Women's Team Finals

[Terry]

I love Aly. But her chances of beating Simone and winning AA gold are less than nonexistent.

 

[duyetanh]

I love Aly. But her chances of beating Simone and winning AA gold are less than nonexistent.

Well...if Simone forgot her leo....or overslept....or was in the bathroom during an event....or decided to skip an event for the heck of it...or fell on every event twice, I guess then it could happen.

 

[wandrewsjr]

Well...if Simone forgot her leo....or overslept....or was in the bathroom during an event....or decided to skip an event for the heck of it...or fell on every event twice, I guess then it could happen.

I get your point, but they were separated by 1.75 in qualifying not 8 points.And Aly was even better in team final. I get that Simone is still a huge favorite, but cmon "8 falls"? Aly has closed the gap enough that 2 falls(perhaps one if that fall also meant loss of skill/connection values) would put her ahead. And Kohei just won by less than a tenth...I think it's going to be closer than we imagined it could be coming in to the games.

 

[duyetanh]

I get your point, but they were separated by 1.75 in qualifying not 8 points.And Aly was even better in team final. I get that Simone is still a huge favorite, but cmon "8 falls"? Aly has closed the gap enough that 2 falls(perhaps one if that fall also meant loss of skill/connection values) would put her ahead. And Kohei just won by less than a tenth...I think it's going to be closer than we imagined it could be coming in to the games.

I was being funny.

 

[Deleted member 18037]

1.75 is alot in gymnastics at this level. Excluding falls.

 

[Natasha]

I get your point, but they were separated by 1.75 in qualifying not 8 points.And Aly was even better in team final. I get that Simone is still a huge favorite, but cmon "8 falls"? Aly has closed the gap enough that 2 falls(perhaps one if that fall also meant loss of skill/connection values) would put her ahead. And Kohei just won by less than a tenth...I think it's going to be closer than we imagined it could be coming in to the games.

I was surprised yesterday how close they were, I had not imagined they would be that close. And while I hope no one falls, it is a possibility...even if not a likely one.

 

[Natasha]

So given that Simone only needed to score a 7 something on her floor routine for team finals, is it accurate to say that any level 10 gymnast could have performed in place of Simone and they still would have won? (real question, I'm not familiar with FIG scoring) Obviously they can't just put someone in that hasn't qualified elite, but scoring-wise, it is crazy to think how far ahead the USA is.

 

[Gymmommy71]

Aly really was amazing last night, only 0.834 behind Simone on the 3 events they both did and her UB from qualifying would have scored similarly to Simone's team finals routine...we might actually have an AA competition after all!

I remember thinking Aly's vault score was REALLY close to Simone. If .834 was their difference on the 3 events, if Simone falls or has major mistakes and Aly hits, Aly could more than just possibly win it. I seem to recall Lauries beam being really close to Simone as well - I know Simone had a mistake, but if she makes a mistake again in beam finals and Laurie hits, Laurie can get the gold.

 

[wandrewsjr]

I was being funny.

I know, Iwould have made the same joke before this week. But after Aly's performance last night...Simone's dominance doesn't seem to be guaranteed to comical proportions any more.

 

[Sasha]

I do agree that Aly is closing the once insanely insurmountable gap between Simone and The World. The gap is still sizable, but a major error + a sprinkling of minor ones by Simone could now open the door, whereas before, she would have had to make more than a few major errors on a single day (pretty much zero possibility).

Of course none of us would want to see Simone make a major error in an Olympic Final! And Aly winning gold on the back of a catastrophe by Simone is surely not what Aly would want either.

Edited to add: The prospect of that smaller gap DOES, however, turn the final into at least a little more suspenseful (perhaps fun in a sense) to watch as opposed to watching a final where you know the leader could literally fall 5 times and still win.

 

[duyetanh]

It sounds strange, but for some reason I think Simone has more to show us. Got a weird feeling about this one. I could be wrong though. We will see tomorrow at any rate, should be awesome to watch!

 

[Mrs. Puma]

It starts at 3:00ET I can only watch until 4:00...will that be enough?! There's only 24 of them, right? I have a feeling I'll be missing a lot of it...arrrrr

 

[Terry]

1.75 is alot in gymnastics at this level. Excluding falls.

It's huge. This is an individual AA not a team event.

 

[wandrewsjr]

I do agree that Aly is closing the once insanely insurmountable gap between Simone and The World. The gap is still sizable, but a major error + a sprinkling of minor ones by Simone could now open the door, whereas before, she would have had to make more than a few major errors on a single day (pretty much zero possibility).

Of course none of us would want to see Simone make a major error in an Olympic Final! And Aly winning gold on the back of a catastrophe by Simone is surely not what Aly would want either.

Edited to add: The prospect of that smaller gap DOES, however, turn the final into at least a little more suspenseful (perhaps fun in a sense) to watch as opposed to watching a final where you know the leader could literally fall 5 times and still win.

Agreed, hopefully Simone and Aly knock it out of the park to finish 1, 2 by a mile...Andrade and Mustafina put on a show to battle it out for 3rd...maybe someone like Thorsdottir or Murakami has the meet of her life to make the battle for bronze even more interesting.

 

[wandrewsjr]

It's huge. This is an individual AA not a team event.

But Aly closed that gap to less than a point with her performance in team final...that is not huge gap when a fall is 1 point.

 

[Deleted member 18037]

But Aly closed that gap to less than a point with her performance in team final...that is not huge gap when a fall is 1 point.

To win you need to have the highest score. All it will take 0.25

Swimmers have been winning by way less than 0.5 sec.

It is the nature of the sport. And it is no surprise to the athletes.

 

[Faolmor]

At least you guys got to watch it. It was on at like 5am here, and (in the repeated, identical telecast I saw later on), they only showed about 20 minutes of it all-up - two of Simone's routines, two Chinese girls and 1 Russian. Instead, last night, we got to watch about 2 hours of water polo, soccer and table tennis. Woo. Not.

 

[Terry]

At least you guys got to watch it. It was on at like 5am here, and (in the repeated, identical telecast I saw later on), they only showed about 20 minutes of it all-up - two of Simone's routines, two Chinese girls and 1 Russian. Instead, last night, we got to watch about 2 hours of water polo, soccer and table tennis. Woo. Not.

It's archived on nbcolympics

 

[bogwoppit]

It's archived on nbcolympics

Sadly geoblocked for non US. Have to mess around with HOLA or tunnelbear to watch.

I watched MAG AA on CBC replay tonight, the way they showed it you would think there were only 4 people competing. Not really fun to watch at all.

 

[gymdog]

As someone who has been at a lot of the U.S. events over the last few years, I'm going to throw in my hat for the team that is surprised by what Aly has done in the past few days. Before I thought there was no chance. Simone has beaten the U.S. field with falls before. I believe if she has only one fall, and it isn't a fall that incurs a lot of other deductions, she will still likely win. There is no other Olympic gymnast in history that we could have gone into to the finals and said if this person has one fall they'll still win. That's unbelievable.

Aly on the other hand would have to hit 4 for 4 with sticks along with something going wrong in Simone's performance. So, that's not the same thing at all. But while she used to be several points behind Simone, giving a much larger margin of error, her performances this past week have narrowed that considerably. I think a win is unlikely for sure, but I am starting to see how it could happen.