The road to Rio already started last year at the World Championships, which were the first qualifying round for the Olympics for both men and women. Basically, we will see in Glasgow the first 24 teams from the last year worlds’ team competition, plus gymnasts from countries which were not able to qualify a full team.

With only 30 days left until the official opening of the 2015 Gymnastics World Championships, all countries are trying to build their best available team with the best difficulty and execution they can provide. We intend to follow the road to Glasgow of the countries which could qualify a full team to Rio (first 8 teams) or to the test event (teams 9 to 16), plus other information regarding new skills/ routines, injuries etc.

Based on the results of the competitions held these last weeks and based on team announcements made by Japan and Russia, we tried to figure out how the team totals would look like at this moment. There is still some time left, gymnasts may be added (Mustafina, Munteanu) and teams have plenty of room for improvement (falls are included in the totals for Romania and Russia, for example). However, this is a first look at how the rankings might look like in both qualifications and team final. We will update the lists as soon as we will have more team announcements (USA, Italy) and more recent scores (Great Britain, China, Brazil, Australia). For the teams already included, we will update with scores from further competitions (Romanian nationals).

Qualifications:

Team Final:

Teams summaries

The Russian team seems to struggle as we could notice during the Russian Cup held last week. Even if stars Ksenia Afanasyeva and Viktoria Komova came back after multiple injuries, we don’t know for sure if the star Aliya Mustafina will compete or not in Glasgow. However, both London Olympians came back quite strong, being able to bring good scores to the team. Alla Sosnitskaya, vault specialist, and Maria Kharenkova, beam specialist, are still struggling in their coming back after injuries, while as Maria Paseka and Daria Spiridonova seem to be “on fire”.

Valentina Rodionenko, head coach of the team, named the following girls as having greatest chances of making the team: Maria Paseka, Daria Spiridonova, Viktoria Komova, Seda Tutkhalyan, Maria Kharenkova and Ksenia Afanasyeva.

We don’t know much about the Japanese team since the Asian Championships in August, where the team seemed to be on their way to Worlds Team Finals in Glasgow. Japan may be the surprising factor this year if they manage consistent routines.

Here is a summary of the Japanese scores during the Asian Games for the announced Worlds Team (we did not take into consideration Sasada’s score as she might be injured and replaced by Yu Minobe – source). Yu Minobe’s scores are from the Universiade.

After a struggling year, Romania will enter the game with big hopes and ambition, especially after the friendly meet with France held two weekends ago. Unexpectedly, videos from the meet emerged, as well as the final scores. Next weekend Romanian Nationals are scheduled, where Andreea Munteanu is also expected to compete, along with other contenders who did not perform during the friendly meet, such as: Stefania Stanila and Andreea Iridon.

At the end of the friendly meet the girls were way above what we expected, given that Diana Bulimar is recovering from injury (and still competed on all events), Larisa Iordache had a rough year and couldn’t train as she should have due to pains until one month ago and Catalina Ponor also had interrupted come back training due to health issues until one month ago. Anamaria Ocolisan surprised everyone, being at a better level than last year even if she had surgery on her elbow in spring.

Here are the scores posted by the Romanian team during the friendly meet. The good news is that the girls still have place for a significant improvement.

Germany also had nationals (first worlds team qualification phase) last week. We tried to guess a team based on these results.

Here are the scores posted by France during the same Romania vs France meet in the second weekend of September:

Netherlands also had trials this weekend and here is a summary of how their team might look like:

Belgium also had a first test before worlds, a friendly meet with Sweden and Austria. Unfortunately, Julie Crocket, who might have been really useful to the Belgian team, injured herself again during vault warm ups. If we consider the total they gathered during this friendly meet, a direct qualification seems highly improbable.

Cristina

Source used for results for Russia, Japan, Netherlands and Belgium – www.gymter.net