Russia 's performance

[ArnoldRimmer]

I have come to believe it was a political statement of some kind. We must decipher it.

 

[blake]

An absurdist statement on the WTC’s concept of an indirect connection? She’s an artist without parallel.

 

[onodian]

specially rio qualies BB was the ultimate performance art

 

[Livi]

One thing to identify that Jordan’s dance elements are mostly asking for 0.3s, which we as a board would pretty much all have understood going into Tokyo, quite another to envisage a gymnast in a US leotard actually getting smacked with the full force of them.

This is a very significant point and actually one of the highlights of these games for me.
Yes, USA dominated the past 10-15 years in gymnastics and yes, it was justified. But the scores they were getting, weren’t always. It made the gap between them and the rest of the world that much bigger. Being brought back to earth these games while also having to deal with losing Simone must have been a hard pill to swallow (especially for Tom), but it felt like a breath of fresh air honestly.

For too long we have seen US gymnasts like Aly Raisman get away with form issues and they still do, domestically. To see them get fair scores here, is a huge step in the right direction, where gymnasts will be scored on their performance, regardless of their leotard.

 

[YurchenkoLoop]

Chiles is very clean and I really don’t think she’s comparable to Raisman. She has some bum skills in her routines but on the whole her form is beautiful. However, she seemed to peak for Trials–her vault had a little less pop at the Games, although others had issues with the table too; see Lu Yufei omitting to do the DTT

 

[tsarinajen]

Considering Aliya wasn’t planning to do beam in 2012, Grishina was supposed to, i think that was really as hit as Aliya was going to do especially considering her back issues at that point too.

Part of the success of Urazova/Listunova has to be contributed to the coaching change. The junior coach moved up to the senior division with them. So the new seniors didn’t switch coaches. We’ll see how this impacts the new seniors moving forward with Aliya heading the junior program.

 

[RedBirdie]

Chiles is very clean and I really don’t think she’s comparable to Raisman. She has some bum skills in her routines but on the whole her form is beautiful.

I think the issue is there are significant issues with almost all of her dance elements (and that goes for most US gymnasts!) and that adds up very quickly. In previous quads, or even in 18 and 19, it seemed like a lot of that was ignored solely because of the leotard. Seeing the rule book applied to US gymnasts is…unusual.

Aly Raisman is just the best (worst?) example of judges turning a blind eye to obvious errors because of the flag she competed under. There’s no way Aly Raisman of Sweden would have gotten the same benefit of the doubt. (8.733 e-score on bars!!!)

 

[MRR]

Exactly. Chiles does not have good dance elements, and her posture is shockingly poor. The Landis should’ve probably replaced the wolf turn, but otherwise they stripped her down as much as they could. She was only counting 3 dance on BB/FX, and still getting picked apart.

At least Aly could manage a decent Gogean and quite good double L by Rio, and in terms of form the DLO was a marked improvement from the triple full. That said, I would love to have seen her judged by the Tokyo E-panel…

 

[Jack]

For all the talk of the US depth, there really wasn’t any at all.

 

[Doug1233]

Did Chiles miss the EGR?? (I know you meant CR ha)

 

[Doug1233]

There was! Way more than Russia.

You cannot tell me that Gerasimova is a better AAer than Wong?!

 

[Jack]

There was depth in the fact that there were a large number of athletes in the 55 AA range, but if you think about possible 4 person teams, it hard to imagine anyone other than Grace or Suni making any of the previous teams except Sydney. There was a notable dip in talent this quad, and it’s certain to continue the trend next quad.

 

[MRR]

Oof, turns out I meant CV

 

[Doug1233]

Ha I thought she might not have landed feet first or something!!

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Yeah, the fact that Russia had even less doesn’t mean the US was deep.

It did come as a surprise, for me anyway. I didn’t buy into any of the shit about the US B and C teams beating the rest of the world, that was never even true when the programme genuinely was dominant, but I didn’t think we’d see a situation where there were so few legitimate contenders (although Malabuyo looked much better at Nationals and Trials than I’d thought possible, so it wasn’t all one way).

Things like Morgan and Riley’s bodies not holding out, GAGE taking things to a new level of wasteful, Konnor’s problems transitioning to senior, DiCello not setting the world on fire, all of those were totally plausible outcomes in themselves. So were the issues that hampered McCallum and Chiles in Tokyo, come to that. But each of them happening simultaneously felt like a much bigger deal.

But then 2019 worlds wasn’t that different really, was it? What looked like potentially a very deep pool ended up with the final spot on the team essentially being awarded by default to someone who never looked like she’d be anything other than patchy at the championships, and wasn’t, and the specialists convincingly beating a collection of AAers who could all have been world silver medallists on paper. So maybe the signs were there.

 

[RedBirdie]

2019 only had 15 seniors compete AA at nationals, and seven of them didn’t crack 55.00 even with domestic scoring. There was never the depth some people imagined there to be.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Absolutely. When I talk about depth here, I’m meaning specifically the pool who’d be in contention for major teams, so the top 8-10. But it’s clear that there wasn’t the quality the next level down either. And there’s no reason why there shouldn’t have been.

 

[RedBirdie]

Just for shits and giggles, I roughly estimated the US “B” team for 2016–Skinner, Smith, Locklear, Nichols, Hundley. They likely would be fighting for a medal, but they certainly were not a clear #2 behind the actual US team and ahead of everyone else.

Maybe I’ll do 2012 in a bit…

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

2012 mostly belonged in a sanatorium by the time the Games rolled round.

 

[Jack]

2012 is Tricky! After Price, Li, Finnegan, and Sacramone, there’s not really a good option for the 5th spot. Probably Baker?

I do think that the 2016 B team certainly would have won silver. Russia was such a disaster on Beam and Floor that year that it wasn’t really a big ask.