Warm up for Floor Final - Pan Ams

This I think will be a exciting final. I love floor exercise, the dance, the expressiveness, the tumbling. Unfortunately the scoring has been brutal on this apparatus, not only here in Guadalajara but in this scoring system as a whole. This creates a problem, as gymnasts need to detract from performance and quality of the exercise in order to code whore as much as they can to get mediocre scores.

This event was really good for team Canada in TF and Mikaela Gerber just delivered a fabulous routine.

This video is from earlier this year, but I saw Gerber's routine for TF on the terra.com feed and thought she did much better in Guadalajara, she was cleaner in the twists and in the landings. I like her style, is different. The double turn however is not good, I know the judges will credit it, but at this level of gymnastics I think the competitors should not be allowed to do such a poor job at these dance skills.

Ana Lago of Mexico is elegant and has a nice choreographed routine that suits her style. She also surprises you with some pretty big tumbling, check out the double layout right off the top. Her double turn with leg at horizontal is quite good. She had some small mistakes on landings in this qualifying routine and will be looking to go even cleaner and maybe get another medal for Mexico, who knows maybe a gold.

Kristina Vaculik is here also and she has some lovely choreo and style on floor.

Her tumbling has been clean and she has been solid in this apparatus here so I expect her to challenge. She will be looking to stick those landings and give nothing for the judges to deduct from her.

Dovelis Torres of Cuba qualified 4th with a score of 13.5 unfortunately no videos of her.

Daniele Hypolito qualified 5th with 13.375. For this routine in the AA however she scored 13.825. She needs to repeat this pristine clean performance to get on the podium. Also, in Tokyo she performed a double layout as her first pass, she might try it here to have the edge and get a medal, which would be the first for Brazil in the women side at this gymnastics meet. Brazil has had a very disappointing competition and got a lot of criticism from the Brazilian press for it. Hypolito seemed genuinely pissed off in the AA and VT finals, maybe she will bring that anger into floor and make something out of it.

Ana Sofia Gomez Porras is also making the final here with some exciting tumbling. She was cleaner in her landings in the AA than in qualifying and scored close to a 15.0, which if repeated would put her in a fight for first. Her choreo and dance needs to mature, it is not quite there yet, but she is dynamic and precise in her movements. Even without great difficulty in dance elements her double turn is clean and prettier than Gerber's (or Weiber's or Peng-peng Lee's for that matter, so nobody say I am picking on Gerber! Yes there are plenty of ugly turns being credited full difficulty out there, shame on you judges!).

It is great to know that we will get to see the great work of Elsa Garcia one last time before this competition is over.

I like this routine (but Elsa you could really do better than that sloppy turn at the beginning), she really sells it and looks like she is enjoying herself. The tumbling is clean and so are the leaps, 180 degree split although the rule, is definitely not the norm in today's gymnastics, but Garcia has a style that I really appreciate.

Jessie DeZiel delivered a solid routine in qualifying to get a spot for the final. She did step OOB and had some mistakes on landings so she can improve and move up, the leaps need to be better though. The music and choreo are a little odd, this techno medley is not great and there is not much dancing in this routine, however this is how Martha likes them, powerful with no talent for dance whatsoever, so I guess it is what it is. I would like her to hit and finish in a good position in this final since I believe the rookies of USA's B team, like DeZiel and Jay, did their job overall in this competition while the veterans messed up everywhere. Hopefully DeZiel will finish this competition feeling good about herself, I am sure she has a great NCAA career awaiting her somewhere.

Keeping my fingers crossed for a clean, solid performance by the girls tomorrow, I would like everyone to come and fight for those 6 medals up for grabs and may the best competitors win!