2020 Event Finals Day 3 MAG PB/HB WAG BB (Tuesday, August 3, 2021)

[ArnoldRimmer]

This is an interesting summary. There are some of these things Tom couldn’t influence, for example I can’t see how even allowing Morgan to petition further was going to result in her being ready for Tokyo, but the big picture is of a coach who wasn’t doing much. Too much taking the easy road.

And while he certainly wasn’t alone in assuming the Simone show was going to take care of everything this time round, and none of us saw this specific sequence of events coming, I’d say it was the majority take on here that there were underlying issues being stored up for the future. Gymnastics fans knew the get Simone to do a 59 AA set in TFs and wait for Russia to tank strategy was going to stop being viable for the US, we just thought it would be next quad.

Re the Jade question, it would be interesting to know whether Tom would actually have had the option of including her on the team and forfeiting an Olympic spot if he’d wanted to. Whether USOC would allow it, and whether he ever actually asked (I think I might be able to guess the answer to the second question already). I can see why it would’ve been difficult to get away with, particularly in the context of USAG domestic overscoring and creating a narrative that the US were all but guaranteed the gold. But I wonder whether there was a procedural position or not.

It always felt like the approach with Jade was that USAG were hurriedly trying to think of ways to keep her out of the team following the poorly drafted rules, rather than considering what would strategically make most sense. Knee jerk and arse covering.

Now I think it would’ve been legitimate to take the view that the odds of the US missing out on the team title, even in a covid situation where anyone can drop out, were low enough that it was legitimate to want more athletes to maximise the number of athletes with individual medal chances instead, for example. Particularly before Trials showed that the US barely had any, outside the core. But ideally it would have been a decision USAG were allowed to make, wanted to make instead of default to and one that they made based on full discussion and a strategic approach.

 

[gymskatefan]

The team captain needed to be someone calm enough to reassure everyone else when things were stressful, reliable enough to hit like a rock and guarantee the points that they were expected to deliver, and yet not face enough pressure themselves as the favorite that they would become overwhelmed. In hindsight, that’s why Aly was such a great team captain for the past 2 Olympics.

 

[gymskatefan]

Gotta wonder how much of Simone’s sports psychologist sessions were things Tom said.

 

[gymskatefan]

I’ve been really impressed by how well-spoken Simone has been in the last few years. Having to do all the media she has, she’s really learned to articulate her thoughts well in most interviews and also be thoughtful about her answers while also being candid. Loved her long-form interviews in the lead up to Tokyo and also her FB Watch docuseries.

Glad other people noticed. She’s obviously grown up a lot since Rio:

 

[cats]

I should clarify that I do understand the rules and that MyKayla and Jade could not be substituted in for finals. I was trying to make the point that this situation was the upshot of several years of poor decision making and weak leadership, not just a last minute issue with a key contributor, which always had very limited mitigation options given the format. The one option, which was bringing a balanced AA team and having backups prepared, was addressed for selection but not for the day of. I don’t understand that.

It is interesting to remember that post-Beijing, some coaches (Mihai?) reflected that Alicia’s much-vaunted leadership role was too much - she had an athlete job and a “coach” job, and it was always way too much to expect her to be able to do both, but they didn’t realize that in time.

I’m not entirely anti-Tom. Simone’s observation that the culture is changing is the more important thing here. His hands-off style was probably a boon to some of the Olympians - certainly giving Skinner that reality check would have been a mistake, and Jantzi and Graber got to pace their athletes’ recoveries. I just wish he had been able to course correct some of the others.

 

[irichluck21]

I thought Elise Ray fell.

No Ray didn’t fall she had a balance check after the punch front and didn’t connect the tuck front into wolf jump which resulted in a 9.8 start value. 9.387 was her final score.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I should clarify that I do understand the rules and that MyKayla and Jade could not be substituted in for finals

I read that as a reference to the decision not to include either on the main team. Both would obviously have been controversial for different reasons, but there’s no getting round the fact that each looked better in Tokyo than the 3rd and 4th team members. Some of this wasn’t necessarily within USAG or Tom’s control, like Jordyn losing her consistency at the wrong moment. That may be dumb luck. But some of it, like her getting much lower scores for hit routines than expected and the US being in a position where sending their best team meant losing a spot, was. Basically, I think it’s valid to think a situation should never have been created where Grace McCallum was the answer to a problem.

