Warning about US WAG program.

[JaJa]

I’m going to need more proof before I worry.

That is the more reasonable approach. Except that I kinda knew there was going to be a drop in performance and thus dominance right about now. I am just not at all surprised.

 

[IratePanda]

Sorry, deserved according to who?

That poster. It's their world, and we're all just living in it

The ignore feature exists for a reason.

 

[OnoNoKomachi]

It wasn't just Simone; it was the Simone era, combined with a run of other exceptionally talented people, either prior to or concurrently, such as Raisman, Douglas, Maroney, and Lee. Before that there was Johnson and Liukin in the 2008 quad. It's partly due to chance this all lined up the way it did.

Sports can go in cycles - the Japanese MAG had a dry period.

People scream about the US difficulty but 10 years ago they were not that far behind China and Japan in difficulty. There was a point where we had this killer HB rotations of Horton, Brooks, and Leyva. We aren't at that level now. We went from multiple guys with hard vaults to zero in one quad. Now we have 2 guys who can do 5.6 vaults. We sucked hard on PH and now the US has a multitude of world class PH guys.

After an Olympic silver in 2004, in 2006 the US guys didn't even make TF at Worlds. In 2008 we won a bronze medal.

Some of this is random. People like to find causes for everything, especially when things don't work out the way we want.

The person who wrote the original piece doesn't really know. If it is who Robin thinks it is (and I think she's right) - he's not a gymnastics coach, and I can't imagine a lot of people with inside information are giving him a bunch of tea at this point.

I'm not a gymnastics coach, but I was in the work world for a very long time. You can get good performances while being a decent human being. The best bosses know exactly when to be tough. Sometimes they have to tell people things that those people don't want to hear. That doesn't require being nasty and abusive.

What bosses should not do is put being liked first, try to be everyone's friend, and just let people do whatever they feel like. I also disagree with the athletes totally running the show. The US MAG didn't have a selection camp because they didn't want one, so they didn't have to (not it caused a problem this time -it's the principle). Sometimes the experienced people really do know better)

 

[Aeris]

Sorry, deserved according to who?

According to the code of points as it's supposed to be applied. Also going by responses on this forum, and across the whole gymnastics community, the vast majority thought Leanne deserved to win the AA. I've also not seen a single person who can justify Skye's execution score on UB.

Feel free to share your scores for the event, as others have been doing. Not sure why you've repeated the same line for the 4th time now, while replying to a post where that wasn't the main point anyway.

 

[MaryClare]

Not sure why you've repeated the same line for the 4th time now, while replying to a post where that wasn't the main point anyway.

Presumably because you failed to give a satisfactory explanation on occasions 1, 2 and 3.

 

[Passion]

To be fair, Aeris did link to their score break downs as a response at one point, I just don't remember if it was in response to occasion 1, 2, or 3.

 

[Aeris]

I linked multiple discussions with exact score breakdowns and Mary never replied. They've been completely unnecessary with their replies for days now, acting as if anyone who disagrees with results must be a random blind fan of Leanne/USA, and as if I haven't done a ton of judging analysis on this forum.

To get back to the point: even if USA had received the best result they feasibly could have been judged as at these Worlds, it's the weakest showing since 2001.

 

[KristyJ]

I do think Leanne would've been a more satisfying AA champ because she hit her program vs. Melnikova's fall, and I did get the impression that Melnikova got some execution score gifts, but I also haven't yet bothered to judge the AA competition properly (or, for that the bars final) since I like to try to watch without forcing myself to score at least the first viewing. I score vaults on replay because we get the whole thing but don't bother with the other events till later. That said I did get the impression Skye's bars were cleaner than Melnikova's with if I remember correctly similar difficulty. I would've had Melnikova's execution score a tenth or two lower, Skye's a bit higher, and probably would've ended up with Skye in third (not second) and Melnikova in fourth on that event. But! I have to look back at the routines properly to back all that up.

 

[BB12]

According to the code of points as it's supposed to be applied. Also going by responses on this forum, and across the whole gymnastics community, the vast majority thought Leanne deserved to win the AA. I've also not seen a single person who can justify Skye's execution score on UB.

Feel free to share your scores for the event, as others have been doing. Not sure why you've repeated the same line for the 4th time now, while replying to a post where that wasn't the main point anyway.

You can always find ways in judging to justify changing a close result. But I don't think the gymnastics communities view is relevant here given how much bias exists in this discussion.

Popular US Gymnast vs Controversial Russian. Of course the community thinks the US gymnast should have won.

 

[KristyJ]

You can always find ways in judging to justify changing a close result. But I don't think the gymnastics communities view is relevant here given how much bias exists in this discussion.

Popular US Gymnast vs Controversial Russian. Of course the community thinks the US gymnast should have won.

I think you also have clean AA program vs fall in this discussion, which is as much a rules issue as anything. Melnikova herself did not do anything wrong, and frankly hit the floor routine of her life to pull it out in the end, but a fall does mar the result.

 

[hmmmm]

You only need to look at the current book reviews to see the personalities that that could/would endure that level of 'coaching' that 'got results'

My question is - would those athletes still succeed with an Aimee Boorman style coach and would an athlete like Simone even get to elite level with a different style of coach?

