The World Selection Committee is the group that makes sure every athlete gets a fair shot at going to the Olympics. They look at a wide variety of things, including the athlete’s past performance and their Olympic requirements. The members of this committee are usually experts in their field, so you can trust them to make the best decision for everyone.
The first step of the process is to identify teams that, in the member’s opinion, should be at-large selections in the tournament based upon their play to date. This will typically be done by listing the team in a column along with its corresponding ranking number. The member may only identify a maximum of 24 teams in this column. A team that earns all but three votes in this column will be moved into the tournament as an at-large selection.
Once all of the teams that should receive consideration have been identified, each member will begin evaluating the teams in the next column to determine their rankings. This will be done by comparing the team’s rankings from the previous year against the teams in this current year’s field. This will be done to ensure that no teams are receiving too much or too little consideration from the other members of the committee.
After all of the teams have been ranked in this way, the committee will then begin looking at the relative strength of each region and may move teams between the two higher-ranked bracket groups if there is a severe numerical imbalance. Once this has been completed, the final step will be to place the top four teams in their respective bracket groups per the principles above.
This year’s selection committee is made up of a diverse set of individuals who come from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and expertise. The team includes a former cricket player, a current coach and a former international cricket administrator. Yashpal Sharma and Surendra Bhave are both making their debuts as selectors, but all eight members have a lot of experience in the sport.
For the men’s team, all of the top five athletes will have an automatic spot, including defending champion Jordan Jones and reigning silver medalist Kelley Wong. The fifth team spot is a bit murky, but it’s likely to go to Skye Blakely (WOGA), who was strong at camp and performed well at the P&G Championships. Nola Matthews (Airborne) and Lexi Zeiss (TCT) could also be in contention for this position.
The women’s competition will take place over two days of qualifying events, with the highest-scoring all-around athlete locking up their spot on the team by Friday. The remaining five gymnasts, as well as the traveling alternate, will be selected by the selection committee after the competition concludes on Saturday. This is the same process that was used for the 2018 Pan American Games, which caused quite a bit of controversy. With so much subjectivity involved, it’s understandable why people would have some concerns about how this process works. Hopefully, the committee will release a report detailing their reasoning for selecting certain athletes and not others, which will clear up any confusion.