THAT Khorkina Vault

[RedBirdie]

I found Slater’s Day 1 trials vaults, and I think (I’m at work, so my audio is muted…if they say this on the broadcast, my apologies) she was deliberately doing a piked cuervo for vault 1 and a layout for vault 2. Once again she pikes and grabs her legs on the first vault, then does the very archy “layout” to pike down but without the leg grab for vault 2.



Not to go to far afield, but they never figured out what to do with her on vault. She did a ragged Y1.5 the next quad, and she also did a piked Lucconi, which I don’t think I ever saw her do more than half a twist onto the table. Vaulting held her back her entire career. I wonder why they didn’t go for a Pod once the table was introduced.

 

[onodian]

The banana vault looks slightly better in 99. Her hands are super on the front of the horse, was that adequate technique? That’s where the whole banana situation starts forming

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Only this one, worlds prelims. It isn’t the clearest.



Apparently she got 8.831, which is odd because I think they were just counting the best score of the two then. So maybe the video is mislabelled and actually from a later round? She also vaulted in TFs and the AA and scored in the low 9.2s both times. I don’t know of any other coverage but perhaps someone remembers seeing her land in the background while they were showing Romania during TFs or something?

 

[irichluck21]

Apparently she got 8.831, which is odd because I think they were just counting the best score of the two then.

97-00 CoP Vault

Competition 1: Qualifications. Two vaults performed. The two vaults can be the same exact vault, or a different vault. Scores of both vaults are averaged.

Competition 2: All Around. Two vaults performed. The two vaults must be different vaults. Scores of both vaults averaged.

Competition 3: Event Finals. Two vaults performed. The two vaults must be different vaults AND from come from different families. Both vaults averaged.

Competition 4: Team Finals. Two vaults performed. The two vaults must be different vaults. Both vaults averaged.

If this is labeled correctly and it is qualifications, the vaults can be identical or differ and are averaged. So 8.831 is an average of two vaults.

 

[tempest]

I did a search for her vault in the all-around, and I couldn’t find anything either

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

So maybe that’s right then, and she crashed the other one. I haven’t been able to find any other footage or more detaile results from Tianjin, but we can probably fill in the gaps.

If she was doing a layout and piked barani as her two different vaults in TFs and the AA when she came out with 9.2ish average, and she scored around the 9.125 she got in the Sydney AA for the piked barani, that would fit.

 

[makam]

The way the commentator casually mentions that she has been actually landing her vaults is so weird to me. Outside of the chucked Prods and TTY attempts, do any gymnasts these days do vaults they aren’t sure they can land? Even China has downgraded to FTYs when needed.

 

[Concorde]

Here are Slater’s vaults in prelims from 1999 Worlds:



In Sydney, Slater was given a 9.4 and 9.6 SV in the all-around, so it was indeed the tucked Cuervo and piked Cuervo vaults.

 

[KristyJ]

Yikes, somehow I hadn’t remembered how rough those were. She hits the vaulting horse so low I wonder if instead of transferring power vertically as she clearly means to, she’s simply killing some of her momentum. It looks jarring.

 

[tsarinajen]

Hate to ask cause it was Sydney… is the board in the right place? Those seemed way worse.

Here was earlier in 2000.

 

[RedBirdie]

I have zero first, second, or even third-hand knowledge, but my guess is the Australian team was overworked, underfed, and emotionally destroyed by the time the Games started. Peggy Liddick has the reputation she does for damn good reasons.

 

[onodian]

why are we obsessing about Slater’s vaults? it seems there would be so many nicer gymnastics to obsess about. Next thing y’all will want to watch Hypolito’s sheep jump front vt on slo-mo

 

[irichluck21]

I have zero first, second, or even third-hand knowledge, but my guess is the Australian team was overworked, underfed, and emotionally destroyed by the time the Games started. Peggy Liddick has the reputation she does for damn good reasons.

I would agree 100% with this assessment.
Especially what the next generations had to say about her.

I would also add in that the increased pressure to get a team medal at home was probably also a huge factor in their performance. They went into Sydney expecting to get team bronze, which is why they did those vaults.
It was unfortunate that they started on vault because despite counting the 8.3 on vault from Walker, Australia nearly eliminated USA, who was just .382 ahead of Australia after all was said and done.
Even after that disaster of a 1st rotation Australia came back strong on bars and USA had some flubs on beam and floor. At the midpoint, USA was just .237 ahead of Australia, who was moving to their best two events on beam and floor. The US had to go to vault, where the scores were overall lower.

Australia should have moved into the lead after rotation 3, but had two falls on beam, EVEN with counting a fall, Australia gained ground on US who had a poor vault rotation.
Going into rotation 4, the US only had .151 lead over Australia.

US was able to stay ahead due to bars, even with Chow’s huge mistake. So in a way, the US was lucky Bela chose Dawes and Schwikert because their two bars scores made the difference, though Dantzscher would have been able to put up a 9.7 plus with a hit set.

