Below are roughly 40 bullet points representing the most funky and compelling statistics from the 2021 Olympics in Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG)

Rebeca Andrade

-First female athlete (all sports) from Brazil to win multiple Olympic medals in a single Olympics

-First female athlete (all sports) from Brazil who has multiple Olympic medals in individual events.

-First Olympic WAG medal in Brazilian history.

-First WAG since 2004 to win an Olympic All-Around medal while competing for a program that didn’t win a medal in the team competition (Zhang Nan).

-First WAG to win an Olympic All-Around medal while coming from a country that didn’t qualify a full team.

-Won an All-Around medal despite having never qualified to a previous Event Finals, never won a team medal, and never finished in the top-10 of a previous All-Around. I’m not sure if this is a record, but I’ve NEVER seen such a scenario in any of my previous data entry for a veteran gymnast. I’ve done it for plenty of 1st-year seniors, but never in regards to a gymnast who is a 2x Olympian.

Twins and Siblings

-Lieke Wevers and Sanne Wevers became the first set of twins in WAG history to be 2x Olympians.

-Previously, there had been just two sets of twins in Olympic WAG history. The arrival of the Gadirova and D’Amato twins doubled that number to four.

-Of the 4 sets of twins in Olympic WAG history, 3 sets of them competed at the 2021 Olympics. The last set competed at the 1988 Olympics.

-Prior to 2012 the male:female twins ratio was 4:1, but with three sets of WAG twins in the last two Olympic cycles, that ratio is now 4 MAG examples and 4 WAG examples, or a 1:1 ratio.

-Previously, there were two sibling distinctions that were unique only to Un-Jong Hong and Su-Jong Hong that were “matched” at the 2021 Olympics.

-But they were “matched” by a different set of sisters

-Victoria Moors and Brooklyn Moors join the Hong siblings as the only other set of sisters in WAG where both sisters are Olympians, but they never competed at the same Olympics.

– Jessica Gadirova and Jennifer Gadirova join the Hong siblings as the only other example of two sisters competing in the same Apparatus Finals. Previously, the Hong siblings did it at the 2007 World Championships.

-This makes the Gadirova sisters the first to do it in Olympic competition.

-Because of how one may wish to interpret the age falsification scandal involving the Hong sisters, the Gadirova sisters may or may not be the first set of twins to do it in both Olympic and/or World Championships competition.

-The Gadirova twins are the first set of sisters to go to the Olympics and both officially won medals in that very same Olympics.

-Surprisingly, the 2021 Olympics did not break the record for the most set of sisters in a single Olympics. There were also three sets of siblings in WAG at the 1952 Olympics.

Age Records

-Oksana Chusovitina became the oldest Olympic gymnast in WAG history.

-Vanessa Ferrari became only the 4th WAG in gymnastics history to be a 4x Olympian.

-Ferrari became the first former All-Around Champion to become a 4x Olympian

-Ferrari became the second WAG to have won an Olympic medal AFTER her 3rd Olympic appearance. Previously, only Oksana Chusovitina had accomplished this feat.

-Ferrari won an Olympic medal in an individual event 15 years after winning an All-Around title. This smashes every conceivable record regarding the longevity of former All-Around Champions. Previously, Larissa Latynina (10 years) was the All-Around Champion with the greatest longevity. But Latynina’s record was only 8-years when counting individual medals as Ferrari had done.

-It would be accurate to say that the time between Ferrari winning her first and last medal was longer in length than the entire senior-level career of any other All-Around Champion.

Mai Murakami

-Mai Murakami, Vanessa Ferrari, and Angelina Melnikova have finished in 4th place a combined 8x at the World Championships/Olympic level. At the 2021 Olympics they all shared a podium.

-Mai Murakami and Angelina Melnikova obtained the first Olympic tie in WAG since 1996.

-Mai Murakami became the first Japanese gymnast to win an Olympic WAG medal in an individual event.

-Mai Murakami won Japan’s first Olympic WAG medal since 1964.

-Japan has two WAG medals in its history, a team bronze medal won at the Tokyo-1964 Olympics, and a bronze floor medal from the Tokyo-2021 Olympics which had been won by Mai Murakami.

Russia

-Russia won its first Olympic team gold in WAG in program history.

-Technically, it won’t count towards their actual program results because of “ROC.”

-Vladislava Urazova finished 4th in the All-Around, as did Natalia Shaposhnikova at the 1980 Olympics and Elena Produnova at the 1999 World Championships. This stat is significant because all three gymnasts are from the same Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

-Elena Gerasimova is in the unique position of representing a country that won a team medal, but she herself did not win a medal at any point during the Olympics. Due to rule changes, this will likely be Gerasimova’s unique stat line for eternity.

Other

-Yeo Seo Jeong won South Korea’s first WAG medal at the World Championships/Olympic level.

-Great Britain won its first team medal in Olympic WAG in 93 years (1928)

-Jessica Gadirova recorded British WAG’s first top-10 finish in Olympic All-Around history

-Ellie Black finished in 4th place for the THIRD time in her career.

-Only one of five individual events featured two gymnasts from the same country.

-Out of 18 available medals, they were shared by 10 different countries.

-This figure changes to 9 of 15 available medals in the individual events

-For the first time ever in Olympic history, no gymnast in WAG won multiple gold medals. No really, going back to 1928 this is the first time such a phenomenon has ever happened.