I am heartbroken for this girl. I’ve watched her the past few years since she made the jump to the senior level and she has been outstanding every single time.
If you saw any headlines prior to the coverage last night, you might have thought that she fell on one or two events not to qualify. No, she competed well. Yeah, she’s capable of much better but when you look at it only three gymnasts outscored her. It just so happens that two of those gymnasts come from the same team as her.
It used to be that three gymnasts from each team could qualify for the individual all-around. This rule changed in 2003 as teams were required to become smaller and less gymnasts competed per even. For example, there were seven members of the 1996 team and six competed on each event and five scores counted. Now there are five members with four competitors in qualifying and three in the team finals. It’s actually a little more rare these days to find an all-around gymnast because teams put such an emphasis on each event and a lot of teams don’t have more than two all-arounders. The all-around rule now is that 24 gymnasts can compete and only the top two from each team. Yes, it’s a ridiculous rule because it keeps some of the best gymnasts in the world, clearly, out of the all-round final and you’re not going to have the best competition possible. I get the idea of wanting to give more countries a chance, but the reality is that the girls who qualify in the last spots are not going to even come close to stepping on the podium. Now the reigning world champion isn’t going to have a chance to even compete for the all-around, an event which she could easily win.
Could Weiber still compete in the all-around? Technically, yes. The coaches could pull Aly Raisman and let Weiber compete or Raisman could concede her spot to Weiber. Will this happen? More than likely, no.
Raisman has worked very hard to be known has an all-around gymnast. A lot of coaches told her to stop training on bars because it’s her worst event and she could concentrate on becoming better at her best events. But she kept training and it’s now paid off for her. If Raisman is anything it’s consistent. I like Aly and I’m happy for her. I think she’ll hit her routines but I don’t think she’ll win gold. I hope I’m wrong. But she’s just not strong enough on all four events to defeat Gabby Douglas or Russia’s Victoria Komova. The thing is that Weiber can and has. But she won’t get the chance this time. The U.S. still has a very strong chance in Douglas, but they don’t have that one-two punch they thought they’d have going into the meet.
The big worry now is if Weiber can pull herself together to still be a strong competitor for Team USA in the team finals. The finals are a three up, three down format, which means that all scores count from the three gymnasts that compete on the event. Jordyn and Gabby should compete in all the events, while I suspect Aly will just compete on beam and floor. I think that Jordyn will be great on tomorrow. This will be like her all-around final and she wants to prove that she deserves to be in that competition on Thursday.
I also have to say that I am so impressed with how she composed herself for post-meet interviews. She just had the most crushing blow of her gymnastics career and she is able to stand there and be interviewed about that – at 17-years-old. Pretty sure I would have run off and would still be crying now. I believe that she’s happy for her teammates, but she wants it to be her in that all-around. And I do too.
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