Rio 2016: Event Finals Day 1

Vault and uneven bars.

Vault

I honestly didn't think for a moment that Dipa and Chuso would land their produnovas. We've seen much better efforts from both of them in the past (especially Chuso, whose landing was much worse than Dipa's), but crashed produnovas, mainly from Yamilet Peña, have been a staple of women's gymnastics ever since the actual Yelena Produnova retired. It would have been just wrong to see a successful produnova at a vault final. I find it so amazing that so far Yelena is still the only woman to have done that vault well. Actually, she's the only woman to have done that even okay, and she actually did it on the old vaulting horse, not this springy table. Congrats to Dipa for only having her bum brush the ground though, hers are definitely the most safe attempts these days. I hope the publicity from the Olympics helps to make her training conditions much better, maybe we'll see a proper produnova from her one of these days.

We had two commentators for gymnastics, one of them a technical expert (who though Wang's tsukahara was a yurchenko vault...) and the other one just there to keep the conversation going. The second one was super excited over Dipa's difficulty and kept repeating it over and over again without realizing that Chuso had done the same exact vault only minutes earlier, it was a bit embarrassing. The technical commentator tried to mention it, but was too careful with her wording and the message didn't get through. Maybe they could hire me? I know my facts, but hiding behind the pillow when my favorites are competing might get in the way of quality commentary.

Hong Un Jong also decided to go for broke and brought out the triple twisting yurchenko. It was worse than the ones we saw in training so the risk didn't pay off, especially since they didn't even credit the difficulty. I was a bit annoyed at Hong during last year's World Championships vault finals, because she was the leader of the competition, but grinning and laughing when they wheeled injured Giulia Steingruber out of the arena in a wheelchair. I definitely don't think she was laughing at Giulia's misfortune, I think it was actually something her coach said. And medals are probably extremely well rewarded and valuable in North Korea, both financially and politically... But it was still a bit tactless considering the situation, or just bad timing.

Which brings me to Giulia. The injury in Glasgow was nothing serious and she came to Rio with great expectations, she was even the Swiss flag bearer. And even though AA didn't work out, she got herself a medal on vault. I feel like she's been around forever, a contestant at every vault final since last quad. But even though she's had plenty of success in Europe, this was her first medal at an Olympic/World level. What a time to peak. And her rudi really is incredible. She was surprisingly blasé about her bronze though, I remember her crying at the Europeans several times (both out of disappointment and happiness) but now she looked like it was nothing. And so did Paseka. Masha was probably a bit disappointed that she didn't get the gold (it was her goal at these Olympics), so she didn't look overly happy about the result. I feel like I was more excited about their medals than them, but maybe they were excited inside. Or it just takes them some time to process what happened.

Masha didn't have her best day, but a silver at the Olympics is still great. She was drifting to the side with the cheng, landed her amanar in a deep squat and had to take a big step back in order to not sit down the vault. It has looked like this throughout the competition, so I think it's her back bothering her. Oddly enough, Simone also had to take a hop back on her amanar, but in her case I think it was about trying to stick and avoid the big hop forward she usually does. The commentators were going wild with Simone and it was justified, what a score on that cheng! Especially compared to Masha and Hong, Simone's cheng is spectacular.

I forgot to mention Shallon Olsen and Wang Yan, but they weren't that memorable. Wang Yan looked just like usual, good but not great and Shallon Olsen still has some refining to do, but she's still super young. They both are actually. I like that Shallon does her second vault tucked though, it's so rare these days. Brings me back to the days of Khorkina. The commentator managed to embarrass herself again and actually thought she meant to do it straight. "She has her knees noticeably bent so I'm sure the judges will take deductions, they are supposed to be straight". Ummm, right... 

A nice final really. Lots of drama but nothing serious, no injuries or big disappointments. But somehow watching this made me miss McKayla so much. 

1. Simone Biles 2. Maria Paseka 3. Giulia Steingruber

Uneven Bars

As I said, I was too scared to watch, I was too emotionally invested. It actually took me a couple of hours after the final aired to look at the results, and then finally the competition itself. But thank you Aliya for not letting me down.

Jessica Lopez started out with a nice routine. She did her difficult routine with many execution issues, but it didn't matter because she made the final and hit her routine there. She was overjoyed and it was nice to see. 

Gabby unfortunately hasn't been on all year long and wasn't now either. That fight though! I can't believe she managed to save the short handstand without coming off and finish her routine so cleanly afterwards without running out of stamina. She's clearly in top shape physically, but her mental game has been off for awhile. I would love her work on bars if it wasn't for that last pirouette and those giants winding up to the dismount, her elbows drive me crazy.

Aliya had the difficult job of being the first top contestant to go, she needed to score high enough to keep Maddie and Dasha away from her gold medal. Her execution on bars is incredibly consistent, in good and bad, but I don't think this was quite as good as her routines from qualifications and team final. Just a tiny bit looser with the legs on the komova II and jaeger, and slightly under-rotated dismount with the step. But the way she floated the transitions, and that pak! I could spend hours watching that series in slow motion. 

Maddie did one of her prettiest routines to date, legs locked together beautifully, even her lines have definitely improved from last year. But her handstands and pirouettes just don't compare to Aliya's. And that dismount! *cringe* I needed to go watch a bunch of Vika's full outs to recover from that after the slow motion replays. The commentator actually declared it perfect and said that there's nothing to deduct, but Maddie's sumo squat begs to disagree. She slightly outscored Aliya in execution, but not enough to tie with her. Only a few hundredths more and Aliya would have ended her lucky streak of winning tiebreaks. She was nervously waiting for the results with her monkey (I'm sure the panda is jealous) while Maddie handled her disappointment gracefully with a cringey smile plastered on her face. Aly and Laurie took it harder shaking their heads in the audience. Apparently some people took it as an offence, but I don't see anything wrong with it, why wouldn't they want their teammate to win.

Sophie doesn't quite hold up to Aliya and Maddie in the finer details, but she hit her routine and her releases were absolutely beautiful. Her dismount was beautiful too, Maddie should definitely take a note on that. Songsong did a much better routine than in AA, but wasn't expecting to contend for the medals and didn't. 

I clearly jinxed Dasha when I said that she always saves her best for the individual finals and doesn't usually make mistakes in the pak+van leeuwen combo (I mean, she basically warms up on bars by doing an endless loop of paks and maloneys/komovas...). She handled the disappointment incredibly well and didn't cry until the very end, when Aliya was running around with the flag and getting ready for the awards ceremony. Tough as nails that one. As I said before, she has many medals in her future just waiting for her to come and get them. She can first grieve this one and then come back with a vengeance. Russia really needs someone to bring home medals once Aliya leaves the team.

By this point Sophie was clearly starting to fall apart. Spiridoz was her biggest threat to getting pushed out of the medals, but once that didn't happen, she was leaning onto the podium trying her best not to cry prematurely, because her teammate Eli was the last to go. I haven't exactly ever been a fan of Seitz, until she showed an incredibly improved, but difficult and clean routine earlier this year at a German meet. So I was excited for her routine. Unfortunately she chose the Olympic final to remind me of why I wasn't a fan of hers: muscled and sloppy work. Now I have to go back and find the routine I admired to see if it is as good as I remember...

But what a dramatic final. There was happiness and disappointment, and a surprising podium. I hope Fan Yilin gets herself a medal on beam tonight, it would be a bittersweet conclusion for her Olympics.

1. Aliya Mustafina 2. Madison Kocian 3. Sophie Scheder