 

[irichluck21]

Except that the #3 ranked AAer wasn’t ever really an option for the team because that would have meant throwing away a spot entirely and only taking 5 gymnasts to Tokyo. And it was an entirely defensible decision to not place #4 on the team because #5 beat her at Trials and was the steady, experienced international competitor that you want for a lead-off role. #6 was going to the Olympics, full stop, given she hit every single routine leading up to Tokyo.

Gymnasts 3 and 4, BTW, could not be substituted into team finals, so the whole thing is moot.

Still cracks me up that people are like “ohhh Carey and Skinner should have been on the team” when hindsight is 20/20. Both Carey and Skinner had the luxury of being individual athletes with no pressure on them to score well for the team and as a result could go and do their gymnastics. Chiles and McCallum did not have that luxury and with Simone having an off day in qualifications it didn’t help them in the slightest. They also had the advantage of going 5th and 6th up as opposed to 1st and 2nd.

 

[rue_des_plantes]

There are some of these things Tom couldn’t influence, for example I can’t see how even allowing Morgan to petition further was going to result in her being ready for Tokyo, but the big picture is of a coach who wasn’t doing much. Too much taking the easy road.

And while he certainly wasn’t alone in assuming the Simone show was going to take care of everything this time round, and none of us saw this specific sequence of events coming, I’d say it was the majority take on here that there were underlying issues being stored up for the future. Gymnastics fans knew the get Simone to do a 59 AA set in TFs and wait for Russia to tank strategy was going to stop being viable for the US, we just thought it would be next quad.

Re the Jade question, it would be interesting to know whether Tom would actually have had the option of including her on the team and forfeiting an Olympic spot if he’d wanted to. Whether USOC would allow it, and whether he ever actually asked (I think I might be able to guess the answer to the second question already). I can see why it would’ve been difficult to get away with, particularly in the context of USAG domestic overscoring and creating a narrative that the US were all but guaranteed the gold. But I wonder whether there was a procedural position or not.

Yes. cats’s post is great; I’d just like to build on it by echoing this. While Tom and the judges have been infuriating and not helpful for the developing the quad and they should be held accountable as such, selection and the overall Tokyo picture don’t change much if you take them away and use a stricter pen. It just gives McCallum a stronger case for #4 and tells you to pick a +1 between Skinner, Eaker, Wong, and McCusker, and any +1 pick wasn’t going to be able to help in TF.

There’s been a sharp drop-off in usable AA scores after Lee or Chiles this year, depending on the meet, and Tokyo made it the former. Like the post-quad predictions, the US didn’t have the depth or consistency to beat Russia unless you somehow get Carey on the main team and everybody goes berserk. Replacing McCallum with GAGE or TD to help the team score is a crapshoot, to put it mildly.

I’m all about an anti-Tom or anti-US judges rant. Love it, keeps the blood flowing. But there are larger-scale problems at play for USA than, say, Lori Forster is getting owned by The Teens on Twitter again (not that @cats said this).

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Still cracks me up that people are like “ohhh Carey and Skinner should have been on the team” when hindsight is 20/20. Both Carey and Skinner had the luxury of being individual athletes with no pressure on them to score well for the team and as a result could go and do their gymnastics. Chiles and McCallum did not have that luxury and with Simone having an off day in qualifications it didn’t help them in the slightest. They also had the advantage of going 5th and 6th up as opposed to 1st and 2nd.

I dunno what was going on elsewhere, but I must say, on here the consensus even after we all say how prelims went was that there was no realistic way Tom could’ve put both Carey and Skinner on the main team. At best it was an either/or.

However, some of the reason that was impossible by selection time was because of problems that were already baked in. That is, wastage and domestic overscoring. And it’s not like the things that kept Jordan and Grace’s scores lower came from nowhere either. It’s valid to point out that there’s a difference between competing as an individual and on a team. However, that doesn’t explain why Jordan has a lot of built in 0.3 deductions that were ignored domestically, or why Grace hasn’t regained her pre-injury form on bars. Pressure is not the reason for either of those things.

