The men who are going to London...

CBG has decided which boys will represent Brazil at the World Championships. The chosen are:

Diego Hypólito
Mosiah Rodrigues
Victor Rosa
Arthur Zanetti
Caio Américo Costa
Sérgio Sasaki

I am surprised to see Victor Rosa back (last time I heard about him, he had a terrible accident and injured both biceps). I hope he is still able to perform his amazing floor routine. I am also surprised not to see Sergio Eras or Petrix Barbosa on the team.

It will be interesting to see what strategy CBG will adopt regarding the vaulters. Sergio, Arthur and Diego are great vaulters and they can fight for a place in the finals. I am taking a wild guess here, but I think that the best route would be making Sergio and Arthur the all-arounders, while Diego only competes on Floor and Vault.

Mosiah will probably compete at Pommels and High Bar. I have absolutely no clue about who Caio and Sergio are (yeah, shame on me).

Who is going to London? (Part 2)

CBG has decided what girls are going to the Worlds 2009. The list is:

Ethiene Franco
Khiuane Dias
Bruna Leal
Priscila Cobello

It is a surprising list, considering that two of the girls have never been to a World Championships or Olympic Games (Bruna Leal and Priscila Cobello). I wish all the luck to them and I expect the girls to give their best and represent Brazil well (and I am sure they will).

No comments yet about the Men's team, though Diego Hypólito was officially confirmed by CBG. Initially, Diego threatened not to take part in the competition if his coach was not named head coach for the Men's team. His presence in the competition was only confirmed after CBG named Renato the head coach. It will not be a surprise if the alternate for the Women's team is Daniele Hypólito, for obvious reasons.

In other news, while Jade Barbosa will not take part at the Worlds 2009, she is going to compete in an international event in Italy later this year. I am really looking forward to see her new routines!

Jade Barbosa is back to the permanent team!

Jade Barbosa is back! Jade took the 12th and last spot in the permanent national team! Congratulations to her! It is still uncertain if she will be able to compete at the Worlds next month, but even if she manages to compete there, she will not perform in the All-Around competition. Her floor routine has not changed much -- Tsukahara pike, double tuck, 1.5 twist + 1.0 front twist and double pike. She didn't perform using her new music, though.

In other awesome news, gymnast Janaína Santos took home FIVE gold medals (out of six) in the Junior National Championships. Janaína won every event but the Balance Beam. Here are the full results of the Women's Artistic competition.

Brazilian Junior National Championships

Team competition
1 - APCEF
2 - Serc
3 - Yashi

Women's All-Around - 14/15 years old
1 - Janaina da Silva - 53,800
2 - Harumi Freitas - 51,133
3 - Anna Carolina Cardoso - 50,000

Women's Vault
1 - Janaina da Silva (APCEF)– 14,525
2 - Letícia da Costa (Flamengo)– 14,475
3 - Harumi de Freitas (APCEF) – 13,300

Uneven Bars
1 - Janaina da Silva (APCEF) – 12,600
2 - Harumi de Freitas (APCEF) – 12,250
3 - Renata Pinheiros (GNU) – 10,850

Balance Beam
1 - Letícia da Costa (Flamengo) – 13,400
2 - Nadhine Ourives (APCEF) – 12,800
3 - Clarissa Maria de Almeida 0 (Yashi) – 12,700

Floor
1 - Janaina da Silva (APCEF) – 13,250
2 - Anna Caroline Cardoso (APCEF) – 12,850
3 - Harumi de Freitas (APCEF) – 12,800
3 - Renata Pinheiro (GNU) – 12,800

Congratulations, Janaína!

Jade Barbosa back to the permanent team?

Exciting news. This Friday, September 3, Jade will present her routines to CBG and they will decide if she joins the permanent team or not. If she makes it to the team, which seems a no brainer, she can actually be chosen to represent Brazil at the World Championships in October. I am not betting my money on that yet, but it is good to see that there is a slim possibility of Jade making it to the Worlds.

Also, it looks like the Nationals will take place in November, like the rumours suggested.

A new date for the Nationals?

It is really sad that the Nationals had to be postoponed thanks to the outbreak of H1N1 in sister country Argentina (and consequently in Brazil as well). As if the outbreak had not caused enough harm to the competition, Jade Barbosa is uncertain if she will compete or not and both Laís Souza and Daiane dos Santos stated that they are not going to take part in this competition... or any other competition this year.

