Following China’s internal Olympic trials- which we have absolutely zero scores or information about- China have announced their Olympic team:
- Zou Jingyuan
- Zhang Boheng
- Liu Yang
- Xiao Ruoteng
- Sun Wei
Reserves are Shi Cong, Lan Xingyu, Su Weide and You Hao.
After Nationals, the first four of these gymnasts pretty much had their spots secured. Zou Jingyuan had already officially secured his spot by the selection criteria, while Liu Yang‘s rings dominance combined with China’s prioritisation of retaining the Olympic rings title meant his spot was never really in question, despite making the team lopsided. Nationals also saw Xiao Ruoteng‘s impressive return to form, where he had the highest single day AA score. And of course, Zhang Boheng, despite withdrawing from Nationals due to injury, is by far China’s best gymnast and was never in question. I am so pleased for him after what happened in 2021, and I truly hope that he can show his best in Paris despite the injury problems he’s been having.
I’ll talk more about the medal potential of this team in a moment, but first we have to address the elephant in the room:
I wrote in my Chinese Nationals post that I thought Sun Wei was unlikely to make the team based on his performance at Nationals, but it seems that CGA have learned nothing from the controversy of the 2021 team selection, and have chosen to repeat their mistakes by leaving Shi Cong, the 2024 National AA and HB Champion, off the team in favour of Sun Wei. While we don’t know exactly what happened at trials, leaving the current National Champion off the team in favour of someone who has been performing worse all year is undoubtedly a political decision, and will have a serious impact on China’s scoring potential.
The presumable justifcation for this decision is about vault- Shi Cong competed only a kas full (4.8) on vault at Nationals, as he has struggled with the kas double (5.6) and has sustained foot injuries. Meanwhile, Sun Wei does have a kas double, however it is not a consistent vault for him and he actually scored lower than Shi Cong on vault both days of Nationals despite the extra difficulty. Additionally, Shi Cong is both stronger and more reliable than Sun Wei on four of the other events (FX, SR, PB, HB), and losing his scores means losing several tenths on those events.
Here are charts showing team calculations using the best scores from Nationals (note: I have replaced Zhang Boheng’s floor scores as he fell multiple times on both days. This doesn’t affect the other scores.)
The named Olympic team:
The same team, but with Shi Cong instead of Sun Wei:
As you can see, there is almost an entire point difference between the two. It’s also worth pointing out that these are the best scores, and as I’ve already mentioned, Shi Cong is the most reliable of the two.
It also raises the question of Su Weide– If Sun Wei is not going to contribute to the team on rings on pbars, and they really were insistent on bringing a third 5.6 vault, Su Weide has the vault and can add more points to the other events. The only downside of Su Weide is that he does not even have a pbars routine, which leaves them vulnerable to injury. But they are already vulnerable on floor and high bar, where they only have 3 routines (Liu Yang can do floor in a pinch, though high bar not so much).
Here is the team calculation including Su Weide (he does have a PH routine, but I haven’t been able to find his Nationals score.):
Out of the 3, Su Weide actually adds the most points- this is the single highest team configuration for China based on Nationals scores. I can understand why they don’t want to leave themselves with less backup routines, but the risk vs reward would have been the highest with Su Weide, who also could have challenged for individual medals.
(Ultimately if they had been willing to send Lan Xingyu instead of Liu Yang for rings, they could have avoided all of this risk since Lan Xingyu is an AAer. But that’s clearly not where their priorities lie.)
I do think that their chances at winning team gold are significantly lower due to the choices they’ve made here, and I will be aiming to do a full China vs Japan comparison before the Olympics starts.
In terms of medal potentialfor this team, they are still the frontrunners for team silver at least. In terms of individual medal contenders, Zhang Boheng‘s anticipated battle with Hashimoto Daiki is one of the top stories for this Olympics. If he can perform to his best, he is the favourite for gold. He also has the capability to challenge for medals on floor, parallel bars and high bar, though he is not a frontrunner for any of them.
Of course, Zou Jingyuan (parallel bars) and Liu Yang (rings) are both the heavy frontrunners to defend their Olympic titles, to the point where it would be a major upset if either of them did not. Additionally, Zou Jingyuan is a medal favourite for rings, and has an outside chance at getting into the pommel horse final, though he would be held back by lower difficulty.
Meanwhile Xiao Ruoteng has said his goal is an AA medal. He won’t be one of the frontrunners for a medal due to lower difficulty, but his 86+ score at Nationals does place him within the top group of contenders. Similarly, his difficulty on the other events is probably too low for him to really make a challenge for EF medals. Sun Wei has the potential to get into the PH final, but like Zou Jingyuan, this is an outside chance.
MAGnastics 