I don’t see a reason for Simone to work on the Amanar again, it would cut into her training time and muscle memory for the yurchenko takeoff, and it takes a 9.7E Amanar to outscore a YDP fall. That would be the biggest confidence boost of anything to me, knowing I can fall and it won’t make a difference. She just needs to get Laurent off the podium and keep perfecting the Cheng and she’s all set.
Did her Cheng seem Biles-able? She seemed to have a lot of airtime and distance to me (to the point where i was actually thinking she left off twists) and a Biles 1 + Biles 2 vault combo would be baller. Obviously, i don’t want her to ramp the difficulty up to where she is struggling but, well, a girl can dream.
The Cheng isn’t “Bilesable” right now. I’m sure it will be if she works on it. Despite the incredible distance it was technically quite flawed actually. The timing of the twisting was not good and it actually looked like she did not have that many more repetitions in her before she would get lost.
The first Biles vault was a flash in the pan and we won’t see it again, maybe from any other athlete ever if I had to guess. If you look at how she was blocking at that time, it was totally reasonable that she would’ve tried (successfully) to upgrade the Cheng, but her approach to that vault is completely different now and would not reward extra flight time plus a blind landing.
There’s a coach I’ve worked with in Russia who has crossed over to WAG from a tumbling background and he can spot every element of the tumble run, with both hands on the gymnast including both saltos of a double salto. He coaches 11-14 year old girls so their size definitely makes it easier but wow it should be a sport in itself.
AWWW BLUSHING HERE.
I agree. The Simone-Rebeca competition never felt manufactured–especially after Simone sat her vault down. If she had kept it to her feet, the result would be obvious. Bars was so close, beam felt like there were lots of potential and former gold medalists competing and it could be anyone’s day. Floor also felt like more of a race than usual with Simone’s d score not giving her the same cushion against bad landings that the previous quad did.
She did it domestically a few times but there was no one-touch for EF at the time so i think it was the one-and-done, internationally.
Has there ever been another coach like her — a woman coaching a top male athlete?
Olga Bicherova coached her husband, but it was later in his career and he probably needed a motivator rather than a spotter.
Simone did it on two occasions internationally, but both were at the same championship, 2018 worlds. She stood it up in prelims, did the Cheng in TFs and then sat it down in the AA. It wasn’t really needed, so I think once it was named, the incentive evaporated.
Rebecca was superb but Simone clearly dominated.
I don’t understand how people can do this past the age of, like, 35, even if they have this special talent and training.
My background is RG so it’s all witchcraft to me. None of these guys can get their heads around a switch leap though
Ack… okay. I could have sworn she had done it at another competition. Hm. Oh well…
She did it at the selection meet, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re thinking of.
) and several mistakes from challengers meant the AA medals shook out as expected. MAG VT bronze was close but when it’s the same country no one gets too upset. There were lots of lovely podiums at this competition
