90 days out: Liverpool to welcome nearly 600 athletes for 2022 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships
The road to Paris 2024 goes through Liverpool, England, as the home of The Beatles prepares to host the 2022 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships from October 29 to November 6.
The event will crown the first team world medalists of the quad, with the top 3 squads for both the men and women also unlocking berths for their nations to the Paris Games. The top eight will automatically advance to the 2023 world championships, where the rest of the 2024 Olympic team spots will be allocated.
Exactly 60 years after the Fab Four’s first big hit, Love Me Do, M&S Bank Arena will see early Olympic favorites emerge and the return of the five-person team competition.
A qualifying system introduced this cycle has determined who competes in Liverpool, with teams earning the right to compete via results at the continental championships. The team competition is capped at 24 nations.
The top eight teams after qualifications will advance to the team finals on November 1 and 2. Three gymnasts from each team will compete on each apparatus, with every score counting toward the team total.
Countries whose teams did not qualify may still send up to five women and five men to compete in the individual all-around and/or apparatus competitions.
The forty men and 49 women individual all-around qualifiers are determined based on the results of the continental championships. Forty-eight men and 32 female apparatus specialists qualify through the 2022 Apparatus World Cup series.
The top 24 all-around gymnasts from the qualifying round at the world championships, with a maximum of two per country, will advance to the all-around finals on November 3 and 4. The top eight scores on each individual event, also with a maximum of two per country, will qualify for the apparatus finals on November 5 and 6.
Liverpool becomes the fourth British city to host the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships following Birmingham (1993), London (2009), and Glasgow (2015).
The event’s slogan is “Welcome to Our World” while the “Worldpool” logo “honors the diverse nations coming to Liverpool to compete for the titles,” according to the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG).
One-hundred days out from the start of the event, Megan Allen was announced as the winner of the “Worldpool” art competition, which set out on a quest to solicit artwork that incorporated the logo. The 22-year-old is a gymnastics coach from Aberdeen, Scotland. Allen’s artwork features a rainbow-hued Liverpool skyline dotted with gymnasts and contains a nod to the famous green-winged mural by Liverpool artist Paul Curtis, who is an ambassador to the event.
The medals, which were designed by local artist Amy Flynn, will “showcase the feel of the city,” according to Flynn.
2012 Olympic bronze medalist Beth Tweddle, reigning Olympic pommel horse gold medalist Max Whitlock, and Joe Fraser round out the ambassadors to the championships.
Gymnastics Now will be on-site in Liverpool, providing live coverage, including articles, photos, video, and more, starting with podium training on October 26.
You can find out more about the competition here. Tickets are available at that link. Follow @WGC2022 on social media and use #ARTWorlds2022 when posting about the competition.
