Archive for November, 2015

2015 World Championships

Thursday, November 19th, 2015



The dust has settled on another Worlds, and by all accounts it was a fantastic event. Glasgow sure put on a show! Many dreams of qualifying to the Rio Olympic Games were fulfilled, while others were shattered. After two weeks of incredible gymnastics, it’s hard to choose just a few favourite moments, but here we go….

Kohei Uchimura (JPN) wins his 6th straight Worlds (7 years in a row counting the 2012 Olympics). If he wins in Rio next year too, he will have dominated two entire quads. Simply amazing!

I love the Dutch team! So much elegance and beauty, and they must be over the moon to have qualified directly to Rio by placing 8th. The icing on the cake was surely Sanne Wevers‘s silver medal on beam. Sanne’s twin, Lieke, and Eythora Thorsdottir were both delightful on floor.

Oksana Chusovitina (UZB) just keeps going and going. I really hope she can earn a spot to her 7th Olympics at the Test Event. Debuting a double front vault at age 40 is unfathomable, yet she managed to do it!

Simone Biles (USA) is in a league of her own. She is able to build up enormous D scores, and her E scores are fabulous too. Her tumbling is out of this world and her signature Biles (double layout half-out) never ceases to amaze me. Sae Miyakawa (JPN) also has phenomenal tumbling, but I don’t love the rest of her routine.

Manrique Larduet (CUB) earned an Olympic spot by winning bronze on the very last event, high bar. Phew! How silly is it that his silver medal in the All Around didn’t do the trick?! The FIG must be breathing a sigh of relief, because not qualifying after being second in the world to Uchimura would have been a big egg on their collective face!

I love how Ellie Black (CAN) throws every trick in the book on beam! She has now qualified to an apparatus final every year for 4 straight years now: vault at the 2012 Olympic Games, floor at the 2013 Worlds, and beam in both 2014 and 2015. She has also improved her All Around ranking each year: 13th in 2013, 9th in 2014 and 7th this year.

What were your favourite moments from the Glasgow Worlds?