With today’s nomination of Isabella Amado of Panama for the tripartite invitation place – also known as the “wildcard spot” – for the 2016 Olympic Games, the qualification procedure is now officially complete with all twelve countries and all 38 individual athletes set for Rio this summer.
The Olympic Tripartite Commission, comprised of members of the International Olympic Committee, the Association of National Olympic Committees, and the International Gymnastics federation, is allowed to name one gymnast of their choosing to an Olympic berth. This exception from the standard qualification procedure applies to countries represented at last year’s world championships that have sent eight or fewer athletes to the previous two Olympic Games, which included Bermuda, Bolivia, the Cayman Islands, Malta, Monaco, and Panama in 2016. Federations interested in earning this spot had to apply by January 15 of this year in order to be considered.
Amado, who will turn 20 during the Games and will compete for Boise State alongside fellow 2016 Olympian Courtney McGregor next season, trains at Excalibur in Virginia and competes level 10, having also qualified to J.O. nationals this spring. She has represented Panama for the entirety of her senior career beginning in 2012, and has medaled at the South American Championships, Central American Games, and in three FIG World Challenge Cups in addition to competing at the 2014 and 2015 world championships.
With a 48.133 at worlds last year, Amado had the highest all-around finish among the other tripartite contenders, and was ten spots away from earning a spot at the test event. It was a relatively weak performance for Amado, about two points lower than her typical potential after uncharacteristic mistakes on bars and floor as well as a fall on her best event, beam, without which she likely could have qualified on her own merit. Instead, she is now an incredibly strong tripartite nominee, and should perform at the same standard as her fellow Olympians in Rio this summer.
A full list of qualified teams and individuals is below.
| TEAM QUALIFIERS | |
| United States | Canada |
| Russia | Netherlands |
| Great Britain | Brazil |
| China | Germany |
| Italy | Belgium |
| Japan | France |
Reserve teams are Australia and Switzerland.
The reserve gymnasts are Marina Nekrasova of Azerbaijan and Farah Ann Abdul Hadi of Malaysia.
Article by Lauren Hopkins
The Gymternet 
Love it when even the tripartite nomination can perform to the same competitive level!
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Yes, so glad Amado was in the mix! I originally heard it was countries with six or fewer but they must have changed that because the top all-arounders under that rule all had very low scores. Amado is a great performer and does fabulous work on beam typically with the medals to prove it. She will be a great fit in Rio!
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https://worldarchery.org/news/133622/tripartite-commission-identifies-nocs-rio-2016-invitation-places
According to this, the number is actually 8!
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Yes, it was once six but they changed it to eight because there were no countries with strong enough contenders when the rule was six.
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Why does Greece, Hungary Spain Poland Mexico has 2 names for 1 spot each?
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They each qualified two gymnasts to the test event so they get to choose which of the two represents them. It’s not an open-ended non-nominative spot for the federation like Switzerland, South Korea, Australia, and Romania have meaning they can’t choose anyone from the country, but it’s not a locked nominative spot dedicated to one gymnast either. It’s somewhere in between, which is good because if like, they go with Vasiliki for Greece, and she gets injured, Argyro can go in her place whereas with the locked nominative spots, if that gymnast is injured, the spot can’t go to someone else in the country, it has to go to a reserve.
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Also I am confused according to https://thegymter.net/2015/10/16/how-these-world-championships-work/ in the nominative vs non nominative paragraph it says ” spots qualifying from the Test Event to the Olympics are NOT nominative” . Is that wrong in the prior article?
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That was actually reversed in the original article because the rules we originally got from the FIG were wrong – we corrected it in a later article!
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Lauren, do you think for 2020, that one individual from a country that didn’t qualify a full team to the games, should allow 1 spot (like total, not per country) for a gymnast who could potentially medal or get into all around finals. For example: Laura Jurca, Catalina Ponor, Noemi Makra, etc.
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Because 2020 has a different qualification system, it will be more open to multiple gymnasts per non-qualifying teams, so it really won’t be as much of a problem. But the catch is that the gymnast must earn the spot at a qualifying event…so Catalina Ponor could earn a second spot for Romania, but it wouldn’t just be handed to her because of “potential.” She’d have to earn it.
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Larissa would already be qualified under the new rules because of her all around bronze last year. Ponor would likely get the test event spot. It’s so stupid how the current third best all arounder in the world has to prove anything else in order to make it to the olympics.
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Are gymnasts really allowed to live in 1 country but compete for another? I thought there’d be a rule against that.
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Yep, in fact a good number of gymnasts who compete for various countries around the world are from or live in other countries…all of Azerbaijan’s representatives are Russian, Jamaica and Armenia will both be repped by Americans at the Games, one of the Swedish gymnasts competes for Georgia…typically when there are countries where no gymnastics program exists, if gymnasts with ties to these countries have citizenship there, they can compete for them which is great because they’re often the first gymnasts these countries have in the Olympics (as is the case with Jamaica and Armenia this year). Amado is a Panamanian gymnast who moved to the U.S. but is still a citizen of Panama and so because of her dual citizenship, she basically can choose which country she wants to represent.
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Thanks Lauren! Great idea for those smaller nations to still be represented!
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