US WAG Olympic trials Night 1 Discussion

[Doug1233]

Basically because 75% is already in the books. There’s only 25% left to play for.

 

[Doug1233]

It would be super interesting to see who the Gymnaverse Panel would have given the 4th spot.

I guess working out AA is easy. But based on combined FX/VT across Nationals and Trials, which I think is a more accurate metric for determining the 4th.

 

[irichluck21]

Skinner had a bad nationals though, she was 9th all around. Ahead of DiCello but behind McCallum.

 

[Doug1233]

I think Skinner has flipped her first two vaults. The Cheng was, IMO, being underscored. The Amanar, despite being 0.2 lower in D, is not. It ends up giving her an extra couple tenths.

 

[makam]

I guess working out AA is easy. But based on combined FX/VT across Nationals and Trials, which I think is a more accurate metric for determining the 4th.

…maybe tomorrow. Or tonight if I get a second wind!

 

[upmysleeve]

Yeah I was mistaken on this - this is essentially all about the VT/FX total and DiCello’s falls weren’t there. McCallum definitely is hurt by weighing Nats and Trials equally.

Basically, Wong, Skinner, and DiCello have 3 day VT/FX totals within a tenth of each other. That’s a tenth of total scores (all around 85.7) not averages.

Also one wildcard at play - are they going to give Skinner the benefit of the doubt and take her highest scoring vault from each day?

 

[Seyonne]

Did Tom say trials and nationals are given equal weight?

 

[Doug1233]

So looking at the USAG VT/FX numbers so far, based on the following 5 ways to count the best gymnast to fill a combined VT/FX hole, I have:

All 5 Meets Average
1st. DiCello 22.783
2nd. Wong 22.697
3rd. Skinner 22.650
4th. Grace 22.340

Middle 3 Meets
1st. DiCello 28.405
2nd. Wong 28.178
3rd. Skinner 28.083
4th. Grace 27.633

Average of Nats and Trials so far
1st. Wong 21.433
2nd. DiCello 21.429
3rd. Skinner 21.412
4th. Grace 20.937

Middle 2 of Nats and Trials - kinda incomplete RN
1st. DiCello 28.508
2nd. Wong 28.392
3rd. Skinner 27.667
4th. Grace 27.475

Highest dual VT/FX score on one night

1st. Skinner 28.999
2nd Wong 28.950
3rd. Grace 28.799
4th. DiCello 28.700

So although Skinner can claim to be on the “highest scoring team”, the more numbers you use, the more DiCello wins.

And in fact, Wong never comes less than 2nd on any of these metrics.

Does anyone else have any idea how Tom will be using the numbers. There is literally nothing between these four. Look at the average of Nats and Trials so far. There is 0.02 between Wong, DiCello and Skinner. The method of determining an “average” score will literally decide who will be on the team, not even the scores themselves.

And the more I look at the numbers, the more I think Grace doesn’t really have a good claim to this spot, and DiCello is the dark horse here. If I was Kelli Hill, I’d be waving these numbers so hard in front of Tom’s face. If he wants steady and consistent averages over VT/FX - its DiCello.

 

[Doug1233]

I’m gonna be so pissed if we don’t get video of at least Skinner’s bars, DiCello’s vault and Carey’s UB/BB.

 

[alc]

Ok… victim shaming perhaps isn’t quite the right word. But you (plural) clearly don’t (fully?) believe Dawes’s story, and your stated reason is that it sounds like self-promotion.

I don’t see the contradiction. Of course she’s going to promote her own gym during the Olympic cycle. It would be stupid if she didn’t. But your claim, if I’m understanding correctly, is that leading with the survivor angle is… a lie? Opportunistic? Free press she wouldn’t otherwise get?

Please do correct me if I’m misunderstanding, but my read of what you’re saying is that she had a great relationship with Kelli Hill, then turned around and backstabbed her not because time and motherhood made her realize how abusive the prevailing gymnastics culture actually was, but because she made a calculated business decision to ride the survivor gravy train?

Ok, having (I hope) understood your points, let me make my own.

First off, I really wish I could read through old wwgym threads so I could direct-quote instead of paraphrasing. But FlyingRobin has described multiple times her firsthand observations of elite training at Hill’s. There’s no escaping the sarcasm and yelling, even if perhaps there wasn’t, say, the physical abuse of Twistars. I’m not in a position to know why Dawes hasn’t directly mentioned Hill’s but her so-called vague accusations certainly seem to me to be congruent with what FlyingRobin described. I find Dawes’s description of the culture utterly believable based on what I’ve learned from the old wwgym board. (I say this as a casual fan who wandered in to learn the names of the moves, not to acquire in-depth knowledge of Geddart, Haney, the Fongs, KZB, and all the other “clearly worse than Kelli Hill” coaches.)

But now let me say two things, as a parent of a five-year old and a one-year old.

I have a decent relationship with my parents and have forgiven a lot over the years. But there are absolutely aspects of my own upbringing that I would now describe — privately, to myself — as verbally and emotionally abusive. I have no interest in punishing my parents or proving my accusations to anyone, even my husband. But I would never, ever, even internally in my own head, have used the word “abusive” until I had kids myself. So this part of Dominique’s story absolutely rings true to me. There’s shit you’re conditioned to accept for yourself (that I deserved the yelling and screaming and endless narcissistic monologues) that you suddenly realize you won’t tolerate for your kids.

