Arbitrary

The more I've been watching gymnastics lately, the more I'm kind of getting miffed that things (i.e. rules) are not more standardized. I mean, gymnasts basically give up their entire youth to dedicate it to their sport. And it seems like, depending on what era it has been throughout history, results could have been drastically different than they are.

Let's take the '89-'92 Quad. Well, you didn't have to nail two vaults in the all-around because you got to drop your lowest score. Good thing, since gymnasts like Onodi fell on one of them in the '92 Olympic AA (I know she wasn't going to win an AA medal, but still...). And, by the same token, good thing in the '06-08 Quad, Nastia didn't need two different vaults like gymnasts did in the '97-'00 Quad, or she might have been screwed.

And in the '89-'92 Quad, even if your difficulty hypothetically went over a 10.0, if you made a big enough mistake, it didn't matter. Risk did not necessarily = reward. Look at Kim Gwang Suk's uneven bar routine in event finals. (Why this didn't at least get a bronze, btw, is beyond me). (The fact that she was prob. underage aside).

And, I mean, technically, it's always been the rule that pirouettes on uneven bars should end in handstand. But this was never enforced until '06. Well, gee, that sure did come in handy for the 5 previous years for the Romanians. In fact, form in general was conveniently ignored for a good while, at least as compared to the degree to which it's considered important now.

And what about ties? In '92 they were allowed, and there were several. If memory serves me, wasn't there a 3-way tie for bronze on FX. WTF? Now, we go to obscure tie-breaking means, as in Beijing with Nastia & He Kexin. But had that been 16 years earlier, a tie would have been no big deal! And why is it that when there's a tie for say, second place (back in the day when ties were allowed), there's no bronze medal given? There's still technically someone whose score was third-best and it's not her fault that the 2 of the 3 people above her tied. Someone is getting screwed out of receiving a medal. And remember the days when falling meant losing the chance of winning a medal? Well, no more since Shanshan won a medal at the '07 Worlds and Cheng Fei won bronze on vault in Beijing. But, if the rules had allowed such things in the past, then who knows, Mo Huilan may have won a medal in the AA in Sabae at the '95 Worlds! Even minuscule obscure rules like I think in '95 at National level competition, gymnasts got .1 bonus for doing 2 different vaults. And what about the Phelps vault, the thing I abhor more than any other skill... no one really enforced the layout position (deducting for pike), nor did anyone pay attention to the twisting direction! IG had a good write up on this in '97 or '98, in which they concluded that, depending on the direction in which the gymnast twists, it could be considered two different vaults, and that technically, Amanar was the only one performing it correctly! Did no one care about rules?!

Arg, it's just frustrating how arbitrary some things can be.

I wish Atler would write a book...

OK, true, no one knows who she is except me and the people on the IG Forum.



I just watched the 2000 Classic last night (which, although cheesy, I really enjoyed the coach's insights on each of their athletes). Nessa had a nice (for her) bar set. And she seemed genuinely happy about hitting.

Flash forward to 2000 Olympic Trials. She bombs everything.

Flash forward again to 2005 Starting Over. Nessa seems "over" gymnastics, trying to sabotage herself, relieved to have not made the Olympic team, and not so enamored with Liukin.

When does the change occur between Classic and Trials? What happened? I mean...sheesh... if she had continued improving at that rate, I can see her being a player in vault finals in Sydney (esp. if she threw her Rudi, which btw. is a real shame it's not named after her) and perhaps in BB and/or FX finals.

It's now 10 years later and I still feel full of questions. When did she fall out of love with the sport? When you think about it, what a shame! Even if she wasn't happy in early 2000, that's 15 years (give or take) worth of work, all thrown away. I'm not saying she would have been Olympic AA champion, but just to go and give it your all.... why not do that?

Heated Debate!

I am having a somewhat heated discussion with the fellow fanatics on the IG Message Board.

Fishbulb says: Bleh. I don't understand the execution scores at all. It doesn't make sense to me that a short handstand on bars can be worse than a FALL. I might get pummelled for this, but... why does Ivana get such low scores on bars? Before you freak out, mind you I'm not a code expert, and obviously I didn't get the memo about short handstands = death. I can see that her tkatchev is bad, but other than that (and the HANDSTANDS) how does she barely score better than Jana?

AGREED. Neither gymnast is THAT sloppy. Jana gets picked on, bur seriously, from an 8.4 you'd think she was horrid. But how can Ivana only score .2 higher than that? Yes, handstands and low Tcatchev, but... hmm for YEARS these things didn't matter like they do now. which leads me to his second point...

I feel like the FIG picks one new thing every code to focus on, and kind of forgets about everything else. Now it's this no-lunge landing thing. Can I just mention that this may be the stupidest thing to ever happen in gymnastics. IMO. I spent a million hours as a kid practicing throwing my head back and stepping back just the way the elites did it. Now that's gone. WHY? They give some BS answer about this being the only way to show lack of control, but isn't that the judges job? Aren't the supposed to watch and decide if someone is in control or not? I see it controlling the girls into a bunch of snapped ankles.

So, to be clear, the two most important things in gymnastics are handstands on bars, and landing like a dude on floor. Not so much skills, artistry, creativity, expression, staying on the apparatus... It's a few tenths for a fall, and 72380189710980 tenths for a missed handstand. HURUMPF.

Precisely. This year it's execution. Oh well if you're consistent and hit 8-for-8, like hong. If you can land like a guy, and hit handstands, you're good as gold.

And, I'm sorry but it's ludicrous to say that the "lunge" girls have done for years shows a lack of control. I'm not a judge, but even I know the difference between a lunge that shows a controlled landing and one that does not!!