Women's Balance Beam Final

Gold - Deng Linlin CHN

Silver - Sui Lu CHN

Bronze - Aly Raisman USA

The Balance Beam final was definitely not something I would call pretty. There were many wobbles and several falls .. and not just falls, pretty ugly falls.

Sui Lu was up first and she delivered a nearly flawless routine. I was actually very impressed with her in qualifications and if one Chinese was going to win the gold I wanted it to be her. She scored a 15.5, huge score! Catalina Ponor was up next, and while I really enjoyed her beauty and routine, she had many balance checks and wobbles, and to me it just looked sloppy. Deng Linlin was third and to my dismay she posted a score even higher than that of Sui Lu's -- 15.6. That was definitely the highest score awarded on beam throughout these Games.

Larisa Iordache was up next, and she ended up falling off of the beam almost immediately. She managed to get back up and definitely fight through the rest of her routine with no major errors. Next up was Kseniia Afanaseva. She got her routine with no falls and relatively cleanly, however a huge step back on the dismount and a low D score was enough to keep her out of medal contention.

Gabby Douglas unfortunately had a very nasty fall after a broken connection and two major balance checks, and Viktoria Komova, who followed had not only one fall, but also sat down her Patterson dismount!! Honestly I think the worst beam final that I have ever seen!!

Aly Raisman was up last for the USA, and her routine was very solid, especially compared to the others. A few slight balance checks, and a hop on the dismount, but I was sure she'd medal. When the score came up, however, it had her in 4th place behind Ponor, again!! As I got ready to declare this THE worst EF I'd ever watched, Bela and Marta start waving to Mihai from the stands, telling him that he should appeal the score, and he did! They ended up raising her start value to 6.3, resulting in a tie for bronze with Ponor!! And this time, the tiebreaker went in Aly's favor and she ended up with the bronze medal!!

I was so happy for her for getting an individual medal, but irritated that China went 1,2 - and also with all of the falls and errors, this beam final was hard to watch.