Oh absolutely I understand the point about watering down. I was a high-level gymnast myself, and absolutely you want to do your hardest routine possible, and the armchair coaches on Youtube and Gymnaverse bemoaning, like, how dare Vanessa Ferrari do her eponymous leap on floor! are missing the point that, ya know, maybe she likes doing it? And rational score optimization is not the objective goal of all athletes at all times. (This does not include our righteous critiques of things like the Russian gymnasts’ deduction-laden requisite giant 1/2 turns before their dismounts, because how much pleasure can they really get from a filler skill like that? 
)
I think that’s why the NCAA-goes-to-Olympics idea is sort of amusing and maybe not too outlandish, in that it wouldn’t be a gymnast downgrading at all, it would be a gymnast taking the routines that they’ve mastered to a new context – though, presumably, with a few choice compositional changes that could make a big D-score boost without too many deductions… like doing a D tumbling pass last instead of first.**
**Yet another side note, what do we think about the D-score dismount bonus on floor. I understand it for beam, but when a “dismount” on floor basically just means re-sequencing your tumbling passes to put a C-combo in the middle, why do we really care?
)I think that’s why the NCAA-goes-to-Olympics idea is sort of amusing and maybe not too outlandish, in that it wouldn’t be a gymnast downgrading at all, it would be a gymnast taking the routines that they’ve mastered to a new context – though, presumably, with a few choice compositional changes that could make a big D-score boost without too many deductions… like doing a D tumbling pass last instead of first.**
**Yet another side note, what do we think about the D-score dismount bonus on floor. I understand it for beam, but when a “dismount” on floor basically just means re-sequencing your tumbling passes to put a C-combo in the middle, why do we really care?
