doublearabianpunchfrontlayout:
is anyone else feeling iffy about brazil not sending more girls to worlds just because they wont make any finals??? like there are girls on the national team that maybe arent medal or even finals contenders but imho it would be worth it to give more girls some major international experience without the pressure to win medals and make finals on them?? idk just my thoughts but yeah
^^ agreed because those girls could be major players later in the quad so why not give them the chance?
The only reason I can think of is if the federation has limited resources/funding it’s probably hard to justify sending gymnasts who have no chance at finals
Yeah, it’s definitely about money, I think they even said it so. Brazilian federation is not in situation to be lavish right now.
I was just having this conversation with someone about another country possibly not sending anyone to worlds and here’s what I don’t think people get…if you’re a major country like China, the U.S., Russia, etc, where you’re bound to bring home multiple medals or at least be in the mix for them, and if you’re not a program that’s so small that the best expectation for you is qualifications and MAYBE a surprise AA final if your top girl hits but you send her anyway because you expect that going in and you have resources and are fine with spending the money on getting that experience (which is why countries like Norway will send four girls who will all get 11s on everything UGH SOLVEIG JUST HIT BEAM ONCE IN MY LIFE), then you’re in this limbo where you really have to weigh what benefits your program most, especially if you have limited resources.
With countries like Brazil, Australia, Belgium, Hungary, and other middling programs that have lots of talent and medal potential, but aren’t quite one of the top dogs, it’s tough to justify sending a full squad knowing that the best you’ll probably see from athletes who aren’t real contenders is QFs. Is it worth spending the money to fly them to worlds where they’ll compete once and then go home? With the world cups giving away prize money to finalists and with weaker fields guaranteeing finals spots to even some of the weakest programs, it’s much much much more financially feasible to send your middling-level gymnasts to many of these competitions where they can compete multiple times, make multiple finals, and win multiple medals/prize purses (even 8th place at the world cup finals gets like $100 or something, and more than that, they get to go back to their federation like “we’re winning international FIG medals, give us more funding!”).
So when you have a girl like Carolyne Pedro in Brazil who won’t come anywhere near finals in Montreal, is it really worth sending her when you can send her and several other athletes to Melbourne, Cottbus, Baku, etc, where she’ll basically be a freaking star AND still get experience in front of international brevet judges? If you don’t have endless money to send gymnasts to every competition out there, there has to be a trade-off. Either you sacrifice all of the world cups and medals and prize money to get the chance of being like “our gymnast placed 59th in AA qualifications at worlds, the most prestigious gymnastics competition outside of the Olympics!!!” or you sacrifice the prestige of worlds for things that can actually make a difference in your program’s funding. Some people value the prestige more than anything else, but a lot of the middling countries value those world cup and similar competitions where they get more bang for their buck, especially in a post-Olympic year where it’s individual competition only and there are no upcoming Olympic qualification berths on the line.
Next year and in 2019, it’ll be totally different, and everyone will want to send as many athletes as possible. But this year, many of these countries value the smaller FIG meets at a higher level. You just have to remember that not every program has a realistic goal of world medals or finals like Russia, the U.S., and some of the other top countries do, and many times these other programs have to make difficult decisions about what’s best for their gymnasts and the overall health of the program, and sometimes skipping a post-Olympic worlds is what’s best for them, even if fans think that worlds is the be-all, end-all of elite competition. For most countries, it’s literally not even close.
I have also heard about athletes that partially have to pay the trip by them self if they want to go. Don’t remember if it was Iceland or Denmark or something.