It is a familiar feeling by now – a gymnastics competition being canceled. Last year, most of the gymnastics competitions worldwide ended up canceled or postponed. The hope was that by 2021, things would start looking better and competitions would resume again leading up to the Olympic Games.
However, the first FIG artistic gymnastics competition of 2021 – the Apparatus World Cup in Cottbus that was postponed from November – is canceled now. Germany is currently under the lockdown and it can potentially last well into March. Following that, the All-Around World Cup in Stuttgart might also be canceled. The FIG announced that it will definitely not take place in Stuttgart but might be moved to another city.
While the cancelation of the Cottbus WC will only mean a missed competitive opportunity, canceling the Stuttgart WC has more implications. It is a part of the AA World Cup series that serves as an Olympic qualifier. Originally, all four AA World Cups in 2020 were supposed to count towards Tokyo qualification and countries with most points could earn an extra non-nominative Olympic spot.
So far, only one AA World Cup took place – the American Cup in March, 2020. However, Russia and the Netherlands (out of the top 8 team at 2019 Worlds) withdrew from the competition, as the pandemic was already going on. The Netherlands were not a very likely winner of an extra WAG spot but Russia could definitely win a MAG spot (with the reigning AA champ slated to compete at one of the cups) and was a strong contender for a WAG spot. The FIG then changed the rules and said that the top three results will count towards the qualification. Thus, if three more Cups will still take place, Russia will still be in the running for this extra spot. However, if Stuttgart WC is canceled but Tokyo and Birmingham go on, it will take them out of the running as they will only attend two events tops.
Birmingham WC is also a big question mark at the moment despite no official announcements – UK is going through a major outbreak of COVID-19 and things are unlikely to improve significantly by the end of March. If both Birmingham and Stuttgart WCs are canceled, then the extra spots will go to the top three countries in qualification at 2019 Worlds that haven’t earned two extra spots so far. This would be Russia, China, and Japan for MAG and USA, China, and Russia for WAG.
In other news, while the pandemic is raging in UK and many countries have suspended flights from UK due to the concerns about a new mutation of the virus, the British MAG team decided it’s the best time for a training camp abroad. In a now deleted tweet, Dominick Cunningham posted a photo of the men’s team training in Dubai, UAE.
The British MAG followed the path of many other Brits who are flying to Dubai to escape the lockdown. The UAE opted to keep things open despite a local spike in cases in order to stimulate tourism. Other UK sports also recently held or are currently holding training camps in Dubai, for example, the British Athletics and Celtic FC. While travelers from Dubai to UK are required to self-isolated after the arrival, elite athletes have special exemptions that allow them to continue training. That is, unless they bring the virus with them – which is what happened with Celtic FC – and then have to quarantine.
