At the Test Event team competition on Sunday, Brazil gave a master class in how to deliver a team pe
At the Test Event team competition on Sunday, Brazil gave a master class in how to deliver a team performance under pressure. They only missed automatic qualification by half a point in Glasgow, and are coming in even stronger this year with Andrade 9 months out from an ACL injury and already vaulting excellent DTYs and Saraiva growing into her all-around potential. It is hard to imagine that if Andrade continues to look better at each competition and Oliveira returns to full strength from the injury that sidelined her from Jesolo that they will not be in even better shape for the Olympics. With one less member of the Big Four to go through, could Brazil have a long shot at the team podium?The way the numbers are looking now, I would say their chances are not any worse than Great Britain’s if their upward trajectory continues. Looking at top-three team totals from Glasgow and the Test Event, their excellent Test Event performance is within a point of an all right showing from the British team in Glasgow qualifications, a better but still not maxed out British showing in the Glasgow Team Final (Ellie Downie fell on bars), and rougher outings for China and Russia in Glasgow qualifications and the Glasgow team final, respectively. Required disclaimer about the iffiness of comparing scores across competitions, but this is the best benchmark we have for these teams putting it together as a team in an international competition. Just approach it with a critical eye.A full strength Oliveira alone should add half a point to their floor total and reportedly Andrade is close to having her Amanar back, which brings them closer to the British team. And those are only two conservative predictions for improvements from Brazil in the coming months – the scoring potential of Andrade on floor this year is yet to be determined. Of course, China, Russia, and Great Britain also have room to grow, and that is without looking at Japan and Italy. Italy in particular was hit hard by injuries last year, so they should not be slept on among these second tier teams. And like last year, for any team from that tier to medal it would take a special brand of meltdown from either Russia or China, who are at least 4 points ahead of the rest of the field if they hit – without factoring in the added value of their own new talent. Russia in particular should not be in such dire floor straits this year, gym gods willing.But that meltdown from Russia happened in Glasgow, and if it happens again Brazil should be one of the teams waiting in the wings to take advantage.Edit: I also went ahead and made a version of the above chart with only the high scores for China, Russia, Great Britain, and Brazil, so you can compare them with less noise. This definitely makes me feel like vault scoring was more lax in Glasgow than Rio since GB & Brazil have identical difficulty there and are half a point apart. Taking that into account, these four teams are relatively close on vault and floor. Then Brazil is more significantly behind on bars while GB is more significantly behind on beam. This was a bars rotation for GB with a fall from Ellie Downie and Becky Downie competing her “conservative” 6.2 routine, so in a best case scenario they would be hanging in with China and Russia a little more (though of course still behind). On beam, China counted a fall from Wang Yan so that pushes them ahead there, as well. One knock against Brazil is that bars is their weak apparatus, and it can be such a high scoring event. If you’re keeping up on vault, beam, and floor but can’t get those 15+’s on bars, it does make things more difficult. -- source link
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