Lara Mori and Vanessa Ferrari
It’s take two for the Doha World Cup, which was supposed to wrap up the apparatus world cup Olympic qualifying series in March. Due to a postponement of over three months in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the meet is now taking place over the next four days, and the ten gymnasts who will earn berths to Tokyo will finally see payoff.
In addition to finally seeing the apparatus world cup spots named this weekend, the FIG should also confirm the athletes and countries that have qualified via the continental championships. Most of those who have already earned continental berths won’t be affected, but one there’s one notable – and potentially messy – exception on the men’s side, as the Russians technically earned a second non-nominative spot at the European Championships. But if Russia’s Vladislav Poliashov ends up winning the parallel bars berth here, given the order of how spots are awarded, it will mean Russia will have to accept the parallel bars spot on top of the all-around world cup berth they’ve already earned, in which case the Euros spot will open up to Nicola Bartolini of Italy.
That all depends on who wins rings, however. Right now, Liu Yang of China has the lead, and even though two other Chinese men lead apparatuses – Weng Hao on pommels and You Hao on parallel bars – with the one-per-country tie-breaker, Liu would get it, opening up the other two events to the athletes next-in-line, which would be Poliashov for parallel bars, which would mean Bartolini gets to go to Tokyo.
But the Chinese athletes aren’t competing in Doha this weekend, and Eleftherios Petrounias of Greece has a shot to take over the rings rankings if he can score a 15.333 or higher. If he wins rings, You is next in line to earn a spot for China on parallel bars. Both You and Poliashov have 90 points right now, with You winning the tie-breaker, but since neither are in Doha and with no one else mathematically close enough to take over, it means a Petrounias win on rings gives the parallel bars spot to You, which means that Russia will then win a non-nominative continental berth, and Bartolini wins nothing.
If you’re thinking “so Bartolini’s Olympic fate rests in the hands of Petrounias failing to match the scores he got at Euros?” then congrats, we’re in exactly the same mental space.
Thankfully, the rest of these spots are much easier to figure out, and some are even mathematically impossible to top.
For the women, Jade Carey of the United States has unofficially locked down the vault spot, Fan Yilin of China is mathematically unbeatable on the uneven bars, Ashikawa Urara of Japan is all set for beam, and none of these athletes have registered to compete in Doha because they don’t need to be there. The spots are theirs.
Carey is also technically the series winner on floor, but since she’ll already qualify on vault, she’s not eligible to also take the title – and the Olympic berth – here, leaving Italy’s Lara Mori and Vanessa Ferrari to battle it out. The two are tied in terms of points, as both have 80 total right now, and if either of them wins the gold on floor in Doha, that gymnast will snag enough points to win the Olympic berth outright.
If neither wins and if the two remain tied in terms of their points, Mori will win the tiebreaker based on her actual scores in her three counting exercises from the routines she’s already done. However, if Ferrari places second ahead of Mori and scores at least a 13.266, she will be able to drop 25 points and her corresponding 12.966 score from Baku 2020, which could then put her ahead of Mori’s total.
Basically, Ferrari either needs gold, or silver with a 13.266+ performance, while Mori can finish anywhere as long as Ferrari doesn’t do either of those things. Mori is then essentially showing up to play defense, to hold Ferrari back from overtaking her as the current leader, and she’ll either want to beat Ferrari here herself or hope that someone else beats her so she can be sure that Ferrari won’t be able to sneak in and get the spot.
For the men, Rayderley Zapata of Spain should be secure on floor while Epke Zonderland of the Netherlands will be all set on high bar, but the other four apparatuses could all see some really tight races.
I’ve talked about the rings situation already, where either Liu or Petrounias will qualify depending on how Petrounias performs here. To reiterate, if Petrounias gets it, You will get the parallel bars spot, but if Petrounias can’t score well enough to get through, Liu will take the rings spot, and Poliashov will get in on parallel bars.
Over on pommels, where Weng is leading at the moment but not eligible due to the one-per-country limitations, it’s looking like Kameyama Kohei of Japan will be next in line. He’s in Doha, as is the gymnast just behind him, but Saeedreza Keikha of Iran would have to win gold on the event just to tie Kameyama’s 80-point total, and then he’d also have to beat his FIG points total, which might be a tall order.
Finally, on vault, things are looking good for Shin Jean-hwan of South Korea, though Yonekura Hidenobu of Japan and Jorge Vega Lopez of Guatemala are close behind and mathematically capable of getting upsets (though if both Kameyama and Yonekura end up topping pommels and vault, respectively, Kameyama would win the tie-break to get Japan’s one available spot). Shin, Yonekura, and Vega Lopez will all compete in Doha this week, but if Shin brings out – and hits! – his full difficulty, he’ll be most likely to hold onto the top spot in the series.
