Tokyo 2020 is over…and what a whirlwind it was! The gymnasts did a spectacular job. Host Japan did a spectacular job. And the whole thing went off with fewer glitches than we could have imagined for an Olympic Games conducted during a pandemic!

These Olympic Games seemed to have so many more ups and downs than usual. Well, OK, nothing beats Sydney 2000 in that regard, but here’s a recap of some of the most memorable events.

The sportsmanship this time around was at a whole new level. Without the loud crowds, we could hear so many more words of encouragement from the sidelines. It was thrilling to see gymnasts from all different countries cheering for each other and taking selfies with one another. Thanks to social media, it seems like the gymnasts actually know each other. In bygone eras, even teammates who trained at different gyms in the same country didn’t even seem to know each other.

Liu Yang’s head roll to neck crack on rings had ME cracked up!

Simone Biles went through so much during these Olympics, and she showed us what a queen she really is. We learned a lot about mental health and how it can affect us physically. Simone remained brave and poised under such immense pressure.

Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum and Jordan Chiles should be proud of the way they pulled together to earn that silver medal! Grace was steady the whole time and proved she earned that spot on the team.

Gymnastics went ahead without any positive COVID-19 cases amongst the competing athletes!

It’s so upsetting that COVID-19 caused Kara Eaker, Leanne Wong and Naomi Visser not to have the Olympic experience they had worked so hard for. I hope Kara and Leanne have a super fun time in the NCAA, and that Naomi makes the next Worlds team.

Rebeca Andrade’s Cheng vault. Just wow!!! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a block and a delayed twist quite like that. So glad it is finally her time to shine!

Similarly, it was awesome seeing Lee Chih Kai perform his amazing pommel horse routine to earn a silver medal for Chinese Taipei. (I was secretly hoping it would be gold!) Hopefully next time Rhys McClenaghan will also bring home some hardware.

What’s with Oksana Chusovitina being invited to hold the coveted position of flag bearer, only to deny her when she showed up for the Opening Ceremony?! She deserves a proper explanation at the very least. She also deserves the standing ovation she received after completing vault in her 8th Olympics! No finals this time around, but she must be very proud of all her accomplishments.

The Russian WAG athletes finally won team gold! So well deserved. Many of their skills are just utter perfection. I hope Vladislava Urazova and Viktoria Listunova win some individual medals at the upcoming Worlds. And the MAG team stood atop the podium too! Who would have thought that all their legs would hold up so well?!

The Athlete Moment cameras were like virtual hugs from family and friends at home. It must have been so hard for young athletes to be at the Olympics without family, and even harder for parents to have to stay home!

Sunisa Lee, Rebeca Andrade, Angelina Melnikova and Vladislava Urazova made the AA finals so exciting to watch! What a wonderful podium. They all looked happy and displayed wonderful sportsmanship. It’s great seeing such a diverse group of medal winners!

Finally! Danusia Francis officially becomes an Olympian with a couple of toe-ons for a 9.033 E score!

Happy for Vanessa Ferrari, who won the floor silver after finishing in 4th place two Olympics in a row. She displayed a magnificent combination of tumbling and dance. She’s the whole package! Jade Carey’s tumbling was spectacular (…that Moors: WOW!). Her dance and music did go together and I do enjoy watching her routine, but there was a notable lack of artistry. She showed how mentally strong she is by coming back strong after the vaulting disaster the day before.

Thumbs down to the people attacking Vanessa online for the racist comments of SOMEONE ELSE!

It’s always fun to watch Rayderley Zapata and his fantastic tumbling (and sky-high hurdles!). I wish ties were not broken at the Olympics as it’s really not fair. Zapata deserved to share the gold with Artem Dolgopyat. Murakami Mai and Angelina Melnikova were super lucky to have received the same E- and D-scores on floor in order to both stay in bronze.

What possessed British Gymnastics to give trainer credentials to their alternate gymnasts so they could train in the Olympic gym?! They are lucky not to have received more severe consequences.

