Artistic Gymnastics 2019 Discussion Thread

[IoNuTzZ 303]

25 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

And others can fall off again  

Yes I know, but at worlds she has a routine with only 5.4 difficulty, so she has to hit all connections. 

[AmericanHero40 191]

On 13/08/2019 at 02:01, OlympicsFan said:

I am pretty confident she will lose at least one out of balance beam and uneven bars. Would be bad for gymnastics if she would win all golds.

 

I think so but shes probably pretty pissed for falling off the beam in Rio.   Why would it be bad for gymnastics? Shes not Phelps. No way she will come back for Paris

[thiago_simoes 1,417]

16 hours ago, heywoodu said:

And others can fall off again  

Oh, please. No. With all due respect, it's enough of a tragedy for the sport she was the champion once. Not again.

EDIT: I'll explain why I don't like the fact she won gold in 2016.

First, I need to explain how scores work. The difficulty score for the balance beam is counted with the 8 most difficult skills + bonuses + connections. The skills are divided in two parts: 1) acrobatic skills (somersaults, dismount) and dance skills (jumps, leaps, turns). The bonuses are divided in 4 items: 1) two dance elements connected, 2) two acrobatic skills connected, 3) acrobatic elements in different connections, 4) at least one turn. In 2016 there was an extra bonus for the dismount: if the dismount was worth 0.4 or more, the added bonus was 0.5; if it was worth 0.3 the bonus was 0.3; if it was 0.2 or 0.1, no bonus at all. The connections are extra points if two (or more) moderately difficult skills are connected.

In short: the Code of Points was created so that beam routines have lots of acrobatic elements (because they are, in theory, riskier than dance elements). Not only that: acrobatic skills must be difficult and preferably linked together.

What Sanne Wevers did was completely the opposite of what was expected. She focused on dance skills, linked them together and performed very few acrobatic skills. It was very clear that she cannot do acrobatic skills very well, including the dismount. To be honest, even her leaps were not really that good. She could only perform turns really well. She had awesome turns, performed them like nobody else, but she clearly couldn't do anything else really well (acrobatic skills, leaps, dismount). It was the opposite of what everybody else did at the time, and completely subverted the logic of the code of points. The genius thing is that it worked. Olympic champion. 

In the end, it's all a matter of preference. I prefer acrobatic skills over dance skills. If you're not a fan and you can't tell the difference between an acrobatic skill and a dance skill, there's nothing to complain. For me, though, it was not what I wanted to watch.

 

Edited August 14, 2019 by thiago_simoes

[thiago_simoes 1,417]

4 minutes ago, Maxim Fastovsky said:

 

I think so but shes probably pretty pissed for falling off the beam in Rio.   Why would it be bad for gymnastics? Shes not Phelps. No way she will come back for Paris

I only expect girls to match Biles' difficulty on floor in 10 years, maybe even more. She could easily come back for 2024 if she wants, but she said she won't. Time will tell.

Personally, I think she's both the best and the worst thing to happen to artistic gymnastics since Comaneci. It's amazing how far she pushes herself on floor even though nobody else can really come close to what she does, but at the same time it's terrible that she has no competition on this apparatus. Sae Miyakawa was trying some crazy stuff too, but she only hit her floor routine at World once and her execution is so bad she didn't even win a medal.

On vault maybe someone will be able to beat her, but it will be really, really hard. Yeo Seo-jeong is the only one with a minimal chance of beating Biles, but I still can't see it happen unless the upgrades her second vault to an Amanar (and even then it will be close). On bars I don't think Biles can really win gold, and no one should be able to beat the Chinese girls on beam.

[AmericanHero40 191]

57 minutes ago, thiago_simoes said:

I only expect girls to match Biles' difficulty on floor in 10 years, maybe even more. She could easily come back for 2024 if she wants, but she said she won't. Time will tell.

Personally, I think she's both the best and the worst thing to happen to artistic gymnastics since Comaneci. It's amazing how far she pushes herself on floor even though nobody else can really come close to what she does, but at the same time it's terrible that she has no competition on this apparatus. Sae Miyakawa was trying some crazy stuff too, but she only hit her floor routine at World once and her execution is so bad she didn't even win a medal.

