Does Yang or Deng have what it takes to be world all-around champion?
Since we now have less than a week to go before the start of the world championships, I decided I would start highlighting some of the gymnasts we’ll be seeing on both the men’s and women’s sides. To start off, I wanted to take a look at the recent performances of two of the all-arounders who will undoubtedly be in the hunt for the world all-around title: China’s Deng Linlin and Yang Yilin. All of the following routines are taken from their recent National Games, where Deng and Yang took 1st and 2nd in the all-around, respectively:
Deng Linlin Vault 2009 Chinese National Games AA
Deng Linlin Beam 2009 Chinese National Games AA
Deng Linlin Floor 2009 Chinese National Games AA
So what do you think? I’d say that’s about as good as Deng Linlin has ever looked – she’s taken all year to get back to this form but it appears she may have timed her peak just right. It’s pretty amazing to think she’s actually competing instead of Jiang Yuyuan in the all-around at worlds, but she certainly looked much better than Jiang at this competition. That beam routine in particular was incredible! The scores at this competition were quite low, so I wouldn’t gauge their competitiveness based on those numbers. I think Deng’s bar routine has improved from last year, although a couple pirouettes do finish late and her D-score is still not extremely high. Her floor is a bit on the mediocre side as well, but overall she’s got a very strong all-around effort. If she can hit this well in London next week, I think she’ll be in the hunt for the title.
Yang Yilin Vault 2009 Chinese National Games AA
Yang Yilin Bars 2009 Chinese National Games AA
Yang Yilin Beam 2009 Chinese National Games AA
Yang Yilin Floor 2009 Chinese National Games Prelims
Yang isn’t quite there in my opinion, but she still had a few weeks to go after this competition took place. Her vault looks fine, and her bars is almost back to normal but not quite (her double layout looked much better than that low half-in, half-out)…but her beam and floor were quite weak here. There’s no way those two routines would hold up for all-around gold, but hopefully she’s been working hard on them. After the experience Yang gained at the Olympics last year though, I would expect her to get back to top form fairly quickly and be right in the running for at least an all-around medal. Her status as the top ranked all-around gymnast in the world competing at the world championships won’t hurt her reputation either.
Overall, I think Bridget Sloan can beat both of them if she hits as well as she is capable of. I think she has better looking gymnastics with less conspicuous weaknesses than both Deng and Yang. I think Rebecca Bross is capable of beating both of them as well, but she’ll have to get her beam under much better control than she showed at the U.S. Championships and handle the nerves of her first world competition.
Next, we’ll take a look at two other gymnasts who may factor into the all-around mix…Rebecca Downie and Youna Dufournet!