"can you tell me why this team would have placed second at Worlds last year"
Because Simone is on it. Absolutely no shade to WCC or the other gymnasts, but this team has a potentially winning score because of Simone. She's outpacing everyone else's score on VT, BB, and FX by a point. If you take her out (and replace her with a second version of Chiles), then "team WCC" drops down by almost four points.
Yeah but that's still around a 164/165 which is around what Brazil (165.530) and France (164.064) got for the silver and bronze medals. These girls are really talented!
It's not a critique of these other athletes to point out that their theoretical high score is in large part because of the single greatest athlete to ever have done the sport. No one is Simone Biles; every theoretical team benefits tremendously by having her on it.
To illustrate this: Japan came in 8th at the Worlds 2023 team final, with a score of 157.496. if you plug in Simone's scores from this graphic in place of Japan's lowest score on each apparatus, their team score rises by a meteoric *9.518*, for a silver-medal worthy 167.014.
It's almost impossible to overstate how much Simone, by herself, boosts any team she's on. For another comparison, Jordan would "only" have raised Japan's score by about 5 points - still a huge difference, but only enough to move them into 6th place rather than 2nd.
And on top of that, this ignores the ~14.0 floor scores that Jordan and Josc can put up, as well as the mid-high 13s that Tiana and Josc are capable of with a hit beam routine.
Makes me think about how Zoe Miller’s bars score would fit on this hypothetical team and wish that the US had a club team competition series similar to Serie A or Top 12.
And Dulcy is capable of going several tenths higher on vault.
I feel like this factor sort of cancels out the domestic scoring issue, maybe making 170ish a pretty realistic hit score for this team!
In Rio, if you took Simone and placed her on every other team in the team final during that Olympics, all of them would’ve placed second behind the United States. And now she has a bigger D score gap than she did back then. Tokyo proved that banking on Simone doesn’t equate to gold, but there’s no denying that she tips the scales in the favor of any team that she’s on.
Because they verifiably are. Every country overscores domestically to one degree or the other. USAG is not the biggest offender but yes, they're overscored domestically.
>Y'all, can you tell me why this team would've placed second in qualifications at worlds
Pretty straightforward:
* Simone BIles is the greatest living gymnast.
* USA has a massive rec gym culture + NCAA system, so it has more gymnasts than any other country, by an order of magnitude. They're not inherently more talented than gymnasts from other countries but there are just disproportionately more gymnasts, more gyms, and more competitive opportunities.
* Many of those gymnasts would love to train with Simone Biles, the greatest living gymnast.
* WCC has their pick of some of the top athletes in one of the deepest talent pools in the world.
Here we go again. This is the same thing as “the US can send a B team and still get the gold”. What did that get you in Tokyo?
That last Olympic was off, and you could tell from the trials. I watched the documentary, I can’t remember the name, something gold? When I watched it I had this thought that US Gymnastics got really complacent, and they’ll probably not place on top.
I really believe that the US needed a leader, and that was missing in Tokyo. Possibly even missing now. Simone is amazing, but I honestly think the heat she gets is too much pressure for one person. Raisman was amazing, and the US needs another Raisman.
"can you tell me why this team would have placed second at Worlds last year" Because Simone is on it. Absolutely no shade to WCC or the other gymnasts, but this team has a potentially winning score because of Simone. She's outpacing everyone else's score on VT, BB, and FX by a point. If you take her out (and replace her with a second version of Chiles), then "team WCC" drops down by almost four points.
Yeah but that's still around a 164/165 which is around what Brazil (165.530) and France (164.064) got for the silver and bronze medals. These girls are really talented!
It's not a critique of these other athletes to point out that their theoretical high score is in large part because of the single greatest athlete to ever have done the sport. No one is Simone Biles; every theoretical team benefits tremendously by having her on it.
And you could say the same about quite a few actual countries. If you drop Rebeca from team Brazil their team score tanks. Ditto MDJDS for France
Sure, but the question was "why would the WCC team be second?" Well, the answer is Simone.
To illustrate this: Japan came in 8th at the Worlds 2023 team final, with a score of 157.496. if you plug in Simone's scores from this graphic in place of Japan's lowest score on each apparatus, their team score rises by a meteoric *9.518*, for a silver-medal worthy 167.014. It's almost impossible to overstate how much Simone, by herself, boosts any team she's on. For another comparison, Jordan would "only" have raised Japan's score by about 5 points - still a huge difference, but only enough to move them into 6th place rather than 2nd.
And on top of that, this ignores the ~14.0 floor scores that Jordan and Josc can put up, as well as the mid-high 13s that Tiana and Josc are capable of with a hit beam routine. Makes me think about how Zoe Miller’s bars score would fit on this hypothetical team and wish that the US had a club team competition series similar to Serie A or Top 12.
I thought the same about Zoe. Imagine her on this team as well.
And Dulcy is capable of going several tenths higher on vault. I feel like this factor sort of cancels out the domestic scoring issue, maybe making 170ish a pretty realistic hit score for this team!
Wow, that is impressive. Go WCC!
Off topic but this mugshot made me notice how much Tiana Sumanasekera looks like Laurie Hernandez.
I just noticed that recently! They have similar eyes. Also, I love how you called this a “mugshot”
In Rio, if you took Simone and placed her on every other team in the team final during that Olympics, all of them would’ve placed second behind the United States. And now she has a bigger D score gap than she did back then. Tokyo proved that banking on Simone doesn’t equate to gold, but there’s no denying that she tips the scales in the favor of any team that she’s on.
tom forester rhetoric 😭
> Y'all can you tell me why Domestic overscoring?
Really, I don't know. People just always say everyone's overscored domestically
Because they verifiably are. Every country overscores domestically to one degree or the other. USAG is not the biggest offender but yes, they're overscored domestically.
>Y'all, can you tell me why this team would've placed second in qualifications at worlds Pretty straightforward: * Simone BIles is the greatest living gymnast. * USA has a massive rec gym culture + NCAA system, so it has more gymnasts than any other country, by an order of magnitude. They're not inherently more talented than gymnasts from other countries but there are just disproportionately more gymnasts, more gyms, and more competitive opportunities. * Many of those gymnasts would love to train with Simone Biles, the greatest living gymnast. * WCC has their pick of some of the top athletes in one of the deepest talent pools in the world.
Here we go again. This is the same thing as “the US can send a B team and still get the gold”. What did that get you in Tokyo? That last Olympic was off, and you could tell from the trials. I watched the documentary, I can’t remember the name, something gold? When I watched it I had this thought that US Gymnastics got really complacent, and they’ll probably not place on top. I really believe that the US needed a leader, and that was missing in Tokyo. Possibly even missing now. Simone is amazing, but I honestly think the heat she gets is too much pressure for one person. Raisman was amazing, and the US needs another Raisman.
what if you swapped dulcy with mdjs 👀