Post Olympics (September 2024) Articles and Social Media posts

[Aeris]

in TF Skinner would've likely done the Amanar as opposed to the Cheng

Um?? Her Cheng scored higher, there's no reason she would do the Amanar instead.

Obviously, nobody could predict what pen the Tokyo judges were going to use, but Skinner's domestic scoring did not match up with Tokyo, and she wasn't that much of a better option than Grace.

Skinner didn't get any boost domestically in comparison though? Even on the one event where her score did drop dramatically (beam), it's been argued constantly that Grace's dance series shouldn't have been credited, so Skinner wasn't even necessarily getting more gifted there.

It's also irrelevant that she wasn't "much" better of an option. Yes, the team would have won Silver either way, assuming what happened to Simone still happened, but that's not what selection is about. It generally just comes down to a few tenths at most, but you still need to make the best choice.

Skinner and Wong also both had better individual medal chances, which should be a factor. It's really weird how people so often look only at the team event when talking about who should be on a team. That's only 1 medal. Ultimately, Skinner actually WAS the much better choice, as she added an extra medal to USA's count. It's just unfortunate that Riley McCusker didn't also get the opportunity to compete, because a Silver on UB was very much within her reach.

All of this going to say, the Grace-McCallum-situation™, not to mention the recent Nedoroscik Supremacy, should be used as a lesson to not pick teams by AA rank.

 

[Hatsumomo]

Would Skinner have done the Cheng in TFs, though? Simone wasn't even doing her Cheng in TFs.

Yes, Skinner had a better individual medal chances, but even on paper, she was always going to get 2-per'd out by Simone and Jade and would've ended up as the only American to go home with zero medals had Simone not needed to pull out of VT EFs. To give Skinner the only prop she deserves: she did rise to the occasion and win silver after being pulled out of reserves and Jade had to bail on her vault. But it did still take a wild series of events for Skinner to get that medal, while a potential UB medal for McCusker would have been based on nothing but her performance (though we don't know how the Tokyo judges would've marked her).

Individual medal chances are a consideration, but there's something to be said for the Kyla Ross role on a team, too. Also, this wasn't the first or second time Skinner was left off a team despite seemingly being the "better" option on paper. The last time Skinner was on an international team before Tokyo was 2015 Worlds where the woman who valued consistency above all else chose the gymnast who was inconsistent on her premier event and benched her for TFs and relegated Skinner to alternate.

 

[Aeris]

Would Skinner have done the Cheng in TFs, though? Simone wasn't even doing her Cheng in TFs.

Skinner's Cheng was her primary vault, she had it before the Amanar and it consistently scored better. Simone's Cheng wasn't as good as her Amanar.

Regarding 2015, it was the correct decision to bench Skinner there because judges at Worlds were saying they might not credit her one-armed Cheng. And to her credit, she improved it (but honestly, if she had kept using the technique of twisting on the table, it might have been realistic to add an extra 1/2 rotation, or even a full rotation more like she played around with in training...giving her a frightening 6.8 D-score on vault)

 

[RichardL]

The Skinner blinders are insane here and suggesting now that she could possibly be doing a "frightening" Randi off the table utilizing an illegal technique is enough to discredit most of this poster's stakes in this discussion, at least for me. The bitterness is real, and is not based on reality.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Yes, Skinner had a better individual medal chances, but even on paper, she was always going to get 2-per'd out by Simone and Jade

It didn't really look like that at selection time. There wasn't a lot to choose between the two of them in the run up to Tokyo, depended on the landings on the day generally. Our panel here had Mykayla ahead in podium training, for example. Jade also had quite the habit of running out of Amanars at that point. It had happened at both worlds she'd been to, and there was a real question about whether that was likely to happen again under pressure.

Though I'm not sure how much any of that would've mattered if Jade hadn't been injured at Trials.

One thing that is certain, Skinner's case for the Tokyo team is much stronger than for Rio. The former was a genuine 50/50, whereas the latter is a longer shot based on her looking like the likeliest EF bronze contender from the chasing pack at the time of selection (Locklear would never have stayed healthy). But I feel like we've heard more from her about Rio even after 2021 than we did about missing the Tokyo team, or am I mixing my timelines up?

 

[MaryClare]

Beam breaker has a vid out

 

[Aeris]

suggesting now that she could possibly be doing a "frightening" Randi off the table utilizing an illegal technique....

Twisting on the table (and onto the springboard) isn't an illegal technique. It's been historically under-penalized, making it a competitively viable strategy.

Probably the reason why Skinner found it natural to do a one-armed Cheng is because keeping the body weight more to one side makes it easier to pre-rotate before leaving the table. But you can still pre-rotate while keeping the required amount of contact with the second hand.

When you do a counter 1/4 + 1/4 turn after the initial 1/2 onto the table following a roundoff (or should I say, the initial 1/4 onto the table following a Roundoff 1/4 onto the springboard), then you're coming off the table backwards instead of forwards. In effect, the flight phase of the vault becomes a Scherbo.

That description, including nearly a 1/4 turn roundoff onto the springboard, is almost exactly how Kenzo Shirai did his "Shirai 3" vault (Scherbo double twist); only difference is he didn't place his 2nd hand on the table until he nearly reached sideways position, instead of first contacting the table with the 2nd hand in a forwards position and then twisting to sideways position.

Skinner's body was naturally trying to twist more like a Scherbo than a Cheng. She could have leaned even more into "cheating" the rotation of the vault and getting into a fast rotational position, while being sure to make contact with her 2nd hand, and this quite possibly would have allowed her to perform a creditable Li Xiaopeng vault. She'd definitely land with a low chest, but that and the .3 deduction for pre-rotating throughout the entry phases of the vault is nothing compared to getting .8 higher D (especially given the number of judges who never took that full .3 deduction anyway). Yes it is frightening that such a flawed technique could have been, and still would be, highly rewarded.