John Orozco and Colombian Jossimar Calvo both had strong days on Saturday in the men’s qualification round. Orozco qualified for three individual event finals while Calvo reached two himself. Their overall scores were quite similar with Calvo just topping Orozco 88.765 to 88.640. But neither were any match for Ukranian Oleg Verniaiev who put up a massive 92.107 and qualified for the final in five of the six individual events.
Jacob Dalton didn’t participate on every apparatus but did qualify for the final on the vault with the second highest score of the day. Orozco will be in the final for pommel horse (eighth highest), parallel bars (seventh highest), and horizontal bar (fourth highest).
The US doesn’t have any women competing in the artistic events this weekend in Rio so the next competition will be when Orozco and Dalton are in the individual finals on Monday.
The first Olympic archery nomination shoot narrowed the field of potential athletes down to 16 men and 16 women and the second nomination shoot will narrow it down to the top eight. On the men’s side they are going for three spots on the Olympic team while only one is guaranteed for the women but two more might be earned at later international qualifying.
Points are accumulated throughout the rounds of qualifying and never reset so many of the archers still in competition this week are likely too far back to eventually grab one of the spots. On the men’s side the top three are currently Zachary Garrett (27.25 points), Sean McLaughlin (25 points), and Brady Ellison (23 points). Jacob Wukie is just behind Ellison with 22.25 points. Ellison and Wukie were both 2012 Olympians. Jake Kaminski was also a 2012 Olympian and is in fifth with 20.25 points.
On the women’s side Mackenzie Brown leads with 25.75 points, Ariel Gibilaro has 23 points in second and Lanola Pritchard is third with 22 points. 2012 Olympic fourth place finisher Khatuna Lorig is in fourth here with 20.75 points.
Monday will feature two 72 arrow ranking rounds where points are awarded depending on your finish. Four points to the winner and 0.25 points less for every spot on down from there. Up to three bonus points are available for each round as well depending on how high the scores are.
American head coach Mary Jo Hernandez shook things up on Sunday in Australia as she elected to use Coco Vandeweghe in the first singles match against Australian Sam Stosur. Just like her decision to use Christina McHale against Stosur on Saturday this decision seemed to be a stroke of genius. Stosur won the first set 6-2 and held an early 2-0 lead in set two before Vandeweghe finally started to regain her footing and broke back and evened the set at two each. With the set tied at five and Stosur serving up 40-30 Vandeweghe won the next three points to grab the break and consolidated the break in the next game to force a third set. She’d continue her strong playing winning the first couple points of set three and turning that into a set opening break that would stand through the entire third set. She saved four break points and held on for a 6-4 win and sent the Americans into the World Group next year for the first time since 2014.
With the tie no longer in doubt the second singles match was cancelled but the doubles match still took place between Vandeweghe and Bethanie Mattek-Sands and the Australian team of Daria Gavrilova and Arina Rodionova. The US cruised to a 6-1, 6-4 win and a 4-0 sweep of the tie.
With the World Group spot locked up the US knows they will be taking part in February 2017. It’s a long ways off bu when it comes around it’ll be interesting to see how strong of a squad the US sends. If their very top players can’t go some of the “B Team” who competed this weekend showed they are capable of delivering on a big stage.
If there was a bright spot in the disappointing tenth place finish this weekend it was Nate Ebner. The New England Patriot safety made his first three starts for the US and scored a pair of tries in a 26-0 bowl semifinal win over Portugal. Ebner is making a late push for a spot on the Olympic team and after looking decent this weekend will need to continue to show progress next month in Paris and London to solidify his chances.
The US opened Sunday with a 24-5 win over Russia where Zach Test, Danny Barrett, Make Unufe, and Perry Baker all found time for a try and a 26-0 win over Portugal behind those two Ebner tries and Test and Unufe’s second tries of the day.
A good match finally awaited the US in the bowl final against Scotland and the US found themselves down 14-0 at the half. Much like yesterday’s final match against New Zealand the US battled back and Test and Unufe once again scored tries but without conversions on the two kicks Scotland held on for a 14-10 win. The tenth place finish by the US was their worst since losing in the bowl semifinals in Dubai last year, a run of 14 straight tournaments.
Looking back at the nine-tournament run of cup quarterfinals it’s a streak of pool play success I don’t think anyone anticipated when the US started it last May in Scotland. The US had only reached the cup quarterfinals in nine of the 19 tournaments leading up to this streak. The only other countries to make each cup quarterfinal during that stretch are the big four of Fiji, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. For an upstart country like the US to pull off a stretch that long say something about how far they have come over the last couple years and why they will be medal contenders, though certainly not favorites, in Rio.
It does seem to me that while the US is missing something when Carlin Isles is not part of the team. Being able to throw out fresh legs by swapping Isles and Baker surely makes a difference in such a physically demanding two days. Hopefully he will be back for the US in Paris in May.
Olympic spots will be determined in four events this week in Sarasota, Florida while in three other events a crew will get the chance to qualify for the Olympics at a later international event. The first event to get underway is the men’s quadruple sculls where three teams are vying for the qualification spots. These teams will have a time trial on Sunday before racing a final on Tuesday to determine the Olympic spot. According to US Rowing one of the teams (Craftsbury A) features Peter Graves who made the 2012 Olympics in this event.
