STUTTGART, October 16, 2019 – Indisputably, the 49th Artistic Gymnastics World Championships which ended a few days ago in Hanns Martin Schleyer Halle of Stuttgart (Germany), the third time it has been hosted by the city (1989, 2007), now with a record of over 500 gymnasts from 92 countries, was a superlative sporting event from all points of view, perhaps the most successful world championships in at least a decade. Excellently organized, with innovative concepts, with prominent gymnasts, with technological developments of a high-level, with an incomparable electrified atmosphere in the tribune with thousands and thousands of spectators who inspired gymnasts to top performances, a whole town connected to gymnastics fever. “At the end of this great competition I would like to thank all the athletes, the public and the organizers with their 600 volunteers, who have made a most excellent event,” FIG president Morinari Watanabe said.

SIMONE BILES, GYMNAST FROM ANOTHER WORLD … There were 540 gymnasts in the competition. But before everyone was Simone Biles, no doubt, a gymnast coming from another galaxy, the greatest gymnast of our time or any time in history. “She’s just better than anything we’ve seen in the discipline”, five-time Olympic gold medalist Nadia Comaneci said, praising “the dominance she’s shown over all the other gymnasts who have competed here”.  Simone Biles is not only extremely talented. She has the personality of an Olympic star. There is attention to detail in training, the same laid-back humour that has contributed to Bolt’s great popularity and, especially in the modern era, a savy use of social media. IOC President Thomas Bach said that Simone Biles’ star status would make gymnastics a flagship event at the Tokyo Olympics. “You can have legends confirming their status, as we just saw with Simone Biles, this incredible performance on the beam, but you also have new stars… Gymnastics has all the ingredients to be at the forefront in Tokyo.” Simone Biles is a five-time World all-around champion (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019), world gold five-time gold at floor (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019), three-time at balance beam (2014, 15, 2019), two-time at vault (2018, 2019), member of the gold-medal-winning American teams at the 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. Additionally, she is a three-time World silver medalist and bronze medalist. At the Olympics, she is a 4 time gold medalist and one bronze at Rio 2016. Having won a combined total of thirty Olympic and World Championship medals, Simone Biles is the most decorated American gymnast and the third most decorated gymnast of all time, behind Vitaly Scherbo (33 medals) and Larisa Latynina (32 medals). In October 2019, “Biles surpassed Belarusian Vitaly Scherbo’s record of the 23 world medals he won in the 1990s”, winning “her 24th and 25th world medals, both gold” at the World Championship competition in Stuttgart. As of the 2019 World Championships, Simone Biles is the gymnast with the most World medals (25) and most World gold medals (19) of any gender, as well as the female gymnast with the most World all-around titles (5). She is the sixth woman to win an individual all-around title at both the World Championships and the Olympics, and the first gymnast since Lilia Podkopayeva (Ukraine) in 1996 to hold both titles simultaneously. She is the tenth gymnast and first American gymnast to win a World medal on every event, and the first gymnast since Daniela Silivaș (Romania) in 1988 to win a medal on every event at a single Olympic Games or World Championships, having accomplished this feat at the 2018 World Championships. After her breathtaking performances, Simone Biles responded modestly to reporters that her routine „wasn’t as good as in some of the trainings.” On winning her gold medal, she said „each (title) gets better and better … it just keeps getting more exciting.”

NEW LEADER, NEW STAR. A year ago, in Doha, he was a bronze medalist behind Artur Dalaloyan (Russia) and Xiao Ruoteng (China). Now he’s the new leader of the men’s competition: Nikita Nagorny (Russia). He topped defending champion and friend Artur Dalaloyan to give the Russian Federation a 1 – 2 finish on the men’s All-around final (where Oleg Verniaiev won a historic bronze for Ukraine) and helped Russia to win gold in the team event, almost one-full point ahead of 2018 champion China, and Japan.  He won another gold medal in the vault, narrowly beating Dalaloyan who won silver.  The European All-around champion delivered the best performance of his career to give the Russian men their first pair of back-to-back world All-around titles and making himself the favourite for next year’s Olympic Games.