Do I love my parents? Yes. Would I ever publicly call them out? No, not in a million, trillion years. (I’m banking on anonymity in typing this out here.) But did having kids of my own force me to recognize, decades after the fact, that aspects of their behavior were abusive? Yes. I spent decades convinced that I didn’t deserve better, but I knew from the jump that my kids deserve better. Motherhood does change you in that way. That part of Dawes’s story is utterly believable to me.

Which brings me to my second point. As a parent whose kid used to take kiddie gymnastics lessons before the pandemic, I simply don’t believe that there’s a survivors gravy train to be ridden. Learning that Hill’s and all other Maryland gyms are toxic wouldn’t make me pick Dawes’s gym for my kid. It would make me pick another sport entirely. If Dawes wanted to get my kid into gymnastics beyond the toddler level, she’d be much better off talking up the Magnificent Seven and how wonderful it was to be an Olympic gold medalist and how she can make your kid into one too. The fact that she’s not taking that angle is proof, to me, that she’s telling the truth about her own lived experiences. (Which, in turn, doesn’t invalidate the lived experiences of those who’ve experienced much worse abuse with much less payoff.)

I mean, thought experiment. Let’s posit for a moment that Dawes really did have a delayed reaction in seeing what she went through as abuse, and that the revelatory moment was brought on by motherhood. What exactly would you expect her to be doing differently from what she’s doing now? Not self-promote? Not tell her story? Lie low during the Olympic cycle? If your argument solely rests on grounds of “if this was all true, why didn’t she say so earlier”… “ well, that is a form of victim-shaming. Many survivors don’t come forward immediately, and one of the biggest reasons is that they normalized it and didn’t recognize it as abuse until much later.

Is it possible that I’m wrong, that the survivors gravy train does exist, and that she’s coldheartedly riding it? I mean, sure. But from an Occum’s Razor perspective, I’m much, much more inclined to believe the simpler explanation, which is that she’s telling the truth at the time in her life when the truth became clear to herself.

 

[falcon9]

ProScore is one of the major scoring systems that we use in USA Gymnastics. All of the competitions that our company puts on uses it…

Auburn Electronics Group - Home of ProScore and ProSchool

ProScore is the ultimate gymnastics meet management and scoring software and ProSchool is the next generation in school and class management.

www.aegroup.com

Their website doesn’t seem to be working right now. This is probably the most traffic they have ever gotten.

 

[rue_des_plantes]

I desperately need McCallum or DiCello on the team over Skinner, and I’m still leaning slightly towards Grace. However, I’m attending in person, I’m very close up, and McCallum’s bars score was perfectly fair, as was McCusker’s.

Now, this wouldn’t be an issue, except that Skinner was so overscored by comparison. Luckily, she has nowhere to go but down after having one of the best meets of her life, and DiCello and McCallum left a lot of tenths on the table. They can regain many even without going lights out.

We will see whose stamina carries them, and if a certain flic + full gets cursed again. It ain’t over until Valentina Rodionenko sings, and probably about somebody’s weight, ironically.

 

[makam]

Eh, I’m still on Team McCallum. She had a rough nationals that is keeping her averages down. if she repeats night 1 of trials, she is right up there with Wong and DiCello.Skinner’s scores are up because of her VT but I’m still not convinced it is a good idea to put 2 athletes carrying foot injuries on the same team even if she adds a few extra, un-needed 10ths. Not getting, McCallum, I’d prefer DiCello, she seems least likely to break of the remaining 3.

 

[MRR]

With Doug’s breakdown of VT/FX and how close everybody is, my gut is Tom will simply go off rank order. It’s what he knows best and requires the least amount of thought, and he deflects accountability by putting the choice in the judges’ hands.

It wouldn’t be Trials without a late surge from Skinner that scares everyone, but she only has 0.1 on McCallum (and 0.3 DiCello) after the best meet of her career. DiCello is an interesting wildcard and perhaps the most reliable of the three on FX, but ultimately I bet more on McCallum who has an uncanny way of sneaking onto teams. She can be much better on UB/BB than night 1, and even a bit better on VT.

 

[YurchenkoLoop]

Oh wow so Skinner could actually make top 4. I just finished watching Night 2 coverage. We have her ranked 6th thus far. Would be very cool to live score Night 2 collectively @Doug1233 @Concorde @irichluck21 @Denn @rue_des_plantes @MRR and anyone I’m forgetting

 

[falcon9]

With Doug’s breakdown of VT/FX and how close everybody is, my gut is Tom will simply go off rank order. It’s what he knows best and requires the least amount of thought, and he deflects accountability by putting the choice in the judges’ hands.

I agree with this.

 

[Doug1233]

You know I’m there!!

@cats do you know if we are still able to pull individual judges scores from the USAG website? Would be amazing to add these into the spreadsheet

 

[cats]

I just DM’d the file. Having read through the comments, I think my favorite observation is that Judge 5 gave Skinner a 7.9 and McCusker an 8.1 on bars.

 

[irichluck21]

I didn’t say I don’t believe her.

I am saying it is very opportunistic of her to come out about this after the Nassar scandal broke out. It appears (to me) that she is pushing her gym academy as the alternative to evil USAG. She’s very vague about the alleged abuse that took place.

Calling her academy “Maryland’s ONLY positive gymnastics school” goes a bit far.

 

[Doug1233]

Literally came on here to say that.

I would laugh if it wasn’t so painful.

ETA: There’s gotta be something nefarious going on there. This judge clearly wants Skinner on the team at the expense of Riley.

Every other judge had an 8 tenth separation between Riley and Skinner - except J5 who had 2 tenths.

Something aint right here…