On vault maybe someone will be able to beat her, but it will be really, really hard. Yeo Seo-jeong is the only one with a minimal chance of beating Biles, but I still can't see it happen unless the upgrades her second vault to an Amanar (and even then it will be close). On bars I don't think Biles can really win gold, and no one should be able to beat the Chinese girls on beam.

 

So team and all around gold is a given in Tokyo?

[heywoodu 14,770]

6 hours ago, thiago_simoes said:

In the end, it's all a matter of preference. I prefer acrobatic skills over dance skills.

Me too. Which is why I usually switch off when the women's floor event starts, because half of the time they're just making weird 'dance' moves. Like standing there and flapping their arms around.

 

Honestly I think 'a tragedy for the sport' is a rather big exaggeration if anyone with a different skillset wins (in my opinion, the only winners who are tragedies for the sport as convincted dopers and/or pure assholes). I'm not gonna cheer for her simply because of the flag though. It's about sports and athletes, not about which flag is next to one's name.

[thiago_simoes 1,417]

10 hours ago, heywoodu said:

Honestly I think 'a tragedy for the sport' is a rather big exaggeration if anyone with a different skillset wins (in my opinion, the only winners who are tragedies for the sport as convincted dopers and/or pure assholes). I'm not gonna cheer for her simply because of the flag though. It's about sports and athletes, not about which flag is next to one's name.

You're absolutely right. I apologize for being overdramatic (I always am, though). Her coach was very clever exploring the possibilities within the Code of Points, and it's not his fault if the CoP allows 8 dance moves to be counted, but forbids 8 acrobatic moves to be counted. Besides, she made the most out of her routine and some of her dance skills are not easy at all. I just think it takes a bit of the excitement when there are just turns after turns with few acrobatic elements.

And massive respect for you not relying on your nationality to cheer for an athlete. This is mostly how I think we should approach sports: I never cheer for Zanetti, for example, and I was really happy when Molinari (from Argentina) won a medal at the Pan Ams, even though he knocked a Brazilian off the podium. 

[thiago_simoes 1,417]

16 hours ago, Maxim Fastovsky said:

 

So team and all around gold is a given in Tokyo?

Yes. And silver for Russia should also be a given. The real battle will be for the bronze medal, but China is one step ahead thanks to their awesome beam and bars routines (and they're trying hard to improve vault and floor). All around gold should be easy for Biles. She adds more than one point on floor alone, and her vault should also be 0.5 to 1.0 higher than what anybody else does. No one right now can challenge her for the gold medal.

[heywoodu 14,770]

1 hour ago, thiago_simoes said:

 

You're absolutely right. I apologize for being overdramatic (I always am, though). Her coach was very clever exploring the possibilities within the Code of Points, and it's not his fault if the CoP allows 8 dance moves to be counted, but forbids 8 acrobatic moves to be counted. Besides, she made the most out of her routine and some of her dance skills are not easy at all. I just think it takes a bit of the excitement when there are just turns after turns with few acrobatic elements.

And massive respect for you not relying on your nationality to cheer for an athlete. This is mostly how I think we should approach sports: I never cheer for Zanetti, for example, and I was really happy when Molinari (from Argentina) won a medal at the Pan Ams, even though he knocked a Brazilian off the podium. 

Oh absolutely. Watching a major balance beam final is one of the most tense things in sports for me anyway because literally every step can be the end (same feeling with the horizontal bar where every move can end up on the ground), but I do want to see as much crazy acrobatic stuff as possible  

[Olympian1010 7,825]

2018 Commonwealth Games Gold Medalist and Rio 2016 Bronze Medalist won’t be attending the world championships because an injury (nerve damage) caused him to miss the British Champs. This comes after a neck injury that put him out of the game for half of last and the first half of this year. Plus, he’s been dealing with serious mental health issues as well, as all athletes would in his position.