Details on Junior Worlds

FIG has finally published the details about the Junior World Championships that will take place in Gyor, Hungary on June, 27-30. The competition will include a team final, an all-around final and event finals. However, the team final, the AA final and the qualifications for the EFs will be just one competition, like it was done at Junior Euros last year. The team competition format will be “three up – two count”, EYOF-style, because, I guess, two people are a team now. Well, let’s be thankful it’s not “two up – one counts,”because this seems to be the general tendency when it comes to team competitions.

In addition, the rules do not favor event specialists, as only those who compete AA in the qualification will be eligible for Event Finals: “In order to qualify for the Apparatus Finals, a gymnast must compete and earn a score on every apparatus in the Qualifications (i.e. he/she must obtain an All-Around score)”. I wonder, of course, what happens if a gymnast just touches the apparatus ala Paseka in London or does one skill and pretends it’s a routine on the events they don’t want to or can’t do – will this be counted as if they did AA? The rule seems to be quite excessive as, generally, juniors train AA and the specialization usually starts a bit later. However, one might be limited to one or two events due to an injury and this rule could either lead to such gymnasts missing the competition or pushing through injuries to compete AA and risking further injuries.

In order to reduce the number of participants, only the countries that qualified to the Youth Olympic Games can send a full team. That includes countries that qualified to YOG but didn’t participate for whatever reasons, like USA. The rest are only eligible to send one MAG and one WAG.

The following countries can send a full MAG team: ARG, AZE, BEL, BRA, CAN, CHN, CZE, ECU, EGY, FRA, GBR, GER, HUN, IRI, ISR, ITA, JPN, KAZ, KOR, LAT, NOR, NZL, PUR, ROU, RSA, RUS, SRB, SWE, TPE, TUR, UKR, USA, UZB, VEN, VIE.

The following countries can send a full WAG team: ALG, ARG, AUS, BLR, BRA, CAN, CHN, CRC, EGY, ESP, FIN, FRA, GBR, GER, GRE, GUA, HUN, IRL, ITA, JPN, KOR, LTU, MAS, MEX, POR, PUR, ROU, RSA, RUS, SGP, SRI, SWE, TUR, UKR, USA, UZB, VIE.

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