u/boletusaureus

I thought I'm gonna drop it here as well, as it's interesting to look through. World Gymnastics confirmed all the places from Frankfurt (Germany, Bulgaria and Italy get a non-nominative RGI quota; Spain, Japan and Brazil get a RGG quota), so 3/24 (RGI) and 3/14 (RGG) spots are locked.

• Individual: no surprise here, Varfolomeev, Nikolova and Raffaeli are dominating the AA podiums since 2022. All but one WCH AA podiums between 2022-26 were the trio (the exception being Valencia, when Nikolova was 4th), Varfolomeev and Raffaeli both made the Olympic podium as well. Their quotas are not nominative but unless injury or a catastrophic loss of form happens, they will be in LA.
• World Cups: Onofriichuk and Ikromova are very well positioned to take the 2 quotas via the World Cup. Varfolomeev (1st), Raffaeli (3rd) and Nikolova (4th) can't win more quotas for their country, and Onofriichuk (130 pts, 2nd) and Ikromova (100 pts, 5th) are well above the others. 4 World Cups left in 2027 and the top 4 results will count from 2026-27.
• Groups: Only 1 European group in the top 3 in Frankfurt will lead to a Euro bloodbath. There are cca. 10 highly competitive European groups without a quota: Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Israel, Germany, France, Poland, Belarus, Italy, Hungary. At most 6 of these can qualify for LA (1 via the World Cup Series, 4 in Baku 2027 and 1 at the ECH 2028). But also, China and Uzbekistan are without a quota, and Olympic champions China are very likely to get one via either the World Cup Series (they are leading the rankings in front of Russia) or in Baku 2027. That means that it's very likely that only 6 European groups will make it to LA (out of 14 places). Everyone in Asia will pray hard for China to get a spot before the Asian qualifier in 2028, so they don't go for the continental quota.
• This is very risky in groups, as for most European groups going for the quotas can go to last chance saloon with even 1 bad routine in Baku 2027. You drop something and then you face the race for 1 (one) spot at the 2028 Euros as your last chance. I can realistically see a major power not qualifying here.

I've gone back with data for the open D era. I converted the scores to percentages (winner = 100%, and all the other scores are relative to that). It is really interesting and shows how stronger the competition became. Getting the 94% of the winner's score is something great. It guaranteed a gymnast a top 7 place before. In Frankfurt it was good for 14th place.

Obviously the winner's performance defines the list, but I think we can safely say that the depth of the elite has never been this good. I went back to Stuttgart 2015 (closed D, artificially narrowing the differences), and 94% would've been 7th even then. The number of gymnasts potentially going for top six places has widened so much, and it's great news for RG. I think this was one of the things that made yesterday's final so memorable: everyone is extremely good from this lineup.

I think when the current COP was drafted, closeness of the competitions might have been a consideration. That, together with how good the top 20-30 gymnasts are, creates great competitions.

World Gymnastics updated and released the quota list for the 2026 World Championships. The table is now complete.

The most interesting thing is that Uzbekistan didn't get 2-3 individual quotas for the World Championships. Which sounds insane, as Ikromova won 6 gold medals at the Asian Championships and UZB dominated the event.

So what happened?

If it was not intentional (which would be a bizarre decision), then UZB probably didn't correctly interpret the Asian Championships directives with a view to the WCH qualification.

The directives state the following:

"Qualification for the World Championships 2026:

1. A ranking of total of 8 routines from 2 individual gymnasts per NF from the qualification will decide the 4 quota places for RGI (2-3 individual gymnasts) to the 2026 World Championships.

2. All NFs that participated in this Continental Championships and are not qualified yet among the quota places for the RGI team (2-3 individuals), have the right to participate in the 2026 World Championships with 1 individual gymnast."

Uzbekistan fielded a 4+3+1 lineup (Ikromova 4, Usova 3, Sarantseva 1), while all their rivals lined up with 4+4. This basically meant that Uzbekistan cannot get 2-3 RGI quotas for the World Championships by default!

Calculating with the 8 routines in qualification by 2 gymnasts:

1. Kazakhstan 213.700
2. China 211.800
3. Kyrgyzstan 199.000
4. Japan 196.550
   ---(top 4 take 2-3 RGI spots for the WCH)---
5. South Korea 192.250
   (Uzbekistan 191.800, would've been 219.150 with Sarantseva's score added, winning the qualification by a good margin)

Totally baffling. Different continents have different WCH qualification rules (e. g. Europe did 8 routines from 2 or 3 gymnasts).

I detailed it a bit more here.