Manila Esposito, Alice D’Amato, Martina Maggio, Veronica Mandriota, Giorgia Villa, and Elisa Iorio

The 2022 World Championships start tomorrow in Liverpool, England, and will serve as the first qualifier for the 2024 Olympic Games, with a total of six teams earning berths for Paris.

Below, you can find everything you’ll need to follow the competition over the next few days, including who’s competing, the complete schedule, and how you can follow along.

What’s at Stake?

Unlike the qualifications to get into worlds, qualifying from worlds to the Olympics is pretty straightforward. For both WAG and MAG, securing a spot for Paris is as simple as finishing top three in finals. That’s it!

Unlike previous mid-quad worlds, however, this year’s worlds will not act as a qualifier for next year’s worlds. The 24 teams that qualified this year will have to re-qualify to worlds via continental championships again in 2023, meaning we could see a slight shake-up for some of the teams that were on the bubble for making it this year.

Who’s Competing?

We’ve been tracking the qualification process for worlds since it began with the first world cup in February and concluded with Euros in August, and we’ve also been tracking the team announcements for every program over the past few months, as well as following along with changes to both the teams and individual spots as athletes have been injured and replaced.

The complete lists of athletes set to compete in Liverpool are below.

Women’s Roster

Men’s Roster

When’s it Happening?

Here’s the complete schedule, along with a breakdown of who’s in each subdivision. All times are local to Liverpool, which is currently five hours ahead of ET…for the next three days.

Keep in mind that England’s daylight savings ends this Sunday, October 30, meaning the clock will jump back and Liverpool will only be four hours ahead of ET, since the U.S. doesn’t end daylight savings until November 6, after which Liverpool will be five hours ahead of ET again. Fun! If you’re not in the U.S. or England, be sure to check into when/if your country is jumping back, and here’s a time zone conversion tool just in case.

How Can We Watch?

Streaming finals will vary based on your location. The U.S. will stream all finals on Peacock, the UK will stream via the BBC,  and we’ll add a few more local streams as soon as they share links.

The Olympic Channel should also be streaming finals, as should the FIG on YouTube, which is where we’ll also see videos of each routine after the fact, though I believe these streams will only be available to people within countries that haven’t purchased broadcast rights.

Notice that I only said finals for the above. Eurovision is coordinating and distributing worlds to broadcasters this year, but their list of transmissions only includes finals, not qualifications, which means no broadcaster can stream qualifications since they get their transmissions via Eurovision. This is…kind of egregious? Usually, the distributor has transmissions for every qualification session, and then whether a broadcaster chooses to use them or not is up to them, but to not even provide these transmissions is not something I’ve ever seen at this level of competition before in nearly 20 years of watching worlds and it is truly embarrassing for the sport.

Because the distributor is not handling qualifications, my only hope is that this means the FIG will do it, but my expectations are very low and since we haven’t heard anything yet, I really don’t think people who are not physically in the arena will have any way to watch qualifications – an Olympic qualifier – as they happen live.

We will at least have access to live scores, which are being handled by Swiss Timing, and you can also find them on the Liverpool 2022 website. The FIG’s microsite for worlds also has a Programme & Results section that should include start lists, live scores, and final results.

I personally am credentialed as “remote media” because I was able to get access to a fantastic media livestream last year and decided this would be preferable over traveling to a crowded event at the start of flu and COVID season. But I don’t know if we’ll even have that this year – I’ve emailed several people on the comms teams for both the FIG and the local organizing committee, and I’ve received either “no clue” responses or no responses at all, so I’m again keeping my expectations low. Without qualification streams, we likely will not share live blogs with quick hits, but will be following along with whatever videos the FIG posts and will share recaps of each qualifying session as soon as they’re complete, sharing an analysis of what’s happening in terms of who’s making finals, who’s missing finals, and so on.

We’ll update this post with more information as it becomes available.

Article by Lauren Hopkins