The September Briefing | Szombathely + Worlds Watch

Three of Four Szombathely Leaders Changed in the Final

Three of four qualification leaders changed when the Szombathely Event Final was decided. Greta Mayer moved from third in qualification on VT at 12.900 to the Final win at 13.516, a 0.616 gain. Dulcy Caylor was the exception: she held the top FX position and raised her score from 13.333 to 13.466.

Flávia Saraiva changed the UB and BB order without posting a higher score than she had in qualification. She moved from third on UB (13.733) to first in the Final (13.366), and from third on BB (13.833) to first (13.766). On FX, she improved by 0.500, from 12.933 to 13.433, and earned silver. The result produced three Final medals across UB, BB and FX while underscoring that Final rank depends on the new field performance, not qualification score carryover.

Difficulty and execution tell a second story. Bettina Lili Czifra retained the meet-high D signal on UB, moving from 6.4 in qualification to 6.2 in the Final, even as her total fell from 14.333 to 13.000. The meet-high E moved from Mayer's 9.000 on VT in qualification to 9.100 in the Final, shared by Mayer and Emily Roper. One meet does not establish a broader trend, but Szombathely shows how D, E and field movement can reshape an apparatus order between rounds.

Nemour's 57.750 Holds as GIGA's 2026 AA Benchmark

Kaylia Nemour's 57.750 in the Mediterranean Games AA Final remains the highest 2026 AA total in GIGA's High-Score Tracker. Her event scores were VT 13.800, UB 15.650, BB 14.700 and FX 13.600. The 15.650 UB carried 7.1 D, also GIGA's tracked 2026 apparatus high for both total score and D.

The more revealing comparison sits outside UB. Against her 56.498 at the African Championships, Nemour gained 0.534 on VT and 0.867 on FX, added 0.084 on UB and gave back 0.233 on BB. The net 1.252 AA increase was therefore fueled primarily by VT and FX. Different competitions and judging panels limit direct score equivalence, but the distribution of the change is clear.

The 57.750 also contained identifiable scoring components below values Nemour had already received elsewhere in 2026. Her VT carried a 0.1 ND, while her BB received 6.4 D after a 6.7 D at the African Championships. Those are observable components of the Taranto score, not a forecast of a future AA total.

The Collegiate 10.0 Path Now Separates Bonus from Composition Credit

For 2026–27 NCAA rules, UB, BB and FX start from 9.2. Reaching 10.0 requires the full 0.6 in difficulty / connection bonus and 0.2 in composition credit. Within the 0.6 bonus, a routine must include at least 0.1 from difficulty and 0.1 from connections; the remaining 0.4 may come from either. VT uses its separate value chart.

UB: A Maloney connected directly to an overshoot handstand receives 0.2 difficulty bonus but no connection bonus under the NCAA examples. That pairing alone therefore does not satisfy the minimum 0.1 connection-bonus requirement.

FX: A two-pass routine can earn 0.1 composition credit for a D acro element in each pass and another 0.1 for a D or E dance element, assuming the other requirements are met. With 0.6 valid bonus and both composition credits, the start value reaches 10.0. With only 0.1 composition credit, the same 0.6 bonus produces 9.9.

Bonus and composition credit fill separate parts of the start value. Extra bonus cannot replace missing composition credit, so routine review now requires both calculations rather than treating all eight tenths as interchangeable.

Nominative Entries Start the Rotterdam Sequence, Not the Final-Team Count

World Gymnastics published the September 18 nominative registration for the October 17–25 World Championships in Rotterdam. Nominative entries identify athletes entered by federations at that stage of the process; they are not, by themselves, the same as confirmed final national teams. GIGA is tracking that distinction in the Newsroom.

The next competition sequence is compact. The Paris World Challenge Cup runs September 26–27, followed by the U.S. Women's World Team Selection on September 30–October 1, then the World Championships on October 17–25. Paris offers another apparatus-level read on credited D, sustained E and qualification-to-Final repeatability; U.S. selection serves a different role by determining the U.S. team process.

Leanne Wong will miss the September 30–October 1 U.S. selection event while continuing knee recovery, according to current reporting carried in the GIGA Newsroom. That changes the U.S. selection field, but it does not establish a recovery timetable or support a broader Worlds prediction.

The sequence matters because each checkpoint answers a different question: Paris provides another apparatus data point, U.S. selection resolves one federation's team decision, and later federation confirmations determine which nominative entries become final Worlds teams.