The stars were out for the US on Saturday in Mesa as some of the biggest names in swimming took first place in their races at the Arena Pro Swim Series. Katie Ledecky will be as big a star as anyone this summer in Rio and she made it three wins in three tries in the women’s 800m freestyle. Danish swimmer Lotte Friis was second while Cierra Runge had her first top four finish in third.
Maya DiRado won the women’s 200m individual medley for the second straight time while Ella Eastin was second in her first race of the season while Melanie Margalis finally didn’t finish second. Unfortunately she didn’t move in the direction she hoped to. Michael Phelps made it three-for-three on the men’s side with Chase Kalisz finishing in the top four for the first time in second. David Nolan’s first appearance of the year resulted in a third place finish.
Maya DiRado won her second event of the day in the women’s 200m backstroke while Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe was second and Kaitlin Harty finished third in her first apperance. The men’s side saw Ryan Lochte grab his first win of the year with Omar Pinzon of Colombia in second and Connor Green with his first top-five finish of the year in third.
The women’s 100m freestyle saw Simone Manuel win her third race in three tries this year. Abbey Weitzeil has also been really strong and her second place finish makes it three top-three finishes in three tries. Finally Dana Vollmer was third in her first appearance in this event. Nathan Adrian won for the fourth straight time in the men’s 100m freestyle with Cristian Quintero of Venezuela in second and Jimmy Feigen finishing in third for the second time this season.
Finally in the men’s 1500m freestyle Jordan Wilimovsky won in his first appearance of the season and made it four winners in four events. Michael McBroom added a second place finish to his first from Minneapolis while Ous Mellouli of Tunisia now has three third place finishes in three tries.
The fifth of seven events will be next month in Charlotte starting on May 12th.
In the women’s trap event Ashley Carroll and Corey Cogdelljust missed out on a chance at the finals. Both shot a 22 in the third qualifying round and missed a tied for the final spot in the semifinals by a point. Carroll finished ninth while Cogdell ended up 12th. Janessa Jo Beaman shot a 22 as well, her best round of the event, and finished 24th. On the men’s side BrianBurrows dropped to 43rd after a 21 while Casey Wallace rose to 50th and Seth Iman dropped to 64th. Two more qualifying rounds will be shot on Sunday but it seems the Americans are too far back to get into the finals.
In the women’s 10m air rifle Sarah Beard came the closest to making the finals after a 417.2 but she missed out by 0.3 points, due to a 103 in the first series, the lowest score in any of the four series by anyone in the top 13. Virginia Thrasher ended up in 28th with Sarah Scherer in 32nd.
Will Brown reached the finals of the men’s 10m air pistol with a 580, tied for seventh. Brown won the inner tens tiebreaker over two other shooters to grab one of the finals spots. Jay Shi had a 575 in 24th and Nickolaus Mowrer was in 41st. In the finals Brown was fourth after the first stage and managed to stay alive until finishing fifth.
Sunday will feature the final two qualifying rounds and the finals of the men’s trap as well as the entire women’s 10m air pistol competition. Courtney Anthony, Lydia Paterson, and Enkelejda Shehaj Bekurti will compete for the US. None of them competed in the first stop in Bangkok.
The USA Women’s Sevens team went 3-0 against Spain, Fiji, and New Zealand last weekend. The second verse was not quite the same as the first. The US started off the day great with a Leyla Kelter try in the first minute and an early 7-0 lead over Spain. That lead would last until the very end of the match when a Spain try gave them a 10-7 win. The US got a 24-12 win over Fiji to head into the final match with New Zealand with a chance to win the group.
Again the US had an early 7-0 lead thanks to a Bui Baraviala try but New Zealand scored 19 unanswered to win 19-7. The US still managed to finish second in the pool as Fiji rallied late to overturn a 10-5 deficit and upset Spain 15-10 and send the US into a Sunday cup quarterfinal against England. England was 2-1 on Saturday with a 5-0 loss to Canada the blemish. The other part of the US half of the bracket is Australia-Spain while the four teams on the far side of the bracket are New Zealand, Russia, France, and Canada.
On the second day of the FINA Diving World Series event in Windsor, Canada. Amy Cozad had her best competition of the year. Having just missed out on the final in the first two events she advanced from the semifinals this time finishing third in her semifinal with a 333.10. She wasn’t quite as competitive in the final as a 307.10 left her sixth but it was still an improvement on the last two events.
Sunday the event will wrap up with David Boudia competing in the men’s 10m platform competition. Boudia made the final in both of the previous events with a high finish of fourth in Dubai. Semifinals will be in the morning with the finals in the evening.
Isabella Isaksen was the top American on Saturday in the final of the UIPM World Cup event in Kecskemet, Hungary. Isaksen sat 27th after the swimming portion but had her strongest portion of the final in the fencing where she won 21 of her 35 matches to finish fifth. She ended up with a total of 1287, 65 back of the winner Anastasiya Prokopenko of Bulgaria. Samantha Achterberg was ahead of Isaksen after the swimming portion where she finished 23rd but only winning 11 of 35 fencing matches left her well back and top 15 finishes in riding and combined were only enough to place her 27th overall with 1254.
The final of the UIPM World Cup is in Sarasota, Florida starting on May 6th.