 

[Aeris]

I think you also have clean AA program vs fall in this discussion, which is as much a rules issue as anything. Melnikova frankly hit the floor routine of her life to pull it out in the end, but a fall does mar the result.

Melnikova's tumbling form and landings regressed since previous years and the wolf turn was messed up, I'd call it a sub-par performance in her career. The double-L + double turn was exquisite, but too many other points were lost.

It should have been a very decisive win for Leanne, and really nobody would be questioning the result if Melniknova was in 3rd. Leanne and ZQY were both undermarked on bars and a bit on floor, while Melnikova could have been scored lower on both beam and floor (her Memmel likely would have been devalued if she was a lower reputation gymnast, instead of "The Great European Hope").

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Simone wasn't a one-woman show. Her teammates were also incredibly talented and contributed on every event.

Right now, it's difficult to say how the current crop of elites will gel as a team for the rest of the quad. I do think, though, that some people are catastrophizing way too much on the basis of a sub-par post-Olympic Worlds. I don't tihnk any national program got the results they desired in Jakarta, with the possible exception of China and Singapore (with Zhou Yaqin as a huge caveat for the former).

I think GB WAG will be. While ideally Leat would've hit beam in qualifying and made the final, Ruby and Abi are more significant players and their results outweigh that. Japan must be pretty chuffed too? Not followed them closely this year, but you'd have to think they'd have taken 2 medals going in.

But the championship was very fragmented, much more so than any we've seen lately. Hardly anyone was able to put out the team they'd have preferred. So basically even the teams that are happy will be caveating. Lots of yes, but. And even China, as the most successful team there, clearly had some problems.

On a different point, agree with a pp that if we're talking about what fans think as an attempt to bolster a case, best to be specific about which fans. The Russian and English language gymternets aren't necessarily going to lean the same way here! And too many members of the latter struggle when a beloved American is beaten, especially if she's NCAA too. I say this as someone who wouldn't have let Melnikova compete in the first place.

 

[IratePanda]

I think GB WAG will be. While ideally Leat would've hit beam in qualifying and made the final, Ruby and Abi are more significant players and their results outweigh that. Japan must be pretty chuffed too? Not followed them closely this year, but you'd have to think they'd have taken 2 medals going in.

But the championship was very fragmented, much more so than any we've seen lately. Hardly anyone was able to put out the team they'd have preferred. So basically even the teams that are happy will be caveating. Lots of yes, but. And even China, as the most successful team there, clearly had some problems.

On a different point, agree with a pp that if we're talking about what fans think as an attempt to bolster a case, best to be specific about which fans. The Russian and English language gymternets aren't necessarily going to lean the same way here! And too many members of the latter struggle when a beloved American is beaten, especially if she's NCAA too. I say this as someone who wouldn't have let Melnikova compete in the first place.

Yes, fair points about GB and Japan. I confess to a bit of tunnel vision when I wrote my original post. I imagine they were happy with both the WAG and MAG results.

And I agree 100% about Melnikova. I am not a huge fan of the silver medalist, but I would have preferred to see her win. It's not even the politics of the former--I truly never liked her gymnastics and I never will.

 

[OnlyBeansOnToast]

The other thing we have to consider is that athletes can have completely different experiences with the same coaches ... recollections may vary.

And that one person's experience of an incident may be very, very different to another's. One of the things I found a little jarring about Aimee Boorman's book is the way she stakes her claim on the moral high ground when it comes to a gymnast-first approach that is non-abusive and forward-thinking, but then gets properly cross when she gets reported to SafeSport for doing something she thought was perfectly fine and should have been dealt with informally - as if there's no reason why a young gymnast and has parents might be intimidated by the all-conquering coach who shaped the undisputed GOAT of the sport. "Obviously BAD people should get reported through the proper channels, but I'm not a bad person."

 

[MaryClare]

I think GB WAG will be. While ideally Leat would've hit beam in qualifying and made the final, Ruby and Abi are more significant players and their results outweigh that. Japan must be pretty chuffed too? Not followed them closely this year, but you'd have to think they'd have taken 2 medals going in.

But the championship was very fragmented, much more so than any we've seen lately. Hardly anyone was able to put out the team they'd have preferred. So basically even the teams that are happy will be caveating. Lots of yes, but. And even China, as the most successful team there, clearly had some problems.

On a different point, agree with a pp that if we're talking about what fans think as an attempt to bolster a case, best to be specific about which fans. The Russian and English language gymternets aren't necessarily going to lean the same way here! And too many members of the latter struggle when a beloved American is beaten, especially if she's NCAA too. I say this as someone who wouldn't have let Melnikova compete in the first place.

Lol you don’t want to know what Russian gym fans are saying

 

[QuietColours]

Lol you don’t want to know what Russian gym fans are saying

Well, you can't just leave us with a teaser like that

 

[Seyonne]

My only problem with Melnikova’s win is the fall. It just feels wrong.

 

[RichardL]

No one seemed to complain much when Biles won the AA in 2018 with two falls.

Ferrari, Biles, and Melnikova have now won World AA titles with falls. All very dominant gymnasts in their respective championships.

 

[OnlyBeansOnToast]

No one seemed to complain much when Biles won the AA in 2018 with two falls.

It was even presented as a positive, evidence of just how utterly dominant she was. "So far ahead of the competition that she can fall twice and still win."