The 2025 Winter Cup just wrapped up and with it, the US men’s senior national team has also been announced. While some familiar names were there, some names have elicited rather negative reactions from the fans. But the main reason the community is angry is not the names but rather the changed strategy. Instead of following through the rule book, TEAM USA used a totally new way of choosing the members.

First things first. In case you don’t know who made the cut, let’s give you an overview. All three gymnasts on the Winter Cup all-around podium made the list: Champion Riley Loos, 2nd-placed Frederick Richard, who also won the bronze medal at the 2024 Olympics, and Taylor Christopulos. Most event winners of the Winter Cup made the cut.

But 2 event winners missed out on the senior team selection, which has left some of the fans perplexed. Those 2 gymnasts are the vault event winner, Nartey Brady, and horizontal bar winner, Crew Bold. The selection criteria list stipulated that when choosing a member for the team, USA Gymnastics will look at the following points in decreasing order of importance:

Ability to fulfill upcoming international assignments, Individual Event final rankings (combined 2-days), Individual Event D scores from both days of competition, Prior international competition experience and results Development Team needs: athletes will benefit from National Team structure and international experience in preparation for future development

The above list gives you the impression that winning a Winter Cup event was good enough for selection, doesn’t it? Then why did Nartey Brady and Crew Bold not make the cut? One ardent gymnastics fan, Kensley Behel, was curious why Crew Bold was left out and Alex Diab was selected. Diab didn’t win any events at the Winter Cup. He should have been lower in the hierarchy of selection.

She asked the governing body itself. To this, USA Gymnastics gave the following reply, which she shared on Twitter on March 3: “Individual event final rankings from the Winter Cup were a higher priority than prior international experience, but as the posted list indicates, rankings were not the only priorities.” The list they are talking about is the hierarchical list of criteria that we have shared above.

Continuing, USA Gymnastics said, “At the Winter Cup, Alex Diab had the same two-day total on still rings as the winner and the highest D-scores of the weekend on the event, and his past international experience and other factors listed in the selection criteria ultimately resulted in his being named to the National Team.” Well, that’s an answer, alright. And it also clears up why Diab was selected ahead of Bold.

But the fans are now questioning why D-scores and past international experiences were given priority above event rankings. The selection criteria list says otherwise. USA Gymnastics’ explanation has not been taken well by the fans, and they have come out to voice their displeasure.

The Gymnastics fans are questioning the point of having rules codified

If the rules said event winners will be given precedence, then the US senior team selection should have shown that. But it didn’t. Responding to a post about USAG’s reply, a Redditor expressed, “Make rules to just ignore them when they don’t give you the results you want.” The fan is probably implying that USA Gymnastics thought the highest D-scores would also come from the event final winners.

But when it didn’t, they just did what would eventually benefit the overall team scores for the upcoming competitions and prioritized D-score criteria. Another fan sounded his frustration over how USAG has let them down. The comment read: “I really wanted to believe that USAG was getting better at how they were handling MAG, but it seems to be the same boys club it always has been.”

The fan thinks true merit-based selection was not followed when they excluded Bold. He probably wanted Horizontal Bar event winner Bold to be selected over Rings silver medalist Alex Diab. US men’s gymnastics has already been threatened by dropping popularity and a shift of focus. In such a time, merit has to be celebrated and awarded and not subjected to partiality.

One fan just straight away pointed out what USAG did was wrong: “I think the central problem here is that the procedures they wrote didn’t give them the leeway for what they did. They wrote an order of operations and then talked their way around following it.” We have to think about this point. Crew Bold probably prioritized winning the event over D-scores because that was the rule.

Now you say you didn’t follow the procedure you have codified; that’s just unfair. This fan rather went into detail about what USAG’s thought process may have been: “Yep, and that’s the problem with selection committees. Sticking to an algorithm doesn’t give you leeway to work around real-world conditions.”

Continuing, the Redditor asked the gymnastics community which would be better: “…hypothetically, would 1st place in a total splatfest still be unequivocally better than losing a tiebreak for 1st when everyone performed spectacularly?” The Redditor further said, “The alternative is freedom to ignore the pre-selected criteria, which opens the door for bias and bad guesses.”

The decision that has been taken is a subjective one, no doubt. USAG prioritized higher D-scores because they will contribute to team scores in the tournaments. But if the decision backfires, who is to blame? At least USAG has been transparent about it, as the fan commented: “Either way, being transparent about what the priorities were and why they changed would help build trust.”

But for one fan, this wasn’t transparency. As the comment read, “This isn’t transparency either. Just because they say words doesn’t mean it’s transparent. The existence of a pile of s**t next door doesn’t make our pile of s**t stink less.” Many fans are making the argument that it could be worse.

But for this rather aggressive supporter, not following the rules to the letter is bad enough, and also that the governing body just said what they did, but they didn’t explain themselves. That’s true. Why did they do it? Why did they deviate from the written rule?