MyKayla Skinner Olympic participation

[rue_des_plantes]

Utah just looks like a fresh, cleaner team with Skinner and the Marsdens (the old head coaches) gone. They got aggressive with recruiting and landed O’Keefe, Eaker, McCallum, Gilstrap, Paulson, Soza, and Stanhope, among other L10 fixtures. Maile was a delight all season.

When Skinner’s there, it’s just a bunch of whining from her and her fans about why she’s not getting more 10s. I’ve thought for awhile she wasn’t coming back, but even she can do the math and see that Utah would have won it all last week if you plug in her usual, postseason scores, so I don’t know.

 

[blake]

Pretty much everything Rue said. The gymternet made a big deal about how improved her form was doing simplified routines at Utah, but imo it was lipstick on a pig. While she only had 2 (?) tens in her time there which drove her fans wild, she got extremely lenient scoring, especially on UB/BB, despite having evident built-in deductions.

 

[blake]

I remember in 2020, when she was tweeting aggressively about the unfairness, a rather vocal part of the gymternet insisted on portraying her as some kind of feminist icon for demanding 10s from the judges. It was embarassing for the sport imo.

 

[rue_des_plantes]

Her improvements at Utah were overstated, since most were either marginal or fleeting. The biggest impact was slashing and watering down her routines to eliminate the nastiest, most unnecessary stuff that elite makes you do but JO/NCAA does not—full pirouette on bars, switch 1/2 on beam, counting 8 skills with 3 dance.

Her switch leap is actually…fine. It was before she went to Utah. It’s when you ask for things like the 1/2 that the body shape crises start. They started to focus on the Yurchenko block at Utah, for instance, and what minor improvements they made were gone the minute she went back to the Spinis.

 

[irichluck21]

Really??

“competed as an alternate.” in Rio.

She is still delusional as ever clearly.
Did someone not tell her that alternates are not recognized as Olympians by IOC or FIG ??

 

[Puffin]

It is a shame that in the upgrade! upgrade! upgrade! madness of Skinner’s training that they don’t bother to polish the horrible errors on basics. Skinner really needs short routines on UB BB to minimise deductions for body shaping, flexed feet, insufficient split and the bent arms and legs bhs.

I don’t understand all of the attention to upgrading to a huge d score on ub and when she just racks up deductions. She is also not talented on bb dance moves so i’ve no idea why anyone thought that attempting an illusion turn would be a good idea.

 

[blake]

I reckon it comes down to the fact that Skinner as an athlete needs the excitement of learning new/difficult skills to keep her interested in the sport. IIRC that’s the reason her basics are so bad in the first place. In terms of keeping an athlete with clear physical talent in the sport, I guess it was a good coaching decision. If she weren’t nearly injury-proof, that decision could’ve easily blown up in Spini’s face. It’s remarkable a gymnast with such poor basics/technique has never blown an ACL or torn an achilles.

 

[dweiss324]

I don’t think at this age we can still apply the “we don’t think she would care without ignoring technique and throwing hard skills” framework. She’s just… not young anymore. Doesn’t need a thrill to keep her entertained. It is mind-blowing though that her coaches can’t figure out the code. I honestly think she could make it… if her coaches were rational about the things she sucked at, and capitalized on her inherent strengths… I legitimately root for her… and by that I mean I root for her coaches to not screw her over in protecting any sense of delusion

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

The problem is that you’re applying logic here, and that doesn’t necessarily work when people are liking what they like.

I’m not saying Skinner does have to keep doing gymnastics this way to keep her interested, because I really don’t know, but people are often too quick to dismiss the idea purely because it doesn’t make sense to them.

 

[dweiss324]

I think it made sense. But I can’t see how it makes sense now. And it’s not like she suffers from a lack of mental and emotional focus, she came back and is still trying during a Covid year-long delay. Her coaches have ditched the triple double off bars. She clearly isn’t just “trying to throw things to keep her in the gym”. But her goal is to make the Olympic team, and they’re going about that in all the wrong ways, and it’s very confusing.

 

[Doug1233]

Skinner is getting 0.3 for shoulder angle and deductions for feet and body shape on EVERY PAK.

Maybe what they’re going with is - she’s gonna get these deductions ANYWAY, whether she does a Pak or a Bhadwaj, so they might as well load up on the difficulty because it’s not like it can make her E score much worse.

Right?

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

It doesn’t have to make sense to be true. Those are two separate things.

 

[Dex]

She is doing the best thing, upgrade drasticaly. The US judges do not take the basis deductions anyway so she might as well upgrade to huge difficulty so she scores high with the lenient US judging

 

[Hatsumomo]

A total aside, but I was listening to the Halloween 2018 score as I hit play on that video. The track “The Shape Burns” was rather fitting while watching her beam training with that ratchet illusion turn.

 

[Doug1233]

I guess it’s always worked before.

 

[Doug1233]

Here’s Dasha’s DLO for some eye bleach.

I can’t believe that this homemade video is all we have of what is arguably the second best FX routine of that entire quad (after Cheng’s Beijing Q routine). And yes i put this ahead of Izbasa’s EF.

This was Aussie Nationals right? On a podium. Youd think they’d have filmed it.

Sorry for being TOTALLY OT.

 

[emmade]

I was there to watch Dasha live in action and it was amazing. Latest to speak out is the WAIS gymnasts, which is where Dasha and Lauren Mitchell trained.

Aussie gymnastics is currently dealing with revelations of abuse, so it will be interesting to see what the vibe is like at Nationals this year. I will be most likely be attending at least one day and will try and sneak some footage because it is never broadcasted.

 

[RedBirdie]

If we want to discuss the accusations from WAIS athletes, let’s start a new topic for it.

Back to Skinner…here NCAA eligibility clock has to be winding down, no? If I’m Utah, I’d not be thrilled with this whole waffling on coming back. Either you’re coming back from 21-22, or you’re not. Make a damn decision. There are only so many scholarships and coaches need to make decisions about who is getting one for the next season.

 

[Doug1233]

Skinner’s Dad.

And Victoria Moors response.

 

[irichluck21]

I love it!!!