Tokyo 2011 - Closing Thoughts

Work and placements have had me snowed under the last week so this is going to be a few of my own subjective (and possibly biased thoughts) on the worlds in Tokyo rather than delayed reporting of results.

Consistency wins the day (sometimes) 

No-one could doubt that the USA team was the dominant force at these world championships, with all 5 active members doing their job marveously to win the team title. They were error free for the whole team qualification and team final- showing what a young and 'inexperienced' team can do with the right training. Such a contrast from day 1 of the US nationals this year where everyone was falling and we doubted that from that hot mess a team could be fielded to cope with the demands of the high pressure '3-up-3-count' team competition. Martha - we salute you!

The only other team to compete cleanly in the team final was Great Britain, another team who had a long selection process with many pre-world competitions. Even I criticised this process as asking for injury but it seems to have worked. The GB girls can focus on training with a team spot to London 2012 already in the bag. Shame we couldn't say the same for the boys!

That said, consistency doesn't count for everything or Great Britain would have a silver medal around their necks right now. China had (I think) 3 falls in finals and still managed to beat out Romania for the bronze medal. There has been plenty of bashing of the current scoring system this week and even calls to go back to the 'Perfect 10'. I wouldn't go that far - I think difficulty and innovation should be rewarded otherwise it opens the door to subjectivity and staleness. Yes, the demand for high levels of difficulty can sometimes be blamed for injuries (case in point- Aliya Mustafina), but careful coaching should be able to guard against this and there are rewards for doing what you can do and doing it well.

The All Around Arguement

The lasting memory and possible sore point of these championships will be the 0.033 point victory of Jordyn Wieber over Viktoria Komova. That's less than the deduction for a toe out of place!

Yes, I thought she'd won too. I think we all did. And it was devistating to watch the diminuitive Komova so disappointed after her narrow defeat. Maybe it was simply her own disappointment, but you get the feeling the tiny 16 year old felt the weight of Russian expectation on her as well. It's tough to live up to the reputation of Mustafina, who won so dominantly and easily last year, particularly when you yourself are coming back from an injury and not quite at full form.

Komova and Mustafina will both be back with a vengeance next year (touch wood, injuries aside) and who knows, If Wieber is 2012's Shawn Johnson, One of the russian's could well be 2012's Nastia Liukin and pip her to the post with a class performance. Still, Wieber deserves her dues, she has been the strongest most consistent gymnast in the world this season and fully deserves to call herself a world champion.

Reputation counts for nothing...
...If you can't hit! There were no repeat champions in the ladies event this year. The second day of event finals particularly was, I feel, a testament to good judging and the gymnast who hits on the day getting the reward. Few of us would have picked Ksenia Afansyeva as the world floor champion before the competition started. No-one would have thought Romania would go a whole world championships without a medal of any colour. Another blogger said that the sport was in need of 'celebrities', but gymnastics is not a show. It is a sport and the best athlete on the day should win the race.

Watch out for China.

We don't see a great deal from China throughout the year, but they usually find a way to come out and surprise us. This year that surprise was in the consistency and quality of Yao Jinnan and Sui Lu, who have been quietly training at home and came here fairly unheralded to take home 4 individual medals between them. China may not be the unstoppable force that they were in Beijing and their team performance her was far from faultless. But you can bet they have a regimented training programme to ready themselves for the olympics next Summer and we'll be seeing a lot of them in the O2 arena next August.

All Hail Kohei(enough said!)

Next Stop, London
The next big event on the artistic gymnastics calendar will be the test event in the Olympic venue, 7-19 January 2012. Out of the 8 teams in each discipline, 4 will qualify a full team to the Olympics.

On the women's side those teams are Italy, France, Canada, Spain, Holland, Brazil, Korea and Belgium. Italy definitely should have the strength to qualify and it would be strange to see Brazil not there at the olympics (they and France were the teams that pipped GB into the team final in Beijing). I sentimentally would like to see Canada qualify. Rather like GB they seem to practice safe, good quality gymnastics and hold onto their talent for longer than other countries. If Spain continue to improve at the rate they have in the last 12 month, who knows- they could be winning team medals by next August!!

On the men's side the teams yet to qualify are France, Great Britain, Spain, Canada, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Italy and Belarus. To be honest I don't really care so long as the GB boys qualify! They won't really contend for team medals, but they would have done a darn sight better than Romania had they made team finals in Tokyo. The GB men's team has come a long long way since 2008 and did not quite live up to potential in Japan but give them a chance and they should impress infront of a home crowd next Summer.

Anyway- if you stuck with all that - thanks and feel free to comment below. Here are the full worlds results and, to get you in the mood, the schedule for January's qualifying event.

07 January , 2012	Arrival Day for MAG and WAG
08 - 09 January 2012	MAG and WAG Training and Podium Training
10 January 2012	WAG Qualification
11 January 2012	MAG Qualification - Arrival Day for TRA
12 January 2012	TRA Training and Podium Training TRA Qualification - Men’s Floor Final - Women’s Vault Final Men’s Pommel Horse Final - Women’s Uneven Bars Final
13 January 2012	Trampoline Final (Men) - Men’s Rings Final                Trampoline Final (Women) - Men’s Vault Final Men’s Parallel Bars Final - Women’s Beam Final Men’s High Bar Final - Women’s Floor Final
14 January 2012	Departure Day for MAG, WAG, and TRA - Arrival Day for RG
15 January 2012	RG Training and Podium Training
16 - 17 January 2012	RG Qualification
18 January 2012	RG Individual and Groups Finals
19 January 2012	Departure Day RG