Thursday, August 15, 2019

Re: [gatortalk] US Gymnastic Championships

Thanks, Helen - I'm not an expert because a gymnerd would give you all the nuance.  It's kind of a simple overview of why they seem so different.  Since I watch more NCAA than Elite, when I do watch Elite it's always funny to me when a gymnast has a hop on their vault landing.  The commentator will say something like "Oh, what a great vault!" and I'll still sit there thinking "But she didn't stick the landing!"

We had an opportunity to have short Q & As with Jenny Rowland and her assistants.  I asked Adrian Burde if they really had to convince gymnasts to drop elements they were used to doing or if they were immediately receptive to simplifying their routines.  He said usually in the beginning when they first get to campus it's a struggle, but then they'll warm up to it when they realize to themselves "Oh - I can get a 10 just doing THAT?"

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 5:47 PM Hhsgator <hhsgator@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for the explanation, Sandy. I feel smarter for having read this.
Helen

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 14, 2019, at 12:39 PM, Sandy Alonso <sandyalonso66@gmail.com> wrote:

Elite and NCAA can be very different from everything to the maximum difficulty of routines to the scoring system.  

The short and sweet version is that a routine in Elite (say, bars) gets a maximum difficulty applied to it based on the elements of the routine, with a handful of elements being required for each bars routine.  You'll see on bars in Elite a ton more release moves, for example. Elements are rated from A (easy) to J (only the Biles triple-double on floor is rated a J) and there's a max number of points based on how hard they are.  If a gymnast completes all those elements, then there are deductions taken for flaws in execution, which resuts in a final score.  In Elite, any score in the 14+ range is super-good.  (It probably means you started at 15+ and only had about 1 to 1 1/2 points' worth of deductions, so you had a hard routine and did it fairly well.)

In the NCAA, there are a number of required elements for each apparatus, but a routine can be super hard (Rachel Gowey & Alyssa Baumann are two with very difficult elements on beam) or meet the required elements.  The most you can get with required elements is a 10.  So there is no "bonus" for doing really hard elements.  In fact, it can work against you because NCAA is more about consistency than difficulty.  They've tried to change that up a bit recently by making a very common vault a 9.95 max score (since almost everyone was acing it), which is now encouraging harder vaults with a 10 start.

If you saw Saturday's coverage, you might have seen Trinity Thomas' floor routine.  This was much different than her NCAA routine, not just because of some added requirements (they all have to do some kind of pirouette routine) and more leaps/less dance, but you probably saw that first tumbling pass where she attempted a different element called the Biles (not the triple-double) and rotated short.  She does not do a tumble element quite that difficult in NCAA.  Because there's no reward; a fall on a single element penalizes you more in NCAA than Elite.

This is why you'll see more falls and errors in Elite and less inconsistency in NCAA (among the better teams).  It's better to be "perfect" in NCAA.  I think that's why NCAA looks prettier to the more casual observer.

In Elite, they typically do not compete as often (or in such a short time frame) as NCAA.  But when they do compete, their routines are going to take longer and have more exhausting elements.

On Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 3:34 PM Stompin' Gator <g8orboe@gmail.com> wrote:
I've been kind of spoiled by the SEC Network's gymnastics coverage in which there is almost non-stop action. NBC seems to want to focus on a just a few athletes and not even acknowledge the existence of others. I guess they are ramping up to the Olympics and want to start focusing on the ones they believe will be there. It's all about the star power, I guess.

I'm aware that the level of difficulty is greater for these type competitions than the collegiate ones (announcers mentioned that elite gymnasts do 3 times more gymnastics), but there were times where I was not very impressed. It was mostly the uneven bars, where most routines were sloppy when it came to the handstands. Is this just my lack of gymnastics knowledge showing?

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