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By Chrös McDougall |
October 12, 2018,
15h (ET)
Simone Biles is waiting for her ground exercise at the American Gymnastics Championships on August 19, 2018 in Boston.
Simone Biles and Morgan Hurd will lead an American team of five women at the world gymnastics championships, USA Gymnastics announced on Friday.
Biles, the reigning Olympic all-around champion, and Hurd, who won the world title last year, are joined by Kara Eaker, Grace McCallum, Riley McCusker and Ragan Smith. One of them has been appointed alternate before the event, which will begin in October. 25 and crosses the 4th of November in Doha, Qatar.
Including Biles and Hurd, who finished 1-2 at the national championships in August, was obvious, high-level director Tom Forster later declaring: "It would be stupid to think that they will not succeed."
McCusker, who bounced back from a 2017 injury-ridden year to finish third at the national championships, was also seen as a shoo-in, a decision probably easier after finishing second with Biles in a competition. selection camp Thursday in Florida.
McCallum improved to third in the selection camp after finishing fourth at the national championships. Eaker, who should focus mainly on the balance beam, set a 15-15 season record on Thursday, which was undoubtedly the top of the pack.
They will be joined in Doha by Smith, the replacement at the 2016 Olympic Games who has been fighting injuries since winning the 2017 national title. Presenting some of her old form, she finished fifth on Thursday, scoring more than one more point than the national ones.
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Jordan Chiles, Shilese Jones and Alyona Shchennikova also competed on Thursday.
Biles is undoubtedly leading the team. The 21-year-old dominated the sport in the last Olympic quad and culminated with four gold medals and one bronze medal at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Returning to the competition this summer, Biles took over there where she stopped to win a national title. in an area that included world champion Hurd last year.
This continued on Thursday. Although she got her pendulum, Biles corrected some of the mistakes she made during the national drills and made her debut with a new jump, marking a impressive score of 16.0. According to a database maintained by thegymter.net, the previous best chest score this year was 15.6% for Biles at the national championships.
With a total score of 59.7, Thursday's Biles was only followed by herself at the Nationals. The next best overall scores in the world are in the 57.
This year's world championships include a team competition, as well as individual competitions in the all-around and all four events. Four gymnasts per country participate in qualifying, the top three scores counting for the team score, but three competitors and the three scores counting for the team final. Up to two gymnasts per country may also qualify for the individual finals.
The Americans are looking to maintain their dominant position at the Olympic Games and at the World Championships, where they have won all team titles since 2011. During this period, they also won 29 individual World Championship medals and 12 Olympic medals individual, with Biles representing 15 of them.
An American woman has also won all but two Olympic and world titles since 2004, but only in 2006 and 2010. Biles earned three of these world titles and the last Olympic title.
Jade Carey is a gymnast who will not be in Doha. World silver medalist and vault last year, Carey retired from this year's team to remain eligible to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on an individual basis. According to the new Olympic format, the teams will have four gymnasts, against five at the previous Games, and two more will qualify individually.
Carey's father and coach, Brian Carey, told NBC Sports that if Jade was part of this year's World Team and that she was ranking among the top three – thus qualifying the team for Tokyo – so she could not compete for an individual Olympic spot. , an option she wants to keep open.
Despite the absence of Carey, the United States should still have a lot of medal potential in Doha. In fact, Biles could very well enter the competition as a favorite to sweep the individual events, as she did at the National Championships. Since her return, she has transformed her weakest event, the uneven bars, into a real strength. This is the only device in which she has never won a World or Olympic medal.
Outside of Biles, Hurd and McCusker could both compete for medals in total. Hurd, the silver medalist on the beam, is expected to be a candidate again, as well as Eaker, while McCusker could compete for a spot on the unbalanced podium.
Chrös McDougall has been covering the Olympic movement for TeamUSA.org since 2009, including the National Gymnastics Championships and Olympic Trials every year since 2011, for Red Line Editorial, Inc. He is based in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
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