2 posts tagged “balance beam”

Finally. No, they're not bringing the 10 back. It's dead and its corpse is a feast for the maggots now.

The biggest change for the WAG side is the change from counting the 10 highest skills to 8. Still too many, IMHO, because BB will still be skill-pause-skill-pause and UB will be hour long sets with gymnasts trying to fit in a bunch of D and E elements, but hopefully this will end the side double full pass on FX. I doubt it'll be the end of the double pike dismount, though.

"Gymnasts from all disciplines will have to show exemplary mastery in their exercises. Execution will be favored."
These principles are not new, and exist within the philosophy of the current Code of Points. However, beginning in 2009, the women's Code will reduce the number of required elements from 10 to eight. That should lead to shorter routines and longer careers.

The proposed changes for the men's Code focus mainly on the juniors, for which eight skills will count toward the A-score. Also, the A-score will be halved for juniors, thus further de-emphasizing difficulty. Other safety measures for juniors include the prohibition of diving elements that end in a roll-out on floor, and saltos to upper arms or bent arms on parallel bars.

A "G" category, worth 0.7, will be added to the difficulty table, and skills listed there include a Ri Jong Song (triple-twisting double back) and Liukin (triple back) on floor, and a Cassina (layout Kolman) and Shahan (Kovacs with 1.5 twists) on high bar.

Nellie Kim in an International Gymnast interview had said that when they picked the original number for skills to be counted, they picked some arbitrary number and it ended up being 10. Glad they all thought this through before putting it into practice. But she also felt it was too many and wanted it to go down to six. Six is a much better number. The gymnasts can put in a few big skills, don't end up getting tired halfway through, don't have to have five tumbling passes, can have their skills connected and flow much better on BB and UB, etc. Speaking of tumbling passes, I'm hoping they'll put a cap on the number of passes in a routine, four being the max. Five is just excessive.

There's also the question about vault. With the rush to upgrade to Amanars, the main complaint is that even with a fall, an Amanar can score as well as a good DTY, which doesn't seem right. How will the FIG resolve that? Devalue the Amanar a few tenths? If a gymnast falls, give it the value of a DTY and deduct the fall as well? Somebody pointed out that a fall on vault is essentially a blown routine.

What about falls in general? Another person had an idea that you don't get the credit if you fall on a skill. If you don't show "exemplary mastery" on a skill, then why should you still get the full A score?

The "longer careers" comment is debatable. That's not happening as long as they keep putting emphasis on risky high level elements and chucking skills that are beyond a gymnast's capabilities.

Ask gymn fans who their favorite beam worker is and I'll guarantee that the name that'll pop up most often will be Yang Bo. They just don't make 'em like her anymore.

Wonderful! Can I get a double?

Magnificent (aside from the slight wobble after her signature leap)!

Very graceful, hips are squared to the beam, everything is precise, and her signature leap, as well as all her other leap and jumps, are wonderful and get plenty of height. Yang Bo had only one flaw and that was she couldn't hit when it really counted (namely BB EFs). She's known as the best "beamer" to not have won gold, which is just criminal.

Whether it was a wobble and an outright fall:

Or a great routine up until the dismount:

She just faltered for some reason and that's just a tragedy. But it just proves that a gold medal doesn't necessarily prove that you'll go down in history as one of the best. Nearly two decades past her heyday and we all remember Yang Bo as the quintessential standard beam performer.