Gymcastic. Thoughts?

[irichluck21]

I think its quite pertinent to the discussion: why did the US see the average floor e score drop so significantly? Simone’s uncontrolled landings were, imo, part of what drove the drop in the average score.

And it did cost her. I’m not sure how a score in the 7s, only the 4th best e score of US gymnasts in qualifying, and not being the top qualifier to finals, can be interpreted any other way. In 2018 and 2019 her execution scores were much higher, with better (but still not great) landings. She was untouchable. But this year that wasn’t the case. I said all through the lead-up to Tokyo that the decision to throw big difficulty at the expense of consistent landings could make things very interesting.

Honestly, Simone was completely off in qualifications and it is likely that she had the twisties before qualifications. The pressure and stress following qualifications made it worse without a doubt.
I also wonder if Biles was 100% peaking and hitting her sets that it would give more confidence to the rest of the team and if e scores would have gone up. It appeared that Chiles was rattled by the time bars and beam came around. I wonder if Biles being upset/ frustrated with her performance caused the team issues, along with all the pressure of 6 all arounders competing for 2 spots in event finals.

 

[dweiss324]

^, Yeah, I thought we were just generally of the consensus that Simone’s Twisties issue was the major contributing factor to her off performance in qualifications. It was the precursor meet to her losing control. Unless you’re arguing that her Twisties was the net result of her deteriorating lack of attention to control year over year, and she “had it coming”, (yikes…)… I don’t follow the trail of logic of how anyone could definitively conclude that Simone’s floor performance as a whole in tokyo (based on one isolated example of an off qualifications performance) “cost her”, unless point A is spite and point B is delusion. Like… What did it cost her? She still got into finals and then had to withdraw because of the Twisties.

And besides, the drop in floor E score average to Russia was using competed scores. Since Simone barely competed, a much more relevant and rational argument would be to explore whether the drop was caused by her absence, rather than declare authoritatively that it was caused by her sloppy contribution.

And this is a really pointed derailment for a thread about the value of gymcastic. Which I have never listened to because you all have adequately forewarned me and I believe you.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

While I think it’s reasonable to surmise that Simone’s prelims performance was related to the twisties in some way, and we’re probably going to be having chicken and egg discussions for a while now, it didn’t all come from nowhere. She landed the Cheng like that in Stuttgart prelims, and she’s commonly had uncontrolled landings on floor for the last few years. The focus doesn’t appear to have been on sticking. That’s not necessarily a bad thing tactically, doesn’t have to be a criticism, but it’s something that appears to exist.

With that in mind, I don’t think we can assume the floor and vault issues stem from the twisties. They predate it.

 

[Doug1233]

Everyone is conveniently forgetting that Simone looked FANTASTIC in podium training.

Gymnaverse had her:

15.575 / 15.500 = 15.537 (gold by 0.45) - and more with the YDP
14.725 (bronze and a tenth from silver)
14.925 (gold by almost 3 tenths)
15.025 (gold by almost 7 tenths)
AA 60.250 (gold by almost 3 points)

And putting her PT routines into the TF (remove her Y1.5, Suni on FX and Jordan on UB, BB, as was the plan after prelims) = a team score of 171.315 - almost 2 points ahead of Russia even counting Jordan’s FX disaster.

Simply put, Simone was ready for this meet.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Simone’s excellent podium training performances show she was capable of hitting all her routines to an essentially untouchable standard. They don’t show that she didn’t have pre-existing consistency issues with the Cheng landing and staying in bounds on floor, only that any such issues didn’t affect her on that day. And I suppose also that she could also get away with quite a bouncy day and still be pretty dominant.

But it is a headfuck how quickly it all changed… although we also thought something not dissimilar when comparing her first and second nights at Olympic Trials. If you’d told me ahead of time that Simone would pile up a few out of area landing deductions in Tokyo, I wouldn’t have been shocked, but I’d have still assumed she’d be leaving with multiple golds.

 

[Doug1233]

It’s a headfuck for us.

Imagine for her.

