It’s a relative resurgence, and they finished 4th at Euros last year with a few falls!
Nah, they have the ability to pick the teams they want and they need to use that power. Like this year, if Roberson was someone whose coach they told "change these things or we probably won't take her" and the coach didn't listen, they easily could have justified leaving her off the team.
Nevermind that 50 is basically all it took to make world AA finals (which shows that the problem is not US only)
For real. It's harder for a US senior WAG to qualify to US nationals than it is to qualify for world AA finals (although US domestic scoring is.... suspect)
It definitely doesn't have to be Chow. It could be any of the other coaches I mentioned, or someone else entirely.
I see lots of little DP gymnasts in my Insta feed, and have often thought this. Clearly the DP works, because the USA is still very dominant at the international level (if not as completely as they would like). But the music for compulsories is so bad that it doesn't facilitate artistry or fluidity. It sounds like orchestras tuning up, with convenient rhythmic blurps that the gymnasts can snap their bodies crisply to. So these little gymnasts look incredibly sharp - beautiful body tension and marking the beat well - but no fluidity and not really any genuine opportunity to work towards it.
This could be the wrong way to look at it. Melnikova just qualified AA in first place despite a problematic beam and indifferent floor. She's in three finals and is clearly still close to her peak. Instead of worrying why 15 year old Caroline Moreau isn't ready to take on 25 year old Melnikova, we should be wondering how good Moreau (or even Blakey) will look when she's 25. In which case pacing and planning for the future is the key rather than presuming that the pipeline is problematic. It has just....shifted. And if you were a new senior, would you want to be peaking right now, with the Olympics years away? Competition experience, gradual artistry upskilling, careful attention to skill selection. Basically, the development program needs to continue through senior elite until gymnasts naturally hit their peak rather than being forced to because they've hit an arbitrary age.
Things that we probably couldn't get people to do, but I wish that coaches had to take ballet courses as part of their education, so they could learn to feel and see the difference in fluidity. I had to unlearn so many bad habits that I carried to dance from gymnastics that I just couldn't see until I had it pointed out to me, including being overly sharp and pose-y, but I'd been taught to move that sharp way in gymnastics. I think coaches need to have the understanding of the movement to pass it along.
That will never happen. The fanbase doesn't want it. In fact, there would probably be riots.
Fun fact about USAG compulsory routines. I don't know if this is still the case, but at least ~15 years ago when I was more involved, they choreographed the routine first and then "composed" music to match. That's why the music sounds so awful.
I did not know this, but it explains so much.
