USA takes the title while the Chinese lose out to Italy

Tuesday 8th October – The USA clinched their fifth consecutive team world title as expected, with the highest team totals on all apparatus except uneven bars. This despite having to count a fall on beam from Sunisa Lee, and an error from Grace McCallum on uneven bars.

But with Simone Biles anchoring the team on every event, they gained ground with each rotation. Biles earned the two highest scores of the afternoon, a 15.400 on vault and 15.333 on floor.

“I stayed in bounds,” she says of her floor routine, “so that was the highlight of the night. In training I never go out of bounds. So it is kind of crazy how every time I compete it is all over the place.”

In second place were the Russians, who suffered two falls on beam but were strong elsewhere, especially on uneven bars where they had the highest team total. 

“We are happy that we have taken second place today,” said Angelina Melnikova. “It’s still quite difficult to compete with the Americans and to beat them, but we can see that the gap between the scores is much smaller than it used to be in the past.”

The bronze medal was taken by Italy who overtook the People’s Republic of China by just 0.566 points. It was an upset caused in part by falls from the Chinese gymnast, Liu Tingting on both uneven bars and balance beam.

By comparison, the Italians only had one fall, right at the end on their last beam routine. At that point they thought they had lost their medal chances, but were delighted when they saw the final scores.

“It’s good, when you have no expectation or pressure, you can just  do your best,” said Georgia Villa. “We only had one fall, when all the other teams had more than one.”

In fifth place behind the Chinese were France, who had to count some falls and errors, followed by Great Britain, Canada and the Netherlands.