The full roster is below. As far as I know, there won’t be a stream for qualifications – held Wednesday, June 23 and Thursday, June 24 – but the finals on Friday and Saturday will be live on the Olympic Channel.
| ALBANIA | |
| Matvei Petrov | |
| BELARUS | |
| Dzmitry Hurynovich Andrey Likhovitskiy Yahor Sharamkou |
|
| BRAZIL | |
| Francisco Barretto Junior Arthur Mariano Tomas Rodrigues Diogo Soares Caio Souza Arthur Zanetti |
Rebeca Andrade Lorrane Oliveira Flavia Saraiva |
| CROATIA | |
| Marko Jovicic | |
| CYPRUS | |
| Marios Georgiou | |
| EGYPT | |
| Mohamed Ashour Omar Mohamed Ali Zahran |
Zeina Ibrahim Jana Mahmoud Nancy Taman |
| FRANCE | |
| Coline Devillard | |
| GREECE | |
| Eleftherios Petrounias Antonios Tantalidis |
|
| GUATEMALA | |
| Jorge Vega Lopez | |
| HUNGARY | |
| Zsofia Kovacs | |
| IRAN | |
| Mahdi Ahmad Kohani Saeedreza Keikha Mohammadreza Khosronezhad Mahdi Olfati |
|
| ISRAEL | |
| Artem Dolgopyat Andrey Medvedev Alexander Shatilov |
|
| ITALY | |
| Vanessa Ferrari Lara Mori |
|
| JAPAN | |
| Kameyama Kohei Yonekura Hidenobu |
|
| JORDAN | |
| Ahmad Abu Al Soud | |
| KAZAKHSTAN | |
| Ilyas Azizov Milad Karimi Nariman Kurbanov |
|
| QATAR | |
| Ahmed Al Dyani | Duha Al Habshi |
| SOUTH KOREA | |
| Shin Jea-hwan | |
| SPAIN | |
| Nestor Abad Nicolau Mir Joel Plata Rayderley Zapata |
|
| TURKEY | |
| Ferhat Arican Adem Asil Ibrahim Colak Ahmet Önder |
|
| UKRAINE | |
| Petro Pakhniuk Igor Radivilov Yevgen Yudenkov |
Anastasiia Bachynska Diana Varinska |
| UZBEKISTAN | |
| Oksana Chusovitina | |
Article by Lauren Hopkins
The Gymternet 
What makes Jade qualify in vault as opposed to in floor? Why doesn’t the second place vault finisher get the birth and Jade takes the floor spot?
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Jade’s vault scores are higher than her floor scores, so with the tie-breaker, she’d win on vault.
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No, between different events there is no score comparison. Between different events the tie-breaker is by the average ranking points from all competitions attended (not just three counting). Jade’s average on VT is (25+30+30+30)/4=28.75. Her average on FX is (18+30+30+30)/4=27. So she gets the VT spot.
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That’s what I meant by her scores are higher…I should have said points!
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Here’s a different take I have based on my interpretation of the guidance. The Individual All-Around World Cup Series (Criteria 6) did not produce any results because not enough events were held. Therefore, those 3 spots should not be allocated, and instead be reallocated. However, the reallocations for Criteria 6 should happen AFTER all the original allocations, plus the reallocations for Criteria 1-5.
To break it down further:
Criteria 5 allocation (Individual Apparatus World Cup Series): Let’s presume You Hao wins parallel bars. However, because China won 2 other events, we go to the tiebreak, and let’s say either Weng Hao or Liu Yang earns the Apparatus +1 for China. That would then mean the parallel bars spot would go into the Reallocation Phase. It would not be given to Poliashov immediately.
Criteria 6 allocation (Individual All-Around World Cup Series): Because there wasn’t a minimum of 3 events held in the series, as stated above, those 3 spots should not be allocated, and instead be put into the Reallocation Phase.
Criteria 7 allocation (Continental Championships): Kartsev earned a non-nominative +1 for Russia by being the top eligible finisher in Qualifications.
Then let’s fast forward to the Reallocation Phase:
Criteria 5 reallocation: Poliashov earns a nominative spot for Russia for being the next best finisher in the parallel bars. This would be Russia’s second and final individual spot.
Criteria 6 reallocation: Because the series wasn’t held, the top 3 teams in Qualifications from the 2019 Worlds would earn spots. Despite finishing 1st, Russia can’t earn any additional individual spots, so the 3 teams would be China, Japan, and Ukraine.
So I’m thinking Ukraine stands to benefit and not Bartolini. I could be totally wrong on this but I’m just going by all the allocations in order first, followed by all the reallocations in order. Others may disagree with my interpretation, but I think at least we can all agree that this system sucks.
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Interesting…I read that the FIG has already awarded and announced the all-around world cup berths, so that’s why I didn’t include them in this scenario…I thought they were only awarding the apparatus world cup and the continental berths this week.
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Oh I see that here now: https://www.gymnastics.sport/site/news/displaynews.php?idNews=3061
That’s so confusing though, because in their qualification rules, the FIG refers to the cancellation of the series only in the Reallocation section. I hate this.
