The first medals were awarded at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool. The favored USA won the women’s team final – for the sixth time in a row.
Without top star Simone Biles and all-around Olympic champion Sunisa Lee, the Americans came out ahead of hosts Great Britain and the Canadians. The three first-placed teams have thus also secured their starting place at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Sixth consecutive world title for US team
In front of around 8,000 spectators in the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, Shilese Jones, Leanne Wong and Skye Blakely lived up to their role as favorites. After the first apparatus – the jump – the defending champions took the lead in the field of the best eight nations of the preliminary competition and did not give it up until the end. They achieved a total score of 166.564 and clinched the world title for the sixth year in a row. They have thus trumped the record previously shared with Romania. Britain collected 163.363 points, Canada 160.563.
This is how the team final at the World Gymnastics Championships works
Eight nations have qualified for the Team Finals: the USA, Great Britain, Brazil, Italy, Japan, China, France and Canada. In the final, three gymnasts from each nation compete on each apparatus: balance beam, floor, vault and uneven bars. All three ratings are included in the final result. Gold goes to the nation with the highest total points.
Carey shines in the jump, Gadirova inspires the audience with floor freestyle
The US athletes were superior to their competitors in the vault and on the uneven bars. The US women also received the most points for their floor routines, above all Jade Carey (14,100), who had already won gold on floor exercises at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. Only the Brit Jessica Gadirova showed a better freestyle (14.266) and delighted the audience in Liverpool. On the balance beam, on the other hand, the Italians presented themselves the safest.
US gymnast Skye Blakely fell off the beam after a twisting somersault. But since the Brits didn’t get through their programs without major mistakes either, that didn’t change the order.
US dominance
The old and new title holders have been undefeated at world championships for eleven years. The US gymnasts also won the qualifying round for this year’s final with a lead of a good two and a half points. Record world champion Russia was not allowed to start because of the war of aggression in Ukraine. The Russians inflicted a surprise defeat on the US team at the Tokyo Olympics last year.
German women’s team missed the final
The German women’s team had missed the team final of the eight best teams. After the last qualifying round, the quintet of the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB) was in twelfth place.
“I’m proud of what we’ve achieved here,” said the new national coach, Gerben Wiersma, about his mostly young and inexperienced team, who outgrew themselves a bit in the Spiderwoman outfit. His four World Championship debutants, led by the self-proclaimed “proud mom” Elisabeth Seitz, performed almost at their best at the World Championships in Liverpool.
Uneven bars European champion Seitz, 28, was amazed at the composure of her teammates between the ages of 16 and 18: “They radiated calm and did a cool job.”
German team had to do without three veterans
The fact that it was not among the top eight teams, but only twelfth, was mainly due to the injury-related absences of the experienced players Pauline Schäfer-Betz and Sarah Voss. Besides, had Kim Bui from Stuttgart, also an experienced top performer, ended her career after the European Championships in Munich in August.
