Analyzing the U.S. gymnastics men’s World Championships team

By Nick ZaccardiAug 16, 2015, 9:39 PM EDT

INDIANAPOLIS — The U.S. men’s team for the World Gymnastics Championships includes two Olympians, and five of six members have World Championships experience.

Sam Mikulak, who captured his third straight U.S. all-around title Sunday, leads the team. He’s joined by Donnell Whittenburg, Alex Naddour, Danell Leyva, Paul Ruggeri III and Brandon Wynn. The alternates are Chris Brooks and Marvin Kimble.

The World Championships are the last week of October in Glasgow, Scotland.

The U.S. took bronze medals at the last two World Championships with team competitions in 2011 and 2014. It has never earned team medals at three straight World Championships.

China has won every Olympic/Worlds gold medal since 2007. Japan has won every Olympic/Worlds silver medal since 2007. The U.S. could contend with host Great Britain for at least a bronze in Glasgow, should the Americans clean up mistakes from an error-filled Sunday at the P&G Championships.

Japan’s Kohei Uchimura has dominated the individual all-around competition, winning every Olympic and World title since 2009. Mikulak was a medal threat in 2013 before a mistake on his last routine on high bar dropped him to sixth. He was 12th behind Uchimura in 2014.

The last American man to earn a Worlds all-around medal was Jonathan Horton, who captured bronze in 2010. Horton, 29, competed at the P&G Championships in Indianapolis, but he placed ninth in the all-around and did not make the Worlds team.

Neither did Olympian Jacob Dalton, a four-time Worlds veteran who withdrew before the P&G Championships with a small shoulder labrum tear but hoped for a spot on the Worlds team.

Here’s a look at the men who did make the Worlds team with each gymnast’s credentials:

Sam Mikulak: 2012 Olympian, 2013/2014 Worlds veteran. Mikulak is the three-time reigning U.S. all-around champion, but his résumé is missing an individual Olympic or Worlds medal. He finished fourth in the 2013 Worlds high bar final, fifth in the 2012 Olympic vault final and sixth in the 2013 Worlds all-around.

Donnell Whittenburg: 2014 Worlds veteran. Whittenburg qualified fourth into the Worlds all-around final in his debut last year but struggled under the bright lights of the final and finished 17th. He was seventh in the parallel bars final and is also strong on floor exercise, still rings and vault.

Danell Leyva: 2012 Olympian, 2009/2010/2011/2014 Worlds veteran. The Olympic all-around bronze medalist is a two-time Worlds medalist on parallel bars. He was also used on pommel horse and high bar in the 2012 Olympic and 2014 Worlds team finals.

Alex Naddour: 2011/2013/2014 Worlds veteran. Naddour has finished first or second on pommel horse at the U.S. Championships each of the last five years. He could also be used on still rings, as he was at the 2014 Worlds.

Brandon Wynn: 2010/2013 Worlds veteran. Wynn took bronze on still rings and seventh on parallel bars in his last Worlds appearance. He was second on rings at the P&G Championships and no better than ninth in the other five events.

Paul Ruggeri III: Ruggeri was an alternate for the 2010, 2013 and 2014 Worlds teams. He is the lone Worlds rookie this year. Ruggeri was second on high bar and vault and fifth on floor exercise at the P&G Championships.

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After three years of being an alternate…I AM GOING TO WORLDS 😍 I cannot believe it. #teamusa #gymnastics

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Swiss extend best streak in curling history; Norway continues epic winter sports season

By OlympicTalkMar 27, 2023, 9:37 AM EDT

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Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni extended the most dominant run in world curling championships history, skipping a women’s team to a fourth consecutive title and pushing an unbeaten streak to 36 consecutive games.

Tirinzoni, along with Alina Pätz (who throws the last stones), Carole Howald and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann, beat Norway 6-3 in Sunday’s final in Sandviken, Sweden.

They went 14-0 for the tournament after a Swiss team also skipped by Tirinzoni also went 14-0 to win the 2022 World title. Tirinzoni’s last defeat in world championship play came during round-robin in 2021 at the hands of Swede Anna Hasselborg, the 2018 Olympic champion.

In all, Tirinzoni’s Swiss are 42-1 over the last three world championships and 45-1 in world championship play dating to the start of the 2019 playoffs. Tirinzoni also skipped the Swiss at the last two Olympics, finishing seventh and then fourth.

Tirinzoni, a 43-year-old who has worked as a project management officer for Migros Bank, is the lone female skip to win three or more consecutive world titles.

The lone man to do it is reigning Olympic champion Niklas Edin of Sweden, who goes for a fifth in a row next week in Ottawa. Edin’s teams lost at least once in round-robin play in each of their four title runs.

Norway extended its incredible winter sports season by earning its first world medal in women’s curling since 2005.

Norway has 53 medals, including 18 golds, in world championships in Winter Olympic program events this season, surpassing its records for medals and gold medals at a single edition of a Winter Olympics (39 and 16).