At least CBG now has a much easier time in choosing what girls are going to the World Championships in London. Barring injury, the selected girls will probably be Ana Claudia Silva, Ehtiene Franco, Khiuane Dias and Bruna Leal. Priscila Cobello has a very slight chance of taking one spot, but I doubt so. Maybe she will be an alternate.

Too bad Janaína Silva, Nadhine Ourives, Letícia Costa and Nicole Beltrame are not old enough to compete this year. Speaking about Letícia Costa, newspaper O Globo (one of the most important newspapers in Brazil) featured a front page article about her. Letícia is being called a "diamond in need of lapidation", which is quite surprising. Her coach said that he is going to ask her to do her best and then some. She is only 14 years old and she is probably going to be the chosen Brazilian girl to take part in the Youth Olympics next year.

Also, there are some rumors that the Nationals have been rescheduled to November 27-29. CBG has made no official announcements so far, so it is safer to take these rumours with a grain of salt.

As a final note, the Brazilian Group in Rhythmics placed 19th at the Kiev World Cup Series. A very, very disappointing (and alarming) result for the group. I hope the girls can pull themselves together and achieve better results in future competitions.

Things are going slowly lately...

Today, I was supposed to be writing about the Nationals, but things did not go as planned by CBG. The delay of the competition was a cold news. To make things worse, there is still not a new date for the Nationals. The gymnasts who will compete at the World Championship in October are to be selected during the Nationals. The deadline for the submission of the names of the gymnasts is September 9. CBG does not have much time left and, at this rate, they should either transfer the location where the Nationals will take place or just pick the gymnasts they are planning to send to the Worlds anyway and pray they make the right decisions.

In other news, according to this article, Laís Souza and Daiane dos Santos decided not to take part in the 2009 World Championships. Not only that, but they are are not planning to compete at any other competition this year. They say in the article that their priorities are set at the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 Olympics, so they will take the time off to recover from injuries and tighten their routines.

It is good to hear that Laís is not exactly planning to retire as of yet. I just hope they can keep going until the next Olympics.

Difficulty or execution?

Since 2006 the Code of Points in Artistic Gymnastics abolished the perfect 10 score in favor of a more open-ended evaluation system. This change is highly debatable; many people dislike the current scoring system and claim desperately for the return of the perfect 10. I, for one, like the new scoring system better. It is just fair in my book to think that a more difficult routine should, in theory, be rewarded with a significantly higher score. But, of course, difficulty is not everything. If the execution is not good enough, a difficult routine is more likely to go to waste.

Or is it?

During the last quad, a lot of difficult-yet-not-so-well-executed routines found their way to the finals, while clean-yet-not-so-difficult routines were left out. And even if a superbly clean gymnast made it to the finals without an uber-difficult routine, his/her efforts were usually not well-rewarded.

My point is that, although it is a good decision to separate difficulty from execution, there is still not a solid balance between these aspects. It was a pain for me to see clean, artistic gymnasts with difficult routines like Anastasia Koval and Ksenia Semenova being left out of the podium at the Olympic Games last year.

So, while I can see the benefits of the current Code of Points, I admit it is not perfect. While I believe gymnastics is all about challenging one's limits, there should be a limit for one's limit. Every time I watch He Kexin's new Uneven Bars routine I am truly amazed at how perfect she is, but I am also scared to death that she might just slip and fall and God knows what could happen then.

Defying one's limits is not to be taken as defying death. What scares me is that gymnastics is not about execution anymore; it is all about difficulty. I believe, for the safety of the gymnasts, that there should be a cap. FIG should not allow routines over, say, 6.0 or 6.5 in difficulty. Those are still very high difficulty scores under the current Code of Points.

Why am I ranting about all this? Because Brazilian gymnasts seem to be taking the "clean-yet-not-so-difficult" route this quad. I believe this is the safest way to go, but, more likely than not, they are bound not to be rewarded by the current Code of Points for a clean routine. When we think "let the best gymnast win", what do we understand as best? Is the best routine always the most difficult one? I beg to differ. Let the cleanest-yet-still-difficult-but-not-life-threatening routine win. That is much, much better.