Like the post-quad predictions, the US didn’t have the depth or consistency to beat Russia unless you somehow get Carey on the main team and everybody goes berserk.

Mmm, I think it’s instructive to note that even if Simone had withdrawn before TFs, thus not leaving the US having to make up a low vault score, you need the other three hitting it pretty much out of the park to basically tie. Taking their best scores across the whole championship comes out around 169.5, which is the same as Russia got with two falls.

 

[MaryClare]

It all comes back to one thing. Domestic scoring.

 

[JusticeMom]

How much did other counties compete this last year? I have followed gymnastics closely for decades but have been absent this last year due to pandemic circumstances.

The WC and Olympic teams are built on assumptions that different judges will make the same deductions across competitions. That means that the assumptions must be valid to chose correctly.

Given the lack of competitive feedback the USA athletes received this year (not sure who is to blame), choosing this team based on the basically same pool of judges, who are likely in the same echo chamber, seems unnecessarily risky.

Who is to blame? Leadership. It would be very helpful to know Tom’s full scope of responsibility.

 

[dweiss324]

On the other hand, having tighter domestic scoring doesn’t actually make their gymnastics better and make them win either, it just makes their scores lower, and maybe you have more realistic expectations. Unless you start redesigning routines compositionally around concrete feedback. But there’s no proof (Al Fong) they would have done that. Just pointing out that Jordan is getting .3 on every single skill doesn’t make her skills better, she still has to actually learn how to do the skills properly… and while there is some level of “we’re gonna get deducted anyways so let’s just throw big skills and ignore things like artistry”, it’s not like Jordan was competing at less than 100% effort just because she was fine with getting .1s when really they were gonna be .3s.

ETA: Look at Jade and Mykayla as examples of how long it takes for those changes to materialize. In some cases (Mykayla’s flexibility or set or leaps, and Carey’s dancing), they never changed.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

On the other hand, having tighter domestic scoring doesn’t actually make their gymnastics better and make them win either, it just makes their scores lower, and maybe you have more realistic expectations. Unless you start redesigning routines compositionally around concrete feedback

Your points about realistic expectations and redesign are key. That’s what this is about, not effort.

The benefit to everyone being aware what Jordan’s beam and floor, for example, would score internationally are twofold. One, you know she’s going to be 56 rather than mid 57s AA, so you can decide whether you want her on the team or not with accurate information. The answer to that is still probably yes, but it might not have been if the field had been stronger.

And two, there is at least the option of investigating smarter skill selection. You’re right that some coaches are simply incorrigible, and yes it’s possible that everyone in the US other than than Jess Graba and Brian Carey are the same as Al Fong. If that’s the case, there may be nothing that can be done about it. It’s also possible that better routine composition for whatever reason isn’t going to work: maybe the athlete can’t do it, doesn’t have the motivation, whatever. But you only find out these things from a position of knowledge.

 

[dweiss324]

You have to take into account though that it’s all relative too. I know some gymnasts get more routinely overscored than others, but if Jordan is down 3 points internationally, you have to figure most others are down at least 1-2 as well, if not 3. That doesn’t help with team selection that much really.

ETA: I’m 100% pro knowledge, and think it’s a start, but it doesn’t really have that many ramifications UNLESS you hammer home routine composition changes and work on making tangible adjustments to element execution, and the proof for that happening realistically is almost non-existent

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Yes, absolutely. This problem doesn’t begin and end at Jordan. It’s just that she’s never been to worlds, so the problem was more acute for her than for most of the team. Skinner to some extent in the same position.

 

[lovegymnasts]

Thank you!
Other than vault, Carey was not looking good at trials
Not at all
On day one, she scored a 52.899

 

[gymskatefan]

She had the unique luxury of being able to peak at the actual Olympics, since she had guaranteed herself a spot all along. She also had zero pressure to produce any results that affected the team or anyone other than herself, so she was the only athlete truly competing for herself.

 

[lovegymnasts]

Exactly but at trials did she look worthy of being put on the team? Most of the people on this boarding were saying she was lucky that she was already qualified with the way she was looking.

 

[Caledi]

I’d like to hear what the rest of the team thinks about the first point. It seems pretty harsh towards her teammates IMO.