I just wanted Larisa Iordache to have a great Olympics and maybe even win a beam medal. How sad to have to withdraw minutes before the competition, after all that she’s been through.

For a minute there, it looked like first reserve and FIG apparatus qualifier Ashikawa Urara would not quite make it into the beam final. Everyone was on tenterhooks waiting to see if Ellie Black, Flavia Saraiva, Larisa Iordache and Simone Biles would be able to compete. Side note: it was SO hard seeing Ellie just miss out on a medal after doing a stellar routine on an injured ankle.

The parallel bars medallists seemed to be the most elated of all. It’s so exciting to see the silver and bronze medallists so thrilled with their results. What a special moment when Zou Jingyuan and Ferhat Arican hugged after descending the medal podium.

Unfortunately, China’s WAG had a rough go of it. During the selection procedures it looked like they had an embarrassment of riches, but that didn’t translate into Olympic medals until the very last day when Guan Chenchen and Tang Xijing clinched the gold and silver on beam. Tang’s routine was exquisite, and I loved Guan’s disco roll!

MyKayla Skinner was on an emotional roller coaster leading up to the vault final. Imagine planning to fly home early when you are a reserve athlete and had the 4th highest score in qualifications!

Artur Dalaloyan’s recently ruptured Achilles held up and he managed 6th AA! We also found out about Nikita Nagornyy’s kidney stones once the competition was over. These two sure were tenacious!

What a nice moment seeing AA champ Hashimoto Daiki place his high bar gold around Uchimura Kohei’s neck. He had promised to do that after qualifications if he were to win the high bar title. So much respect between teammates.

Gymnastics fans missed the many gymnasts who, for a variety of reasons, were not at these Olympics…Chen Yile, Lorette Charpy, Becky & Ellie Downie, Liu Tingting, Marta Pihan-Kulesza, Morgan Hurd, Teramoto Asuka, Ana Padurariu, Shirai Kenzo, Zhang Boheng, and many, many more.

The stadium used for gymnastics was beautiful and the wooden seats made for a calming atmosphere. The organizing committees, workers and volunteers in Japan are to be commended for their amazing work in difficult times!

What were your most memorable moments?

I have so many fantastic memories from the 2017 World Championships that I don’t even know where to start! It was my first time going to a Worlds, and one of the most exciting things was just seeing the gymnasts in real life. I chatted with Yvonne Tousek and Cristina Bontas (both super friendly!), and got my picture taken with Daniela Silivas, Dominique Moceanu, Ekaterina Lobaznyuk, Amy Tinkler and Brittany Rogers. We saw sooooo many gymnasts roaming the stadium too…everyone from Marian Dragulescu to Ragan Smith on crutches to Svetlana Khorkina.

Here are some of my favourite things from the Montreal Worlds, in no particular order:

I loved the dramatic music and the way each gymnast was introduced with a burst of dry ice (is that what that was?!) and 10 flames. Poor Weng Hao (CHN), Artur Dalaloyan (RUS) and Zou Jingyuan (CHN) didn’t get the flames because they were standing too far off to the side, and no one wants to see a gymnast get singed eyebrows.

Nadia Comaneci (ROU) was interviewed on stage each of the four days of finals (she even did her famous floor pose!), and Max Whitlock (GBR) came out on the floor on the final day to talk about winning Pommels. The organizing committee definitely kept the crowd entertained, not only with the fun intros, but also by having the “present cam” and by having the audience vote for their choice of “rotation” music.

I think I have a new favourite! Elena Eremina (RUS)! She is such a beautiful gymnast, and she looks cheerful and sweet. I never paid much attention until I saw her on YouTube looking overjoyed that teammate Angelina Melnikova had won floor at the 2017 European Championships…a final she herself was also competing in. It’s great she came away from her first Worlds with a silver and a bronze, but I would have preferred to see her win Uneven Bars!