Either way, vault was not the nail in the coffin for Australia even if they finished 12th on the event, as beam ended up being the killing factor.
In hindsight, Australia should have had Walker and Slater go for the less difficult vaults to secure a team finals spot. Knowing what we know about team finals, a solid performance from Australia would have given them the bronze, with China having DQ’d.

Granted they were in the 1st subdivision, but they got the benefit of the first rotation bye and saw what had happened to the US on beam.
However, I guess they were gunning for China all along for bronze and needed those 9.9 vaults in team finals.

Still. I blame Liddick for poor management of the team leading into the Olympics.

 

[RedBirdie]

why are we obsessing about Slater’s vaults? it seems there would be so many nicer gymnastics to obsess about. Next thing y’all will want to watch Hypolito’s sheep jump front vt on slo-mo

I mean, why not? Other than NCAA, there’s not much going on to discuss right now. I suppose we could once again rehash Gutsu-Miller 1992 or Douglas-Komova 2012.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

That feels like a discussion that would’ve been more suited to lockdown. You should’ve made this proposal 3 years ago.

@Concorde I’m extremely impressed with your searching skills.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

They went into Sydney expecting to get team bronze, which is why they did those vaults.

Ironically, as it turned out the vault choices may be the thing that prevented them having a chance at bronze.

Obviously this is in a post disqualification era. They were never going to be capable of beating the team that China sent and nobody at the time was factoring that into their analysis. But if Slater had done her AA vaults in TFs, they’d have made the final ahead of the US, and less dangerous vault choices there could’ve had them within a couple of tenths of Spain. Without the Americans, we’re in hopped landings and tiny wobbles deciding the medal territory.

 

[Passion]

I wonder if USAG would have stuck with the semi-centralized training system at all if Australia had knocked them out of team finals.

Not medaling was enough to sack Bela, but not even moving past qualifications?

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Interesting question.

It’s very obvious that countries needed some degree of specialisation as soon as the format stopped requiring AA, that the US approach of letting the best AAers fight it out and taking the highest scorers was outdated. Romania and China had both worked that out even in 6-5-4, indeed I’d argue that China’s 96 team composition indicates an early understanding even though it didn’t actually work out in practice. And then of course this was going to be exacerbated with 6-3-3.

However, is this bleeding obvious and would USAG have understood it are not the same question. In theory anyone could’ve had an NTC role and it didn’t need to have anything to do with Bela, in practice it’s nonetheless interesting that they went with Marta.

 

[irichluck21]

Obviously this is in a post disqualification era. They were never going to be capable of beating the team that China sent and nobody at the time was factoring that into their analysis. But if Slater had done her AA vaults in TFs, they’d have made the final ahead of the US, and less dangerous vault choices there could’ve had them within a couple of tenths of Spain. Without the Americans, we’re in hopped landings and tiny wobbles deciding the medal territory.

I have to disagree.
I think Australia was fully capable of competing with China if they were fully healthy and hitting all of their routines.
Australia’s floor in TQ was better than China’s total in TF on floor.
Australia’s bars total was .4 short of what China scored in TF, but we saw that Skinner and Slater were capable of scoring higher on bars. Slater scored .1 higher in AA than in TQ for example.
We know about Australia’s VT rotation, however, Australia with hit vaults would have equaled or bettered China (who stuck all their vaults cold) but that was with Kui Yuanyuan out with injury.

The major difference would have been beam, where China was out of this world going 39.099. Australia was never going to duplicate China’s score on beam, but if they could have come with .6-.7 on beam, they could maybe have used their floor advantage. We know that Skinner’s beam in AA was .5 better than Walker’s score on beam in TQ that counted (Skinner’s beam fall in TQ was the dropped score). So Australia was capable of getting within .5-.8 of China’s beam score.

At the end of the day, China superior bars and beam was the edge as they were mediocre on floor and vault and were right with the USA, ESP, AUS, UKR on those two events. Also, China drilled their vaults in TF. I didn’t think Liu Xuan or Ling Jie were capable of those vault scores!

If China had Kui Yuanyuan healthy for team finals, her vaulting and floor scores might have given China the gold over Romania, that is how well the team competed in team finals. They were a huge shock because they had never hit to that ability ever, their only real mistake coming from Dong Fangxiao on floor. They were .6 away from Romania at the end of team finals.

Ultimately they overperformed in Sydney, but going in, Ukraine, Spain, USA, Australia, and Canada all had eyes on the team bronze and given from how China competed in the past, all these teams felt like they had a chance at bronze against them. I expected Canada to be a initial upset into team finals, but TQ falls and injuries to key players. Canada was 1.557 away from 6th place and that was with counting a 8.5 on floor and a 9.0 on vault. Tousek was not as sharp as she was at Pan Am Games (dealing with injury) and also potential beam finalist, Richardson fell.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I think the fact that the theoretical case for China relies on Kui Yuanyuan being injured and China not having a full team is the most significant point here. They really missed her on VT/FX which is where they were weakest.

Agree with you that they could’ve contended for gold if they’d had all 6, albeit that did require Russia to splat. Actually they might even have pulled it off with just the 5 on their best day: that really was a skidfest on floor. But then China were possibly better than Romania on paper going in.