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I know…it’s such a mess. I feel like I had a good understanding of the process early on but with all of the COVID-related changes and cancellations and reallocations I now know what I’m talking about roughly 60% of the time, especially when the rules change without being really acknowledged aside from with a little line in a 50-page document somewhere, so it’s very hard for me to keep up with what has changed and why.
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From the revised qualification system document:
“Should the 2020 Individual All-Around World Cup Series not be held, the unused quota places will be
reallocated to the highest ranked eligible NOC based on the Team ranking results of Qualifications of the 2019 World Championships.”
Click to access en_Olympic+Qualification+System+Tokyo+2020+ART.pdf
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Oh ok, I totally missed your point, sorry. You are talking about when the spots are reallocated. We all supposed that the “reallocation phase” is not after all the spots of all criteria are assigned but after each criteria if there are spots to reallocate. But maybe you are right and indeed in the documents there is this statement:
“After the completion of the final qualification event, FIG will inform the respective NOCs of their allocated quota places. […] the NOCs will then have two (2) weeks to confirm if they wish to use these quota places. […] After this deadline, unused quota places will be reallocated”
So first all the “normal” spots are allocated, THEN all the remaing spots are reallocated.
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Thank you both for your analysis. I don’t know if the monster FIG created totally sucks (it does partially for sure). Clearly COVID helped creating that whole mess. I like the fact some countries can send specialists and IMO it didn’t go far enough (top 3 from the WC EF Circuit would have be great and maybe incentive for more countries to take part and send some of their best).
Is the VT podium from Doha WAG already decided ? (whatever the order)
When Italy will announce its team ? It’s probably not out of question Ferrari can make the team if Mori gets the individual ticket. I may be wrong but I dont see this happen the other way.
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Nice
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All I can say is thank God this is almost the end of all of this Calculus. Kudos to all of you who have managed to not only make sense of this stuff, but to become experts.
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I know, I cannot WAIT for it to be over. I had a pretty good handle on things initially but with all of the COVID changes I’m like, ready to completely get rid of gymnastics hahaha.
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Frankly I’ll be glad when this World Cup series mess is over with. The rich just get richer ie the United States women having 6 spots. I thought it was for athletes whose countries can’t qualify a team to have a chance as individuals via the all around series. Qualifying on individual appparatus is sooooo dumb. It’s just dumb
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Forgive me I’m stupid myself. If jade goes to Olympics qualifying as vault winner she competes in preliminaries and if she places top eight on vault she makes finals and that’s all she does? Is that how it works for her?
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No, she can compete in all 4 events in Qualifying, and therefore could potentially make the All-Around Final and more than just the vault Event Final. Her performance also contributes to the USA’s 2-per country rule for AA and event finals.
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Thank you Joe. That helps me understand a great deal better. I was hoping it wouldn’t count toward the 2 per country rule because that really negates mckayla skinners chances of making the team. Personally I think it will be Simone. Suni, Jordan and grace (consistency) when the dust settles barring injury of course. I sure hope Riley can get the other individual spot.
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I agree! Can you imagine only 2 of Biles, Lee, Chiles, and Carey making FX finals? Or really I should say, only 1 of Lee, Chiles, and Carey making FX finals, because Biles has the other spot locked up.
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Thank you Joe. That helps me understand a great deal better. I was hoping it wouldn’t count toward the 2 per country rule because that really negates mckayla skinners chances of making the team. Personally I think it will be Simone. Suni, Jordan and grace (consistency) when the dust settles barring injury of course. I sure hope Riley can get the other individual spot.
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Thanks for sorting through all of this! It’s SO COMPLICATED. Much appreciated! 🙂
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“However, if Ferrari places second ahead of Mori and scores at least a 13.266, she will be able to drop 25 points and her corresponding 12.966 score from Baku 2020, which could then put her ahead of Mori’s total.
Basically, Ferrari either needs gold, or silver with a 13.266+ performance, while Mori can finish anywhere as long as Ferrari doesn’t do either of those things.”
I’m confused. The 12.966 Q score from Baku is the one that is counting against her. That is the one she wants to drop. But if it’s the quals score that counts, does she need to actually win the event or get silver with the 13.266?
Maybe there’s no prelims in Doha?
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Only reason the Quals score counted from Baku 2020 is because the event was cancelled after the qualifications round, and the FIG declared the Quals scores would stand as the final scores to award the points from that competition. So Lauren’s math stands as is, assuming the event progresses as planned – the actual finals in Doha matter.
FIG website posting re: why the Baku qualifications scores count
https://www.gymnastics.sport/site/news/displaynews.php?idNews=2867
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Oh for the gods’ sake, I effing knew that. I think I was slipped me some molly or something in my Pho yesterday because I also forgot what color my suitcase was at baggage claim for a good 7 minutes.
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Even Mori loses I think she’s likely to go to Tokyo, as Ferrari is looking good to compete for Italy team, thereby giving up the slot. And Italy has the luxury to do so, not like the US.
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Oh for the gods’ sake, I effing knew that. I think I was slipped me some molly or something in my Pho yesterday because I also forgot what color my suitcase was at baggage claim for a good 7 minutes.
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