2024 US Olympic Trials WAG Day 2 (6/30)

[rlayt]

There was a fair amount of things said about Nastia in her time. One poster had photos of her cowboying with a cartoon of a fart coming from her. Some people just have to be ignored.

 

[arabiandoublefront]

In hindsight, there was a lot of hate about both Shawn and Nastia. It was brutal.

 

[Ginger]

Sweet baby Jesus - no! I would hate to see Simone's feet anywhere near the UB podium!

I would love to see Simone medal in UB... if she added like 0.5 in difficulty. Otherwise 6.2 difficulty medalling would mean UB finals was a splatfest, which no one wants.
I am still mourning Jones not going.

 

[Denn]

The Roberson hate here is getting really old, grow the F up! She is a sweet person and works her ass of as well.. She is who she is, her gymnastics is what it is. You can like it or not but all the comments here are so freaking personal it is disgusting

If you take issue with specific comments, by all means, quote them and say your piece. But over-generalizing with "all the comments here are so freaking personal" and saying "grow the F up" is a bit much. A lot of people in this forum dislike her gymnastics but fully see her work ethic, very likeable personality, sporting behavior, etc. And many (including me), didn't want to see her on the team because of other gymnasts we feel are better, but do think she has continued to grow as a gymnast and brings a lot of good qualities as a gymnast and teammate despite some shortcomings.

 

[Denn]

Now that presidents are immune for official acts, can Biden decree that Shilese Jones has to be added to the team and that it has to include 6 people, despite FIG rules?

 

[ewdot2480]

Roberson s a tricky one, for me. I admire the difficulty of her routines and, she does seem like a very sweet girl, but oooof, her form.

I agree that the 4 veterans will take Hezly under their wing and protect her.

 

[Bob]

There's a specific build that has naturally very tight achilles tendons. It's possible for people with this build to improve toe point but it takes a whole lot of work, and at some point there's diminishing returns in regards to flexibility vs strength when you have to stretch the tendon that much.

can someone explain this to me. In my head the achilles is more stretched in a flexed foot and should be more comfortable in a pointed foot. Isn't the achilles at the back of the ankle?

 

[Gymfan93]

Will she and Kevric be the only first year seniors at the games? That is wild.

Abi Martin for GB too. I’m not 100% sure of anybody else, but the ages re definitely skewing upwards which is great!

 

[irichluck21]

List of 1st year seniors (so far):
Hezly Rivera
Abi Martin
Helen Kevric
Zhang Yihan
Nakamura Haruka

 

[FlipSkippy]

can someone explain this to me. In my head the achilles is more stretched in a flexed foot and should be more comfortable in a pointed foot. Isn't the achilles at the back of the ankle?

I am glad I'm not the only one that had the same question! I'm not sure of the name of the muscle but people with poor toe points seem to either have fallen arches and/or tight muscles on top of the ankle. Simone seems to have both, although I recall when she trained under Aimee she had much better extension through her toes.

 

[KristyJ]

can someone explain this to me. In my head the achilles is more stretched in a flexed foot and should be more comfortable in a pointed foot. Isn't the achilles at the back of the ankle?

Generally to a point this is true, but very extended toe point also interacts with the achilles. If you've ever done extensive toe point stretching, you might notice that you feel it through basically all of the ligaments in your ankle, and pushing it too far can stress the achilles as well. When I stretch toe point hard I can sometimes feel it on the inside and insertion area of the achilles. I know I was advised by trainers not to push it too hard if I started to feel it through the achilles-- I've had bad injuries in both ankles and so it took a lot of work to get toe point back enough to do pointe work again in ballet. A very tight achilles will limit range of motion in all directions in the ankle.

 

[makam]

Sometimes people don't have great ankle flexibility either. I know I had a bad sprain in high-school and it took over a year before I got it loosened enough to stand on my tiptoes. And even to this day, it makes funny popping noises. If someone had repeated sprains, I could see it affecting how much they can flex.

