2015 World Championships
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?
December 20th, 2015 at 5:03 pm
I agree that it’s ridiculous that AA medalists don’t automatically qualify for Rio. Thank goodness Manrique Larduet medaled in event finals. What about Larisa Iordache though? I think this rule is another example of the FIG putting more emphasis on event specialists than all-arounders.
May 10th, 2016 at 7:53 pm
Do you think the FIG intentionally left out 2015 AA medalists from automatic Olympic qualification, or was it a gross oversight? Even if they didn’t think there would be AA medalists from non-Top 12 countries, why not still include that provision in the qualification rules? Aside from Iordache and Larduet, whose situations may not have been predicted before the 2015 Worlds started, it seems they failed to consider the possibility that gymnasts like Giulia Steingruber or Oleg Verniaiev (the current AA European Champions) could possibly have found themselves in the same situation. Fortunately for them, SUI managed to grab one Olympic spot and Verniaiev will be able to compete in Rio with his team, but what about Iordache? She now faces tremendous competition from Ponor, who is also a serious medal contender. Iordache should have earned a spot in 2015, with Ponor receiving Romania’s sole berth.
May 10th, 2016 at 9:53 pm
Totally agree with the last line of your comment. I can’t fathom how this is simply not the case.