Oksana Chusovitina (UZB) was absolutely amazing on Vault. She competed a layout front full (a bit piked) and a Tsukahara-1.5 with among the best form seen in the final. I wish she could have snuck in for a medal. Similarly, the very enthusiastic Jorge Vega Lopez was phenomenal and it would have been cool to see him bring some hardware back to Guatemala.

Zou was unbelievable on Parallel Bars. He has absolute control over his body and has mastered this event. He and Oleg Verniaiev (UKR) ended up miles ahead of a strong field of finalists. I was also thrilled to see Hidetaka Miyachi (JPN) on High Bar. His double-twisting layout Kovacs is out of this world!!! It was such a shame when he missed the tucked version….

Kenzo Shirai (JPN) was on fire!!! He is absolutely phenomenal on Floor and Vault. His twisting is indescribable; his quadruple twist looks like a triple, his triple-twisting Yurchenko looks like a double…and he does it all with immaculate form (and a smile on his face! OK, not really). He won Floor by a margin 1,100 times greater than the margin by which he won Vault.

It was fun seeing the Twitter exchange between Morgan Hurd (USA) and JK Rowling!

Surprise medallists…at least, surprises to me! Tim Srbic (CRO) nailed his full-twisting double layout to stand atop the High Bar podium. Almost, not a huge shock, but it’s always kinda cool when a newby like Hurd steps up and wins gold (in the All Around , no less!). I breathed a sigh of relief when Mai Murakami (JPN) finally got a gold medal after ending up in 4th in the All Around AND on Beam.

Brooklyn Moors (CAN) totally deserved the Longines Award for Elegance. What a gorgeous floor routine, complete with a Podkopayeva mount.

Yul Moldauer (USA) was a picture of consistency. He’s such a neat and tidy gymnast. I love Shirai, but I would have been cool with Moldauer winning the Longines Award.

Whoa – only 2 gymnasts managed to score in the 13s on Beam in the All-Around finals: Tabea Alt (GER) and Eremina. And by that, I mean that the 13s were the HIGHEST scores!

Nina Derwael: Belgium’s first medal! She’s been scooping up Uneven Bars medals at various meets for years now, so it as great to see her win bronze at her first World Championship!

Ellie Black (CAN) was a total crowd favourite. It was deafening in the stands before, during and after each of her routines. For her to finish 2nd AA (just 0.1 out of 1st!) was thrilling for the home crowd.

DISAPPOINTMENTS:

This didn’t turn into the Kohei Uchimura (JPN)-Oleg Verniaiev (UKR) showdown that I was hoping for. I can’t even describe how sad I was when I heard that Uchimura was injured and I realized I wouldn’t see him compete in Montreal. I didn’t even see him in the stadium, and he was the one I was most excited to see. 🙁

All the other injuries: Larisa Iordache (ROU), Ragan Smith (USA), Yang Hak Seon (KOR), Vanessa Ferrari (ITA)….  It’s so sad when that happens after all their hard work (not to mention the severe thinning of the field when top contenders are forced to withdraw).

Russian David Belyavsky’s heartbreak on High Bar was awful; the Men’s AA was truly a highlight – a real nail-biter! It was so sad for all the gymnasts who fell, especially Randy Leru (CUB) who looked devastated after he sat down his gorgeous double-twisting double layout off High Bar in the event final. It was also a major bummer for his teammate, Manrique Larduet, to come away from these Worlds without a medal.

I wanted to see Lieke and Sanne Wevers (NED) (I did see them in the crowd a few times!), Eythora Thorsdottir (NED) and Catalina Ponor (ROU), but unfortunately they didn’t make finals.

Weng’s Pommels was simply sublime, but a slight glitch on the dismount and a lower D-score was enough to leave him in 6th. It was kind of fun booing with everyone else when his score came up and we realized he was not in the medals.

(Oh! The video doesn’t do the routine justice. In real life, his body line was gorgeous…here, it just looks REALLY GOOD.)

So all in all, it was a great meet and I had an amazing time with my sister in Montreal. We left the city with fabulous memories. I hope another competition of this calibre come to this corner of the world in the near future.