 

[RedBirdie]

My husband has insanely poor ankle flexibility. Blows my mind how anyone can have that little range of motion. Meanwhile, I have the strength and extension on my ankles that allowed me to dance en pointe for several years in my 20s. The funniest thing is, I have flexible flat feet (and what little arch I had was destroyed by pregnancy), while he has textbook arches.

 

[MaryClare]

My husband has insanely poor ankle flexibility. Blows my mind how anyone can have that little range of motion. Meanwhile, I have the strength and extension on my ankles that allowed me to dance en pointe for several years in my 20s. The funniest thing is, I have flexible flat feet (and what little arch I had was destroyed by pregnancy), while he has textbook arches.

When I learned to drive I was living in England where most cars are manual and I was astounded that many of my friends lack the ankle flexibility to operate the clutch for longer journeys. It genuinely blows my mind, but then again, I’ve done 100+ heel lifts pretty much every day for 30 years

 

[Bob]

Generally to a point this is true, but very extended toe point also interacts with the achilles. If you've ever done extensive toe point stretching, you might notice that you feel it through basically all of the ligaments in your ankle, and pushing it too far can stress the achilles as well. When I stretch toe point hard I can sometimes feel it on the inside and insertion area of the achilles. I know I was advised by trainers not to push it too hard if I started to feel it through the achilles-- I've had bad injuries in both ankles and so it took a lot of work to get toe point back enough to do pointe work again in ballet. A very tight achilles will limit range of motion in all directions in the ankle.

Ok I haven't heard that before. When you look at Simone tumbling in slo mo it looks like she has super flexible ankles though. And her toe point is not as good now as it was so IDK.

 

[KathySantoni]

Has anyone come across two vault scores after day 2?

 

[RedBirdie]

Yes, second vault scores are included on the individual event results: https://static.usagym.org/PDFs/Results/2024/w_24trials_events.pdf

Simone doesn't show on the vault results because she didn't do two vaults on night 2.

 

[cats]

Ms Jade needs to hit her landings to make it past Jordan for the vault EF. That was closer than I thought, even considering the Amanar landing on day 2z

 

[brg09]

My husband has insanely poor ankle flexibility. Blows my mind how anyone can have that little range of motion. Meanwhile, I have the strength and extension on my ankles that allowed me to dance en pointe for several years in my 20s. The funniest thing is, I have flexible flat feet (and what little arch I had was destroyed by pregnancy), while he has textbook arches.

I also have flexible-flat feet. A podiatrist I went to a few years ago said they were "flat as pancakes."

It stems from the fact that I have hypermobility issues, so my joints are kind of "loose" and my muscles are really tight to compensate for it. I wouldn't be surprised if Simone's ankle flexibility is really just... floppiness and thus her feet are weaker, which could lead to the toepoint issue. I imagine there are a lot of gymnasts with

Ok I haven't heard that before. When you look at Simone tumbling in slo mo it looks like she has super flexible ankles though. And her toe point is not as good now as it was so IDK.

I only became aware in the past yesr or so that my own flexible-flat feet were due to a hypermobility issue. Several of my joints are loose to the point of being "floppy" and thus my muscles are generally very tight to compensate for it.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Simone has this same issue--I imagine a lot of gymnasts do. To some extent its helpful because, hey, who doesn't love flexibility, right? But on the flip side, certain muscles get really tight, others get very weak.

This might help to explain the deterioration in her toepoint and also the bad posture that so many people used to complain about.

 

[Gymnbf]

Foot flexibility/toe point is no different than whole body flexibility. You have what you’re born with, and then you make up the difference with work. BUT, it really has to be done during certain periods of growth to have any meaningful effect.

Simone clearly doesn’t have the natural arch of Podkopayeva or Dobre. And, in all likelihood, there was probably little focus on seriously improving it during the right windows. No 7 year old wants to work on that for a half hour every day, and parents don’t let cranky Russian coaches sit on our feet until we cry anymore.