Gymcastic. Thoughts?

[Doug1233]

The difference between Podium (we had 60.250) and Prelims (we had 57.700 and she got 57.731) is staggering.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Maybe. Not sure. I was referencing a post dweiss made.

 

[dweiss324]

I think that’s why I mainly lean towards “the Twisties were a weird one off, we shouldn’t try to attribute rational logic to the results” rather than “you could see this coming from landing deterioration dating back to 2018”. She looked fine in podium training. Then something weird AF happened. There were probably precursors evident in quals, but even then it doesn’t confirm causation. But saying definitively why those weird problems came is at best speculation, at much worse bias, and at absolute worst, victim blaming. I just hope we’re wise and gracious with our words, generally.

 

[pavlovasdawg]

Also trying to make this as benign as possible, is there a possibility that the approach she took with Aimee, wherein she would play with upgrades but stayed far more in a ‘lower’, albeit superior to everyone else, level of difficulty, might have prevented the ‘twisties’? Again, I know we can’t know, but I have thought that the approach Aimee took with her seemed a bit more ‘manageable’.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

It’s not any less speculation or bias than your preference for the idea that this all came from nowhere and there’s nothing more to be discerned than that. If people don’t want to engage in any discussion at all because it’s too much assumption, that’s valid, but this reads more like you want to present some forms of speculation as more acceptable than others. It’s either ok to lean towards a preferred explanation or it isn’t.

Similarly, Doug has given a comprehensive explanation of why this is not victim blaming. Really, this board must have made thousands of posts over the years analysing whether particular coaching and skill choices have had an impact on performance. Along with treating Nabieva as a spiritual and intellectual guru, devoting a disproportionate amount of attention to Mykayla Skinner’s social media and people changing all the scores on the judging spreadsheet to 8.8 for japes, it’s pretty much what we do.

eta- I do actually see why people would prefer the idea that the twisties are completely unrelated to anything else. Lots of us have enjoyed and advocated for the more difficult skills Simone has done over the years, and minimised or not really seen issues because we didn’t want to. I certainly have. I was excited about the YDP, it was exhilarating to watch especially after a year with nothing. Felt like it was worth waiting for. It’s sad to think there’s a possibility Simone having chosen to work that skill, which we all thought was so wonderful, could have been a contributory factor to her being in a situation where attempting a vault might have easily caused her serious injury. And a bit uncomfortable. I don’t want it to be true.

 

[dweiss324]

^AR, I literally almost always agree with you here as a voice of reason. Im simply suggesting there’s a verrrrrry convoluted area here in terms of supporting mental health, Simone’s autonomy in the decision, what she’s explicitly said about her experience, and what we might perceive to be the causes. And it’s very very hard to not devalue one of those first points when we speculate on the latter. I’m just simply suggesting we all be very careful on this topic, because the implications can be very raw or triggering.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I think it’s fine to suggest being careful, we just should be doing that without suggesting our preferred hunch is more ethical than other preferred hunches. They’re all guesswork, no more or less. Nobody should be a complete arsehole over it, obviously. That’s always true but does no harm to say it again.

 

[RedBirdie]

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”.

I feel like this is aimed directly at me, and it is very much twisting multiple posts I have made into an unrecognizable pretzel. I will firmly stand by my opinion that Simone was poorly managed on lots of fronts, and that poor management lead to a deterioration of her gymnastics and perhaps emotional wellbeing. Whether those things directly contributed to her loss of air awareness, I dunno. But I do know Simone 2021 is an example of how NOT to prepare your athlete for the Olympics.

 

[dweiss324]

Yes RedBirdie it was aimed at you, sorry for beating around the bush, and yes ^that’s a perfect example of the callousness I was hinting at. That opinion, expressly said in that way, suggests a lot of things to a lot of people. But you’re right I can’t fault you for having it.

I’m tapping out of this thread.

 

[MaryClare]

SIMONE’S TWISTIES WERE NOT CAUSED BY LEARNING THE YDP.

