Of course they made the team based on merit alone. However, I think it is also wonderful to celebrate how diverse (age, race/ethnicity, etc) this team is. I love that how our team (as well as GB) has great diversity unlike other nations (China, Russia) where the teams are very homogenous.

Compare that to the team from 2008 - 4 blondes, 2 brunettes. The “diversity” that we had back then was Russian (Nastia) and Italian (Alicia).

I was thinking of the same thing! The key difference is that Martha explicitly outlined the reasons why she chose Gabby despite her less than stellar performance over someone like Ashton (all arounder vs 1 or 2 event gymnast). In the case of Ashley/Mirai, the skating federation did a shitty job of explaining their…