Why did many female gymnasts perform wonderfully in Olympic team final, but fell in event final? (Li ShanShan, Cheng Fei, McKayla, Viktoria)

[Iminhanoi]

Why did many female gymnasts perform wonderfully in team final, but fell in event final?

Li Shanshan performed wonderfully in balance beam in Women Gymnastics Team Final of Beijing 2008. She scored 16.05, it’s very important and needed to keep China team still ahead on points.

In qualification of Balance Beam, she placed first with 16.125, and qualify to the final as the strong rival of Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin. However, during the event final, she fell on a full-twisting Korbut flip and placed 6th. Shawn Johnson easily get gold.

Cheng Fei made nice vault in team final of Beijing 2008 and scored 16. However in vault final she fell and just earn bronze.

McKayla Maroney made one of the best vault of women gymnastics history during the team final in London 2012. But in vault final she fell and lost the gold to Romanian Sandra Izbasa

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Viktoria Listunova was biggest star of the women team final in Tokyo 2020. She help Russia team defeat US. She also qualify for floor final. However in floor final, she fell and placed 8th

 

[Passion]

Everyone starts getting tired from the long competition.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Multiple reasons, depending on the athlete and situation.

Some gymnasts clearly find a team environment easier to cope with than individual, such as Li Shanshan and Becky Downie. Sometimes the exhaustion is obvious, like Komova and Douglas in 2012 and Simone in Paris. Sometimes, it's injury. That would be Maroney in London, and I think also Beth Tweddle on bars too. She didn't fall, but she nearly did on the dismount and she wouldn't have got a lot of reps in that year.

Cheng Fei in 08 I think was a combination of exhaustion and not actually being able to reliably compete the skills she fell on by the time the Olympics rolled round. Her Cheng, even the one in prelims that she put to her feet, was absolutely chucked. With the fatigue of multiple competition rounds, she couldn't even do that in the EF. But the Amanar was fine even whilst so tired, because her command of the skill was so much better. Whereas she'd always had some issues with that pass on floor.

 

[Iminhanoi]

Multiple reasons, depending on the athlete and situation.

Some gymnasts clearly find a team environment easier to cope with than individual, such as Li Shanshan and Becky Downie. Sometimes the exhaustion is obvious, like Komova and Douglas in 2012 and Simone in Paris. Sometimes, it's injury. That would be Maroney in London, and I think also Beth Tweddle on bars too. She didn't fall, but she nearly did on the dismount and she wouldn't have got a lot of reps in that year.

Cheng Fei in 08 I think was a combination of exhaustion and not actually being able to reliably compete the skills she fell on by the time the Olympics rolled round. Her Cheng, even the one in prelims that she put to her feet, was absolutely chucked. With the fatigue of multiple competition rounds, she couldn't even do that in the EF. But the Amanar was fine even whilst so tired, because her command of the skill was so much better. Whereas she'd always had some issues with that pass on floor.

The first 15 seconds of Li ShanShan’s routine in Beijing 2008 is very hard. She flips 6 times in roughly 12 seconds, include one Korbut and one Rulfova.

She know she need a very high difficulty score (7.1) to defeat Shawn Johnson. But sadly she fell.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

The first 15 seconds of Li ShanShan’s routine in Beijing 2008 is very hard. She flips 6 times in roughly 12 seconds, include one Korbut and one Rulfova.

She know she need a very high difficulty score (7.1) to defeat Shawn Johnson. But sadly she fell.

There's no doubting Li Shanshan's talent. If anything she'd peaked before Beijing, yet she was still phonemonal when she hit. And finishing in silver with a fall the year before speaks for itself. But didn't she talk about how she always found it easier to it for the team than in the EF?

 

[Iminhanoi]

not only in Beijing 2008 vault final, Cheng Fei also fell in floor final. She was strong contender for the gold but placed 7th

 

[Puffin]

In 2008 it was a stupid decision to put VT and FX finals on the same day as several struggled who'd qualified for both - Anna Pavlova as well

 

[RAFIKI]

Those screenshots make my Cheng Fei-loving soul ache.