USA AND RUSSIA, GOLDEN TEAM. Simone Biles, who was number one, conducted the U.S. women team – with Kara Eaker, Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum, Jade Carey –  to the fifth consecutive title since 2011 and seventh title overall since, bested runner-up Russia by nearly 6 points. Silver medalist in 2018 and at the 2016 Olympic Games, the Russians retained its familiar place behind their U.S. rivals. But the great surprise was caused by Italy. A quartet of first-year seniors – Giorgia Villa, twins Alice and Asia D’Amato, and Elisa Iorio – all competing in their first world championships plus Desiree Carofiglio, after eighth in qualification, turned in the most consistent performance of the day to win bronze, nearly 70 years after their only world team medal, bronze at the 1950 World Championships in Basel. At the same time Nikita Nagorny led the Russia team with his great performance – between Artur Dalaloyan, Ivan Stretovich, David Belyavskiy, Denis Abliazin – who end 25 years of frustration, achieved the world title that had eluded them since 1994, when the first team from independent Russia took silver behind China. Now it was a dispute taken at the highest technical level and spectacular, with Russia concluding a point before China and 3.5 before Japan, without Kohei Uchimura and Kenzo Shirai, the stars who didn’t catch the team!!

HISTORICAL RESULTS. If in the women’s competition the champions of the previous edition were left with gold medals, all the champions were replaced in the men’s competition. Simone Biles (all-around, vault, balance beam, floor) and Nina Derwael (Uneven Bar), USA (women team) kept their titles, changes are generally for other medalists positions medals, in the men competition we have a new team of champions: Youlo Carlos Edriel (Philippine) – floor, Max Whitlock (Great Britain) – pommel horse, Nikita Nagorny (Russia) – all-around, vault, Ibrahim Colak (Turkey) – ring, Joe Fraser (Great Britain) – parallel bars, Mariano Arthur (Brasil) – horizontal bar. This results has meant more historical premieres in world of Gymnastics: The anthems of the Philippines and Turkey played for the first time in world championships history, where Simone Biles (USA) won her 23rd career medal, tying the all-time record; Carlos Edriel Yulo (PHI), who already made history in 2018 with his bronze medal on Floor Exercise, was crowned the Philippines’ first world champion in any Gymnastics discipline. The bronze medalist in 2018, Lee Chih-Kai (TPE) – pommel horse –  did one better in Stuttgart, moving up to silver to equal the best result in history for Chinese Taipei, whose first world medal was a silver on Vault in 1993; The Irish tricolor was raised for the first time at a World Championships in honor of Rhys McClenaghan (IRL), who became the first Irish gymnast to ever reach a world final; Ibrahim Colak (TUR) struck gold on Still Rings, the first world medal ever won by a Turkish gymnast; Just eighth in qualification, an inspired Italian women team win bronze, nearly 70 years after their only world team medal, bronze at the 1950; Chinese Taipei being in contention to send a full team to the Olympic Games was inconceivable to almost everyone just a few years ago. And more…

