Rich, can you edit your post a bit? The Melissanidis is tucked. He trained it piked (and it looked close, but viable;
@Concorde tell me what you think about
this.) but I never saw him compete it piked. He also told me once that he dreamed of doing it with a full. I told him I thought that was a lot, but I think he liked to dream big.
Also, In MAG, the double tuck vaults are all worth 5.2, whether it’s front, Yurchenko, tsuk, or even tinsica-spring. The double pikes are all worth 0.4 more (5.6). Dragulescu piked and Kas-double back (CRAZY hard vaults) are 6.0.
I agree that the reason we see more double front vaults is because (a) men train Yurchenkos a bit less and (b) you can do a half out of it. There’s a third reason though: the Yurchenko triple twist, equivalent Tsuk and Kas vaults, and Randis are worth the same as double pikes. So there’s incentive to do those.
HOWEVER, the next code has grouped all the double saltos as a group and also grouped all the front and Kas vaults as one group. So that will change vault finals (and qualifications). EVERY vaulter will need to do either a double flipping vaults or a roundoff entry vault. So we’ll see if more guys start doing Yurchenkos and roundoff-half-ons.