
3 Michigan
4 Stanford
5 California Berkeley
6 Penn State

… see the full list.

FIG Official – Qualifications, Uneven Bars.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (14.900).

That’s the way backward giants should be done. I’m happy to report there are very few giants “tapping” over the low bar (WOGA style) at Worlds.

She’ll likely qualify for Bars and AA Finals.

The star for China in prelims was YAO Jinnan.

FIG Official – Qualifications, Beam. The best Chinese gymnast in the All-Around Qualifications : 59.031.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

She’ll almost certainly make Floor, Beam and Bars Finals as well as AA.

… Hey, this is the first meet in a long, long time where there’s been no talk of Chinese gymnasts being underage. Nice.