 

[Kara]

Maroney had a pretty serious foot injury and shouldn't have been competing at all, and was also being horribly abused; it's amazing that she landed her other vaults as well as she did.

 

[Iminhanoi]

Some gymnasts clearly find a team environment easier to cope with than individual, such as Li Shanshan and Becky Downie. Sometimes the exhaustion is obvious, like Komova and Douglas in 2012 and Simone in Paris. Sometimes, it's injury. That would be Maroney in London, and I think also Beth Tweddle on bars too. She didn't fall, but she nearly did on the dismount and she wouldn't have got a lot of reps in that year

Gabby Douglas fell in beam final in London 2012; but if she didn’t fall; she still can’t get gold.

The bb final of London 2012 was dominated by Chinese. Gabby Douglas is far weaker than legendary Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin on balance beam; if Gabby didn’t fall her score will be roughly 15; not enough to compete with two Chinese.

 

[Iminhanoi]

There's no doubting Li Shanshan's talent. If anything she'd peaked before Beijing, yet she was still phonemonal when she hit. And finishing in silver with a fall the year before speaks for itself. But didn't she talk about how she always found it easier to it for the team than in the EF?

Do you know the deduction for falling from beam in Beijing 2008? Roughly 0.8 point?

It’s not 1 point. Russian Anna Pavlova fell from balance beam in team final and she scored 15.1; in bb final she done very well and scored 15.9.

If Li ShanShan didn’t fall, look like she just can earn silver with score of roughly 16.1?? (Shawn Johnson was a beast that year). In balance beam qualification Li ShanShan performed very well and scored 16.125, placed first in final.

 

[irichluck21]

A fall was .8 from 2006-2008.

 

[JaJa]

Maroney had a pretty serious foot injury and shouldn't have been competing at all, and was also being horribly abused; it's amazing that she landed her other vaults as well as she did.

Absolutely. But her Team Final Amanar was literally sheer perfection. I think she was not happy with not sticking it on EFs. But the problem came on the 2d vault when she did not get a good block and then (I think) tried too hard to stick the landing and ended up falling.

 

[Hatsumomo]

Maroney had a pretty serious foot injury and shouldn't have been competing at all, and was also being horribly abused; it's amazing that she landed her other vaults as well as she did.

She also had a concussion that resulted in a broken nose, IIRC

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Gabby Douglas fell in beam final in London 2012; but if she didn’t fall; she still can’t get gold.

The bb final of London 2012 was dominated by Chinese. Gabby Douglas is far weaker than legendary Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin on balance beam; if Gabby didn’t fall her score will be roughly 15; not enough to compete with two Chinese.

She wouldn't have won the gold, no. Would've been a bronze if she'd hit.

 

[Big_rock_show]

Also the silence/noise level during EF’s can often be very different from what gymnasts are used to competing with and that can mess with you too.

 

[wishfulgoddess]

How many of them happened with no one-touch warmup?

 

[phoenix7]

It's not just team finals - AA champions usually do worse in EF too. It was the same even before there were event specialists.

Before Simone Biles, only one AA Olympic Champion won a single gold at events final since Nadia Comaneci - Lilia Podkopaeva in 1996.

I remember Yelena Shushunova as someone who really imploded at events finals. I'm sure energy and psychological exhaustion come into it.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Gutsu did pretty well in the EFs in 92, in terms of hitting it out of the park. That was her best bars routine of the Games, it just happened that Li Lu delivered one of those once in a lifetime unbeatable performances. And her floor was the same as the others she'd done in Barcelona too. It's interesting that all three of the AA medallists in 92 had such strong EF showings as well.

 

[RichardL]

Liukin also had an outstanding showing in event finals (effectively tying for gold on UB, and earning the same medal haul as Miller in '92), while Paterson only made one major event final in her entire career ('04 Olympics BB) despite two major AA medals.