The new men's vault final rule is a step backwards

[Denn]

So many guys are already doing two vaults with the same entry. At least one is double flipping and one is not. That helps.

But the rules allows guys to do, say, a Roundoff + front double full (like the Biles vault) and a front double full. So stupid.

Also, you can’t do a Yurchenko double pike and a Roundoff half-on vault anymore. WTF?!??!?! Someone like Eddie Penev would be screwed over.

I feel like there’s a simple solution: there’s a simple way to deal this: just make two bonuses;

• do front/Kas entry and a back/Tsuk entry, and you get 0.2 bonus
• do a multi-twisting vault and a multi-flipping vault, you get 0.2 bonus.

I was trying to think of guys who would have gotten both bonuses. I can only think of two so far:

Yang Wei: Yurchenko double pike + Kas-double full
Yeo Hong-Chul: Tsuk double back + Randi)

 

[navyblue]

Damn., yeah that rule is totally illogical.

I agree with your first bullet about front vs. back entries, though this is now giving me pause to second guess my conception of Kas vs. Tsuk though, because I guess I just consider a Kas to set you up for a back salto that incidentally starts off forward-facing, but that’s definitely not an absolute truth and I can understand the opposite point of view… But also I am bitter than no one bothered to notice that my roundoff and back twisting directions were opposite, so I was stuck trying to eke out as much twisting as I could from a proper tsuk while my teammates had an easier time doing Kasamatsus.

I do feel like a gymnast who hypothetically met the requirement by doing a Kas full (two twists) and a Tsuk double full would confuse most laypersons into thinking they had just witnessed the same vault twice. So I think my ultimate preference would be a handspring (or roundoff 1/2 on) vault as category 1, and anything else as category 2.

I think this should be a requirement for all stages of competition. When every other event has a bunch of composition groups encouraging diverse skills, I don’t see why vault can’t ask for 2 – plus it’s the only event with this weird opt-in policy for pursuing finals.

 

[Denn]

LOL, pretty much nobody is going to attempt a Kas full and a Tsuk double full, and if they do, I’m happy to give them 0.2 bonus for being able to block (or twist) two ways! Sean Golden is the only guy I can think of who did both at various points!

But just to avoid the possibility, it could just say Tsuk with twist + Kas with twist does not earn bonus.

BTW, sorry that your coaches didn’t figure that out for you.

 

[Denn]

BTW, your categories wouldn’t work.
A) Your categories would allow someone to do a Randi and a Kas double full — basically the same vault with a different block position.
B) Yang Wei would not get the first bonus. And he should.

 

[navyblue]

No sir, your categories wouldn’t work. Mine are perfect. Just kidding.

Both of our proposals have the same caveat, inverted.
All that said I think you’re right about Yang Wei – I’m not sure which vaults of his your referring to but if it’s a Kas and Tsuk double back set, those are distinct enough to deserve this credit/bonus we’re thinking of…

 

[navyblue]

Now i’m spiraling: what I said about the challenges for a layperson distinguishing a Kas from a FHS entry though seems to hold true even for a Codeofpoints.com dedicated website.

This video they posted of an exemplary “Yeo 2” looks suspiciously like a Kas 2/1 (Lopez?) to me… what do you think:

For comparison, Li Xiaopeng’s entry is very cleanly and obviously a front handspring:

 

[Denn]

Yep, that’s why the rules really shouldn’t allow a front entry and a Kas entry. Guys can do the same vault twice with different levels of crookendness.

 

[Doug1233]

All of this “different families” bullshit needs to be scrapped. I don’t even care if gymnasts do the same vault twice. We should just add bonus to reward gymnasts who have variety in their vaults. And the amount of bonus increases as you increase that variety. However you want to calculate that. Predominantly in the entry but also extra bonus for having a “double salto” and a “twisty” vault combo.

And require two vaults in all rounds of competition!

Using a WAG example, I would want two DTYs to get about the same D Score as a Y1.5+Tsuk Lay 1/1. We might see a LOT of the top AAers who only work one vault (like Suni) then start to learn and compete a Lopez, for example.

 

[irichluck21]

And require two vaults in all rounds of competition!

This is an easy fix.
Those that want to attempt a vault final qualification can do two vaults from different families, if you don’t want to go for vault finals, repeat the same vault.
Only problem I see is which of the same vault gets in for team qualifications if they repeat the vault.
I think it can be fixed by allowing the best of both vaults to count, which also goes the same for the two different families. Simone Biles in Tokyo is a prime example. Her Cheng was first and counted toward the tam total but then her Amanar ended up over .4 higher in score.

We saw this in Atlanta with Amy Chow doing a Hristkeva for her first vault and then she did a DTY for her second. In these rules she wouldn’t be eligible for event finals, but she could get a safe score first and then upgrade the second.

 

[Denn]

I wish that two vaults were required of everyone – both WAG and MAG – but I also understand why MAG really dislikes that. Most gymnasts train vault less than everything else — in MAG, most guys train it like 75% less than the other apparatus. Some older gymnasts who have been doing the same vault for years may do literally a couple vaults a week just to keep it up. There’s naturally a resistance to doing more.

But yeah, a bonus system would be better — I have proposed this for years, but … sigh.

 

[navyblue]

I’m in favor of requiring two different vaults of everyone in all rounds of competition, and just average the two. The part of my brain demanding order hates that vault is an outlier event where there’s no element groups and where you have to specifically “try” for finals. Requiring different entries for the two would be even better, but I’d settle for just different, and although that might lead to some folks doing Yurchenko full and DTY, the best in the world would still be incentivized to learn something that matches or exceeds their DTY’s difficulty value.

 

[Doug1233]

still be incentivized to learn something that matches or exceeds their DTY’s difficulty value.

Or incentivised to learn a different entry to get a bonus.

 

[Denn]

Agreed — if you’re going to require two, then a bonus totally makes sense.

 

[GymBeauty]

Definitely think 2 vaults should be required from everyone. It doesn’t make sense how a single vault is worth the same as an entire other routine.

2 vaults from the same family should be allowed, just require them to have different amounts of salto/twisting. Give a bonus to people who do vaults from different families (and with different amount of twisting in main flight phase), that way versatility is being rewarded without absolutely requiring everyone to do different entries. Not requiring different entries should actually maximize the amount of variety seen, because for example it’s now common in WAG to ignore the Yurchenko 1.5 and go right to a Yurchenko 2.0, but with this change we would see people training both.

There should be 8 vault families - Yurchenko and Handspring, with 1/4-on, 1/2-on, and 3/4-on each being a different family of each type. Some vaults also need to be differentiated where the twist happens in the vault. For example a Handspring 1/2-on, 1/2-off – if you twist immediately off the table into a forward salto, that’s more difficult than doing the vault as a backward salto and adding the 1/2 twist at the end.

 

[KristyJ]

The fact that it’s trained so much less than other events is yet more reason to require two vaults to make the events more even.