CONFIRMATION AND FAILURES. In any big competition, there were gymnasts who confirmed their leading positions for many years, and others who, known as being, missed the podium, this time, for various reasons. Of the hundreds of examples:  Artur Dalaloyan (Russia) – even though he was not number one, that Doha has confirmed this value, remaining among the medalists; Nina Derwael – back-to-back golds on Uneven Bars; Becky Downie (GBR) – a 2008 and 2016 Olympian, win silver of vault, first individual medal of her own career; Samir Ait Said (FRA) – clinched an emotional bronze medal; Three-time defending world champion Eleftherios Petrounias (GRE), who returned to competition in Stuttgart following shoulder surgery last year, finished fourth at rings; Chinese, the 12-time men’s team world champion, losing the title on the last event could only result in disappointment, and the women team was unable to defend its team bronze from 2018 after major mistakes in the routines from its most experienced gymnast, Liu Tingting; Flying Dutchman, Epke Zonderland, it takes something extraordinary for him to defend his Horizontal Bar title at the 2019 World Championships, but the chronic sinus inflammation which affected the Dutch gymnast’s performance at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games flared up again in May; The French squad, which had rallied to fourth place in qualification with an outstanding performance, suffered two falls from first-year senior Claire Pontlevoy on Uneven Bars and a fall on the Balance Beam from Melanie de Jesus dos Santos, dashing any hopes of a medal; Great Britain, Canada, and the Netherlands rounded out the teams in the final, all committing too many mistakes to be a contender for a podium finish; Two pairs of siblings – Japan’s Tanigawa brothers, Wataru and Kakeru, and Italy’s D’Amato twins, Asia and Alice – won bronze medals in the Team finals earlier in the week, only one family featured in two individual finals; Two pairs of siblings – Japan’s Tanigawa brothers, Wataru and Kakeru, and Italy’s D’Amato twins, Asia and Alice – won bronze medals in the Team finals, only one family featured in two individual finals; The mind of Nestor Abad’s was not really on Gymnastics at all on Friday evening, because less than three hours before the competition kicked off, Abad’s wife, Sonia, had given birth to their second child. Their baby girl, Lis, was born at 1.10pm; at 4pm Abad was the first gymnast to compete on the Still Rings; Second in 2018 to Dalaloyan via a tiebreak, 2017 world champion Xiao Ruoteng was determined to regain his title, particularly after settling for silver in the team competition but a fall off the Horizontal Bar in the final rotation pushed him down to fourth; The All-around runner-up to Kohei Uchimura (JPN) at the Rio Olympics, Oleg Verniaiev won his first World All-around medal, competing in his seventh world championships since 2011; The gold medal of High Bar was Brazil’s Arthur Mariano first ever medal from world championships; 2017 high bar gold medalist, Tin Srbic (Croatia) took the silver, while new dad Artur Dalaloyan won the bronze, the fourth medal in Stuttgart, the most of any male gymnasts in the competition; Gymnasts from Romania, once at the forefront of World and Olympic hierarchies, continued with this disappointing presence,  And more… Gymnasts from 16 countries left Stuttgart having already won medals, at the forefront of hierarchy  being the USA with 5 gold + 2 Silver + 1 bronze, followed by Russia 3 + 3 + 3, United Kingdom 2 + 1 + 1.  It is to be noticed that China has a total of 5 medals, but only silver (3) and bronze (2).

LONGINES PRIZE. Two-time Olympian Sam Mikulak (USA) and Melanie de Jesus dos Santos (FRA) have been awarded the Longines Prize for Elegance, a special prize given by the Swiss watchmaker and longtime partner of FIG over the past 20 years, in recognition of outstanding elegance. The winners of the Longines Prize for Elegance are gymnasts whose performances convey emotional appeal extending beyond technical considerations, sparkling with beauty, grace, harmony of movement, and above all, elegance. In addition to a superb expression on the mat, the winners of the Longines Prize for Elegance demonstrate impeccable sportsmanship off of it as well.  Both gymnasts were selected by a special jury comprised of FIG President Morinari Watanabe, Longines Germany Brand Manager Rainer Eckert, and Stuttgart 2019 Ambassadors Catalina Ponor (ROU) and Fabian Hambuechen (GER).

