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Event Finals Day One: McKayla Get's a Second Vault Gold, Musty Get's Bronze On Bars

The first day of the event finals turned out to be a great continuance from the high of yesterday's women's all around finals.

USA put four more athletes on the medal podium with three silvers, a gold and a bronze medal.



On the men's floor exercise it was Jake Dalton in a Japanese sandwich, winning the silver medal behind  Kenzo Shirai, the japanese floor prodigy with the ridiculous 7.4 D score and men's all-around gold medalist, Kohei Uchimura. Jake had a beautiful routine with beautiful form and he topped it off with a stuck triple twist that was poetry in motion.



Kenzo Shirai won the gold by .4 over Jake. Kenzo's routine is RIDICULOUS! I think he's Simone Biles' gymnastics twin. They both must have springs in their legs because they're both doing some of the hardest tumbling and it looks so easy. The Coup-de-Gras is his quad twist dismount.



Going to the women's vault final. McKayla Maroney reigned supreme once again taking her rightful place at the top of the vault podium with a nearly stuck Amanar and her super high Mustafina vault. Simone Biles took silver with an Amanar that was not only high, but perfectly landed on the center line with only a small hop. Her second vault, she did a Yurchenko half on half on and stuck the landing.

McKayla received an average of 15.724 and Simone received a commendable 15.595 average.





Taking the bronze was Hong Un Jong, returning to competition with North Korea for the first time since 2010. She did an Amanar and took a huge step forward. For her second vault, she performed a Cheng, which was kind of meh, she had some form errors and again, she took a pretty big step on the landing. I was suprised to see that she didn't perform the TTY. She's submitted it to the FIG to have the skill named for her in the code of points. But since she hasn't competed it to my knowledge. That definitely won't happen.

Hong edged out Giulia Steingruber for the bronze medal. Surprising, since Giulia's vaults were cleaner than Hong's. Less difficult, maybe. She does her standard Rudi (6.2 D) and DTY (5.8 D). Other than not pointing her toes in the air and a small leg separation, her form was great. Her vault D score average is a full 6.00  compared to Simone who has a vault  D score average of 5.95 and won the silver. If Giula's score was only about a .30 higher, she would have beaten Hong by .05. It's a travesty I tell you!



On bars, the winner was Huang Huidan, who's 17, but looks like she's 20 and performs on the bars with no grips or guards of any kind. Not even those flimsy tape "grips" gymnasts use occasionally. Her routine was just beautiful. Her lines were flawless and so elegant. I'm loving that the chinese have figured out that there are other connections besides those E + E turn connections. She connects her Ono turn to a lovely piked Jaeger and to top it off, she stuck her landing on her dismount. Just gorgeous. Score of 15.400 (6.6, 8.80).



Kyla Ross took another silver home with another hit routine. Kyla is looking like she's hit her stride as a gymnast. She knows she'll never be the gymnast with the most difficulty, but she knows she can win with beauty. She had the highest execution score out of all the finalists with an 8.866, .66 higher than gold medal winner Huang Huidang



A standout routine that didn't medal was Ruby Harrold of Great Britain.  British Gymnastics is carrying on the tradition that the lovely Beth Tweddle has started by producing killer bar workers. Ruby's routine is innovative and unique. She does the coolest and most interesting transition from high to low, called a Zuchold. I don't know how to describe it, so I just copied the element description from the code of points.


The Queen of the Uneven Bars Aliya Mustafina wound up in third on the medal podium. A little surprising, but then not really since she was facing competition from the Chinese who have superhuman difficulty in their routines. Musty's routine was beautiful, as always, but it had it's errors. She lost tension on a handstand on the high bar  and she always bends her legs to clear them past the low bar and she took a couple of steps on the landing of her signature dismount. But considering she only qualified in 5th for the final and the day she had during qualifiers, this is a great improvement. She looked pretty happy with herself as well.


The same can't be said for poor Yao Jinnan. During her routine, she fell on her Mo salto. It was pretty heartbreaking. She managed to complete the element, but on replays, it looked like she didn't get her grip all the way around the bar and just peeled off and hit the floor. It was pretty obvious she was doing her best not to cry on the podium.


Brandon Wynn managed to score a nice bronze medal during the rings final behind Russia's Aleksandr Balandin and Brazil's Arthur Nabarrete Zanetti. His coach put in an inquiry into his score (15. 666; 6.7, 8.966), but it was rejected. Uncle Tim posted an explanation of the inquiry on his blog. In a nutshell, the issue is that Brandon received a qualification D-Score of 6.8, a full tenth higher than the final. His coach put in an inquiry to see if they could get it raised and put him into second place. Uncle Tim has a breakdown of the score.


Tomorrow are the event finals for men's vault, parallel bars and high bar and women's balance beam and floor exercise.

Start list women's balance beam:

  1. Aliya Mustafina
  2. Carlotta Ferlito
  3. Vanessa Ferrari
  4. Shang Chunsong
  5. Simone Biles
  6. Kyla Ross
  7. Larisa Iordache
  8. Anna Rodionova 
Start list women's floor exercise:

  1. Vanessa Ferrari
  2. Mai Murakami
  3. Simone Biles
  4. Larisa Iordache
  5. Giulia Steingruber
  6. Sandra Izbasa
  7. Kyla Ross
  8. Ellie Black





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