A Canadian team skipped by Kerri Einarson took bronze. Canada has gone four consecutive women’s worlds without making the final, a record drought for its men’s or women’s teams.

A U.S. team skipped by Olympian Tabitha Peterson finished seventh in round-robin, missing the playoffs by one spot.

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Ilia Malinin eyed new heights at figure skating worlds, but a jump to gold requires more

By Philip HershMar 25, 2023, 1:10 PM EDT

At 18 years old, Ilia Malinin already has reached immortality in figure skating for technical achievement, being the first to land a quadruple Axel jump in competition.

The self-styled “Quadg0d” already has shown the chutzpah (or hubris?) to go for the most technically difficult free skate program ever attempted at the world championships, including that quad Axel, the hardest jump anyone has tried.

It helped bring U.S. champion Malinin the world bronze medal Saturday in Saitama, Japan, where he made more history as the first to land the quad Axel at worlds.

But it already had him thinking that the way to reach the tops of both the worlds and Olympus might be to acknowledge his mortal limits.

Yes, if Malinin (288.44 points) had cleanly landed all six quads he did instead of going clean on just three of the six, it would have closed or even overcome the gap between him and repeat champion Shoma Uno of Japan (301.14) and surprise silver medalist Cha Jun-Hwan (296.03), the first South Korean man to win a world medal.

That’s a big if, as no one ever has done six clean quads in a free skate.

And the energy needed for those quads, physical and mental, hurts Malinin’s chances of closing another big gap with the world leaders: the difference in their “artistic” marks, known as component scores.

Malinin’s technical scores led the field in both the short program and free skate. But his component scores were lower than at last year’s worlds, when he finished ninth, and they ranked 10th in the short program and 11th in the free this time. Uno had an 18.44-point overall advantage over Malinin in PCS, Cha a 13.47 advantage.

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As usual in figure skating, some of the PCS difference owes to the idea of paying your dues. After all, at his first world championships, eventual Olympic champion Nathan Chen had PCS scores only slightly better than Malinin’s, and Chen’s numbers improved substantially by the next season.

But credit Malinin for quickly grasping the reality that his current skating has a lot of rough edges on the performance side.

“I’ve noticed that it’s really hard to go for a lot of risks,” he said in answer to a press conference question about what he had learned from this competition. “Sometimes going for the risks you get really good rewards, but I think that maybe sometimes it’s OK to lower the risks and go for a lot cleaner skate. I think it will be beneficial next season to lower the standards a bit.”

So could it be “been-there, done-that” with the quad Axel? (and the talk of quints and quad-quad combinations?)

Saturday’s was his fourth clean quad Axel in seven attempts this season, but it got substantially the lowest grade of execution (0.36) of the four with positive marks. It was his opening jump in the four-minute free, and, after a stopped-in-your tracks landing, his next two quads, flip and Lutz, were both badly flawed.

And there were still some three minutes to go.

Malinin did not directly answer about letting the quad Axel go now that he has definitively proved he can do it. What he did say could be seen as hinting at it.

“With the whole components factor … it’s probably because you know, after doing a lot of these jumps, (which) are difficult jumps, it’s really hard to try to perform for the audience,” he said.

“Even though some people might enjoy jumping, and it’s one of the things I enjoy, but I also like to perform to the audience. So I think next season, I would really want to focus on this performing side.”

Chen had told me essentially the same thing for a 2017 Ice Network story (reposted last year by NBCOlympics.com) about his several years of ballet training. He regretted not being able to show that training more because of the program-consuming athletic demands that come with being an elite figure skater.

“When I watch my skating when I was younger, I definitely see all this balletic movement and this artistry come through,” Chen said then. “When I watch my artistry now, it’s like, ‘Yes, it’s still there,’ but at the same time, I’m so focused on the jumps, it takes away from it.”

The artistry can still be developed and displayed, as Chen showed and as prolific and proficient quad jumpers like Uno and the now retired two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan have proved.

For another perspective on how hard it is to combine both, look at the difficulty it posed for the consummate performer, Jason Brown, who had the highest PCS scores while finishing a strong fifth (280.84).

Since Brown dropped his Sisyphean attempts to do a clean quad after 26 tries (20 in a free skate), the last at the 2022 U.S. Championships, he has received the two highest international free skate scores of his career, at the 2022 Olympics and this world meet.

It meant Brown’s coming to terms with his limitations and the fact that in the sport’s current iteration, his lack of quads gives him little chance of winning a global championship medal. What he did instead was give people the chance to see the beauty of his blade work, his striking movement, his expressiveness.

He has, at 28, become an audience favorite more than ever. And the judges Saturday gave Brown six maximum PCS scores (10.0.)

“I’m so happy about today’s performance,” Brown told media in the mixed zone. “I did my best to go out there and skate my skate. And that’s what I did.”

The quadg0d is realizing that he, too, must accept limitations if he wants to achieve his goals. Ilia Malinin can’t simply jump his way onto the highest steps of the most prized podiums.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.

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