HOW MANY TIMES

THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS

ITS LITERALLY THE ONE THING WE ABSOLUTELY KNOW FOR SURE

 

[RedBirdie]

Yes RedBirdie it was aimed at you, sorry for beating around the bush, and yes ^that’s a perfect example of the callousness I was hinting at. That opinion, expressly said in that way, suggests a lot of things to a lot of people. But you’re right I can’t fault you for having it.

I’m tapping out of this thread.

Name me next time, don’t cowardly subtweet.

What callousness? That Simone was mismanaged and her gymnastics, overall, deteriorated from 2019 to 2021? That at Trials she looked like a woman who wanted to be anywhere but doing gymnastics? That she was failed by lots of people around her?

 

[Jack]

Really, this board must have made thousands of posts over the years analysing whether particular coaching and skill choices have had an impact on performance. Along with treating Nabieva as a spiritual and intellectual guru, devoting a disproportionate amount of attention to Mykayla Skinner’s social media and people changing all the scores on the judging spreadsheet to 8.8 for japes, it’s pretty much what we do.

This is basically a perfect encapsulation of this board :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

 

[Yarotska]

RE: Simone, my friend and I were talking about how we felt like she wasn’t getting what she needed. I read on twitter about Simone’s injury in the spring we talked about it. I was freaking out because it’s like they did everything wrong from that point on because of Olympic pressure. Simone said there was no time to rest and their course of action was just to tape and pray.

And it’s, like, you’re Simone. You can rest. She didn’t need to be showing her full difficulty all season long. Her technique was slipping. She was cheating takeoffs, her BHS wasn’t as stretched as before, she wasn’t getting the same height on her passes. She was rushing more overall. All the impact and all the numbers will have your body screaming at you, even more when you’re punching sideways on tired/injured legs. All that and then the pressure and expectation of being given the gold medals before the competition has started is a recipe for disaster, which is what he said. It’s too much. And eventually the body will say enough is enough and just shut off. There were so many things that were different this time around than last time. There wasn’t one thing that lead to it, I think it was like 20 things at the same time. Has there ever been this amount of expectation on a gymnast at their second Olympics? If there was, they surely weren’t doing what Simone was doing.

This almost felt like, for lack of better terminology, a failed science experiment of how much the human body and mind can handle before it breaks.

And IIRC, she mentioned having the twisties like two years ago, after she saw that viral clip of a gymnast (cheerleader?) completely bail on standing full or something. I don’t think it was the reason, but of course we all know right before the Olympics, that video of Ferrari made the rounds attached to Simone’s name.

Obviously no one knows what actually lead to it. But there was enough present that people felt nervous even before the games.

 

[Sparklesmom]

the reality is that the only person who knows what happened is Simone herself. and she may not even have a full grasp on the why or when it started. to say it absolutely was not the ydp or the triple double or maybe it was a combo of everything including being put back into a high pressure situation where she is forced to relive the indignities and trauma of 2016 plus isolation plus higher difficulty, plus lack of support system present, plus the insane media plus plus plus. arguing about it on a message board to me seems a bit presumptuous and insane to me.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I don’t. When I had the twisties, it certainly wasn’t on anything remotely resembling a Yurchenko double pike, or indeed a vault. Now’s a great opportunity for you to explain further to assist those of us for whom it’s not obvious either by experience or intuition, though.

In terms of the wider discussion about Simone’s preparation, what I do think is coming through here in the last few posts is a sense that people are sad about some of the decisions made and the approach, and wish she’d had access to better. I think that’s valid.

 

[JaJa]

I agree with you. I do not see the point of this conversation.

 

[L_R]

Simone had to deal with a global pandemic like everyone else . Except everyone else wasn’t preparing for an Olympics.

 

[RedBirdie]

In terms of the wider discussion about Simone’s preparation, what I do think is coming through here in the last few posts is a sense that people are sad about some of the decisions made and the approach, and wish she’d had access to better. I think that’s valid.

This, a thousand times this.

 

[RedBirdie]

Yarotska, you said this far better than I have.

 

[rlayt]

I have to agree that even Simone might not be able to untwist all the causing factors. It’s all up for discussion because that’s what we do.