 

[Jack]

I said all through the lead-up to Tokyo that the decision to throw big difficulty at the expense of consistent landings could make things very interesting.

I think in this case though the two things are mutually exclusive. We saw the landings deteriorate in almost every element this quad, including the Cheng. Elements she had no problem controlling when she was with Aimee all the sudden became an issue. She was no more likely to fly OOB on the Triple Double than she was the full in or Silivas. Given that she didn’t upgrade her tumbling after 2019, the landings should have been given more attention (or the underlying mental issues causing them should have been addressed).

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Did we know before prelims that Simone was only doing the full in off beam, or is it possible she watered down due to previous errors?

 

[irichluck21]

Did we know before prelims that Simone was only doing the full in off beam, or is it possible she watered down due to previous errors?

She did the full in beam dismount in podium IIRC

 

[Doug1233]

She did the full in beam dismount in podium IIRC

Thought she did the double double?

 

[irichluck21]

Thought she did the double double?

Ooops you are correct. She did.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Mmm, I rewatched Simone’s PT yesterday because of this discussion, so that’s where this came from. Like you irich, I had actually thought she did the full in then too, and there was a plan to water down in place before Tokyo because it wasn’t worth the risk. But maybe I made that up.

Domestically, she only did the double on Night 1 of US Trials. However I’m not sure if she had been planning it on Night 2 as well but watered down because the routine hadn’t gone well.

 

[MRR]

There was no plan to the double-double night 2. She didn’t warm it up in the arena, and she always does prior to competing.

Don’t know which comps she had planned to do it in Tokyo, or if she wanted to do it in prelims but nixed it because it hadn’t gone particularly well in training.

 

[Doug1233]

nixed it because it hadn’t gone particularly well in training.

I think this is most likely.

Which is funny because she almost ran off the podium out of the back of the full in in prelims. She probably would have stuck it!

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

This is what I was idly musing, whether it might have been better to throw the double. Imagine how differently things might have turned out if she’d finished on a strong note and a dominant beam set, going into TFs on a high. We’ll never know…

 

[dweiss324]

Well, ok. Here’s my question, open and honestly. Do we assume that the Twisties happened randomly period, or from some external circumstance that couldn’t have been avoided by anything she did in the gym (ie, pressure from NBC, family circumstances,)? Or are we saying it could have been prevented if she had just done a double double beam dismount and felt more confident, or some other scenario had played out in her favor?

I internally get very uncomfortable with the line of reasoning that says “had she just stuck with the full in off beam / had she never introduced the YDP, etc, she would have been better served, and thus never have gotten the Twisties and had to withdraw from several finals”. The line between that and victim-blaming Simone in my eyes (ie, she’s a quitter, or she had it coming) is very thin. There’s definitely a line, but it’s much thinner there than just assuming it would have happened regardless. I’d rather take her at her word, whatever word she offers, and be done with it. But I also acknowledge that maybe people DO think it was caused by something unwise, and should be able to speculate as to what that was and whether it was avoidable. Mostly, I’m just frustrated by any suggestion that this is ‘definitively’ what happened.

I personally, won’t go further in speculation than “wrong place wrong time”, and be done with it. But that’s just me I guess

 

[Doug1233]

The line between that and victim-blaming Simone in my eyes (ie, she’s a quitter, or she had it coming) is very thin

It’s not “victim blaming” as it comes from a good place.

I think its perfectly reasonable to suggest that a sub-par performance in prelims, with the US team coming second, increased the insane pressure that was already on Simone’s shoulders, and perhaps tipped her brain into such an intense level of anxiety that it physically manifested into the Twisties.

That is not victim blaming.

 

[dweiss324]

I don’t think it is either. But “it just happened randomly” and “she had it coming because xyz” are opposite sides of a wide spectrum. So what happened? And what does it imply?

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I think actively assuming anything concrete is unwise, which includes the twisties being primarily responsible for the prelims underperformance. All we can really do is riff on possibilities.

 

[Doug1233]

includes the twisties being primarily responsible for the prelims underperformance

Simone has categorically said that Twisties only started in the morning practice after prelims, I thought?