OLYMPIC QUALIFICATION. The current edition of the World Championships took place with a particularly important target: winning the last „passports” for the Olympics – Tokyo 2020 in the team competition and in part of the individual competition. After a terrible battle, we know which teams earned the right to participate at next year’s Olympic Games: men – Ukraine, Great Britain, Switzerland, USA, Chinese Taipei, Korea, Brazil, Spain and Germany join Russia, China and Japan who already qualified last year; women – USA, China, Russia, France, Canada, Netherlands, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Japan and Spain. Greatly absent the second time running from OG, are the women’s team of Romania, their multiple World and Olympic medalists now in a deep crisis. And losing the qualification France, Belgium, Netherland, Belarus (men). A nice surprise, Chinese Taipei for first time is in an Olympic team competition. The individual qualifications are noted as the successful performance of Artem Dolgopyat, Cyril Tommasone, Ibrahim Colak, Ahmet Onder, Tin Srbic, Alerxander Shatilov, Flavia Saraiva, Giulia Steingruber, Johnna Adlerteg and above all Oksana Chusovitina (UZB) – 44 (born 19 June 1975), who holds the record for the most individual World Championships medals on a single event (9, vault) and the only female gymnast ever to compete in seven Olympic Games (!) and Marian Dragulescu (ROU) – 38 (born 18.12.1980), who remains in gymnastic history with an impressive 31 medals at Olympic Games, World or European Championships, of which eight are gold medals at the World Championships and the extremely difficult vault that was named after him, and now he will participate for the fifth time at the Olympics!

NEW TECHNOLOGY. Amid the displays of athleticism and artistry at this championships, there also emerged a development in technology that could hint at the trajectory of officiating across the sports landscape. According to Morinari Watanabe, FIG President, their presence signals “the beginning of a new history of gymnastics.” The last W.Ch. represented a milestone for the project of the judging support system utilizing artificial intelligence and 3D sensors, which is being jointly developed by Fujitsu Limited and the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). For the first time, the system will be officially used in an FIG competition as an additional tool for confirming difficulty scores on four apparatus. The rectangular gray boxes arrayed around the floor at the gymnastics world championships this week are easy enough to ignore. Each of the gray boxes keeping watch in Stuttgart, designed by the Japanese company Fujitsu and about the size and shape of a Wi-Fi router, contained a set of three-dimensional laser sensors that tracked the movements of each of the 547 gymnasts from 92 nations participating this week. That data was fed to an artificial intelligence system, accessible to the human judges, measured and analyzed skeletal positions, speeds and angles – some of them unavailable or simply missed by the judges – as the athletes went through their movements. The robot judges, in other words, have arrived.

PRESS. Over 400 journalists were present in Stuttgart to cover this important event of world gymnastics and sports, which called for a particularly high standard in all respects. Gymnastics competitions are „home” in the famous “Hanns Martin Schleyer Halle”, so the organizers have taken advantage of the rich experience so everything would be a real success with the Media Departments of LOC and FIG making a special effort. As a result, journalists present had the opportunity to work in excellent conditions, with organizers providing them with media representatives, in addition to a generous workspace in the Press Centre, equipped with all the facilities necessary, and a tribune with direct access to the competition space. Thus, journalists had the opportunity to watch the entire competition close to the athletes, and the representatives of Photo and Camera had access to all the important moments in the competition. The on-line platforms of FIG and LOC, which have ensured all the permanent and live necessary information, the mixed area, which functioned normally, press conferences with personalities of world gymnastics gave possibility to develop a work at a high level. Moreover, the large number of transmissions (on-line, TV, written media, websites etc.) worldwide have provided an opportunity for millions and millions of fans of gymnastics to be „present” in Stuttgart. But in terms of facilities for the press, we must also mention the activities organized especially for journalists, invited by the organizers to visit the Mercedes Museum and the Kussmaul factory, where the medals were made, each time accompanied by the two ambassadors of the competition, multiples Olympic and world champions, Cătălina Ponor (ROU) and Fabian Hambüchen (GER). For all these reasons and not only, the Press Departments of LOC and FIG deserves congratulations, and the Press Center nominated for the traditional „Best AIPS Awards” at the end of the year.

In cooperation with Nicolae Gavrea, AIPS Sport Delegate – gymnastics