Eleftherios Petrounias

The Doha World Cup ended a nearly three-year Olympic qualification process earlier today, determining the ten athletes earning nominative berths for the Tokyo Games.

Most of the women’s spots were mathematically locked going into Doha, with floor the only apparatus still in contention. Italian gymnasts Lara Mori and Vanessa Ferrari went head-to-head in today’s final, but Ferrari with her high difficulty and one of her best-executed sets of the quad easily took the title to add another 30 points to her overall FIG total, coming in at 85 points to Mori’s 80.

Ferrari now joins Jade Carey of the United States (vault), Fan Yilin of China (bars), and Ashikawa Urara of Japan (beam) to complete the unofficial list of women who will be awarded nominative berths, but she’s also on Italy’s shortlist of five athletes in contention for the main Olympic squad, in which case she’d have to decline her world cup berth, making room for Mori, who is currently the reserve, to take her place.

On the men’s side, Rayderley Zapata of Spain and Epke Zonderland of the Netherlands were mathematically unbeatable on their respective apparatuses – floor and high bar – but the remaining four still had close contests that were decided here.

With a 15.500, Eleftherios Petrounias of Greece surpassed the score he needed to overtake Liu Yang of China in the rings rankings. With Liu out, it meant China’s next-in-line event leader, You Hao on parallel bars, would qualify a nominative spot, ahead of Russia’s Vladislav Poliashov, who is likely to be sent to the Games as part of the Russian team regardless.

Yonekura Hidenobu of Japan won vault here, while apparatus leader Shin Jea-hwan of South Korea finished fifth after falling on his first set. Yonekura’s win enabled him to tie Shin at a total of 85 points, but Shin will win the tie-breaker based on his actual scores. Even had Yonekura won, however, he would have lost the one-per-country tie-breaker against teammate Kameyama Kohei, who ranks first on pommel horse just a tenth ahead of reserve Saeedreza Keikha of Iran, who won the pommels title yesterday.

A full list of qualifiers is below. Keep in mind that this list is based on the FIG’s ranking and tie-breaker rules, but no spots have been officially confirmed and could be subject to change.

Article by Lauren Hopkins