The USA Women's Gymnastics Team is Deep

Make no mistake that the 2012 Women's Gymnastics team that is representing the United States this year in London is a deep squad.  You can look no further than the fact that three of the five gymnasts were in the top 4 gymnasts overall during Sunday's qualification round.

The best 24 gymnasts in the world will not compete but that's because of the rules.  Of the overall top 24 on Sunday, only 4 of them will not be competing in Thursday's all-around.  That's the sad reality of the gymnastics rules.  But the rules are rules and only two Americans are able to compete Thursday in the individual all-around competition.

Straight from London 2012 website:

The Olympic Artistic Gymnastics competition has four phases: qualification, Team final, Individual All-Around final and individual apparatus finals

All gymnasts compete in the qualifications. The best eight teams then go through to the Team final, where three team members compete on each apparatus. Teams are ranked on their total score

The best 24 individual gymnasts (maximum two from each country) go through to the Individual All-Around final, where gymnasts compete on all apparatus. The best eight gymnasts on each apparatus (maximum two from each country) go through to the individual apparatus finals.

Because of the rules, Jordyn Wieber, the reigning all-around champion, did not qualify for the the individual all-around competition even though her score of 60.032 placed in her the top 4 overall on Sunday.

Aly Raisman was the best American gymnast last night, mainly due to her performance on the floor exercise, and you could not deny that fact.  She was second overall with a total score of 60.391.

Gabby Douglas was the second best with a score of 60.265.  Had she not gone out of bounds during the floor routine, she would have likely have finished in first overall on Sunday night.

In addition to Aly and Gabby, Team USA will have two others competing individually in the event finals.


Individual event finals
Vault: McKayla Maroney
Uneven bars: Gabby Douglas
Balance beam: Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman
Floor exercise: Aly Raisman, Jordyn Wieber

You can read some of the team's quotes over at the USA Gymnastics page.