Musings Concerning The FIG Worlds Newsletter

The FIG newsletter has been released. Here's what you need to know.

Judges were not favorable towards beam work, citing lack of flow, innovation, and stability (staying on the beam, landing skills accurately). Their conclusions after Worlds were: 

• Beam exercises are still, with many pauses and with no fluidity
• Many difficult routines still have no artistry at all which is disappointing.
• The “close to beam” special requirement maybe should include an element” i.e. neck roll / Silivas / backward roll to knee just to try to be creative instead of sitting on the beam, turning, lying back and then standing up.
• It is difficult on beam with regards to devaluing an element because judges have to look at so many things in a very short time.
• No gymnast did a sideward dance element (for the increased value). It is not being performed for fear of falling.
• Double pike back salto appears to be the favored dismount, however, there was an overuse of Gainer Salto dismounts (in particular to get D- dismount).
• The rules for recognition of stretched salto bwd is now clear and these were easier to evaluate.
• The Series bonus is really good as it’s nice to see gymnasts connecting 3 elements.
• Only one gymnast in C-I connected two turns which was surprising because this used to be more popular in the past, but maybe gymnasts are afraid of falling.
• One gymnast did free cartwheel immediate Korbut-flic. This was a lovely combination as it got her low to the beam and it was creative (Eythora Thorsdottir!)

               

                                                     The Dutch team mesmerized fans and the judges

                                                                      

I've often wondered why I enjoyed the 2005-08 quad's beam work more than anything succeeding it, and my conclusion is that those girls spent the majority of their life training under the perfect ten code, but were finally being rewarded for attempting more difficulty than their peers. I think the unique circumstances that led to the open ended code during the Beijing quad resulted in a perfect blend of old school 'trickster' skills with new series connections, all of which were drawn together with- if not artistic choreography- at least melodious tempo and rhythm in going from movement to movement. And those girls stayed on the beam! Many competed either as juniors or seniors under the perfect ten, when a fall was officially the end of any medal aspirations. These days, it seems that a fall signals annoyance rather than dismay. Sometimes they're not even annoyed but look rather reconciled, which is disappointing. 

But how can we make the beam more artistic again, without re-adding compusuries to competition (something the FIG is not going to do)? For one thing, I think beam time should be lengthened. One minute and thirty seconds is asking for a lot when eight skills count: having eight, rather than ten, skills count means that each one needs to be more difficult to make it work towards a competitive d-score. To fulfill leap, acro, dance, and low beam requirements, in addition to everything else, explains why gymnasts have no fluidity anymore. Sure, they lack the compulsories training, but they are also more nervous than ever before. When every single skill is individually more difficult than what you would perform if you could count ten, there's a higher chance for a misstep to happen, hence the dramatically long set-up almost every gymnasts is doing before she performs every.single.skill. Instead of adding or lowering counted skills, how about we keep the skill count at 8 but add 10-15 seconds to the overall time a gymnast can spend on beam? I just feel the gymnasts no longer think artistically because once on the beam it's all about squeezing everything in before that clock ticks out of time. Gym fans love to reminisce about the elegance of the "old school" gymnasts and, no, lengthening BB time won't bring that back, but it's a step in the right direction if it presents more time for creative choreography and the possibility of even more connections. I think BB has always been 1:30 maximum since the sport begun, but there's much more content on the beam today, and perhaps it's time to update the apparatus clock to balance out these additional requirements? 

Seda Tutkhalyan optimizes the FIG's frustration, with her difficult but unstable beam routine
Source:insidethegames pic

Something I have been passionate about is the allowance of A or B rated skills being named. If you're not familiar with the process, gymnasts in WAG are only able to have an element named if it has C or greater value, a restriction that doesn't exist in MAG. Similar disparity comes in the form of when a skill can be named; in WAG, you're only chance to have a skill named is at Worlds or the OG, while in MAG, an original skill can be named at ANY FIG EVENT, including World and Challenge Cups. After 2014 Euros, the FIG released a newsletter (accurately) accusing everyone of having the same beam mounts, and decrying the lack of even miniature innovations. They went on to explain that most of the new skills seemed to be variations on existing skills, nothing truly 'game-changingly' original. I would argue that a certain amount of innovation comes in the form doing 'simple' things (for instance the beam mount of Catherine Lyons: switch split to beam) but since it's not worth it to experiment with something cool or new if it's not difficult, the FIG has effectively limited the type of original skills we are seeing, [which might've been built upon in the future]. I think Pauline Schafer's original skill is exactly the type of daring innovation the FIG wants to see. She has presented a new option for sideward movement, rather than relying on the overused (and hideous) side somi. 

The FIG newsletter contained one other piece of very startling news: a proposal to change the way teams compete. From the letter:    

• Instead of a rotation between two teams, it might be a good idea to rotate gymnasts (e.g if there are two teams AUS and JPN then the rotation should be AUS/JPN/AUS/JPN and so on). In this case two warm ups would not be needed and the competitions might be more interesting.

Not to be defamatory, but I think the UEG's influence within FIG is showing its colors here by highlighting how much both organizations are interested in expanding media attention, even if it's at the sake of the sport. Just a few weeks ago, the UEG held a conference where a proposal was put forward to have fans and all media given access to indoor (non-podium) training! What a potentially hazardous situation waiting to happen, not to mention putting more spotlight on unrefined gymnastics before they're ready to show us their routines. I think if we can find a balance between making the sport understandable to a wider audience of viewers, fantastic, but we must remember that the gymnasts make this sport great, not the pyrotechnics, smoke screens, and DJ commentators. Put the gymnasts first, and build this sport around their comfort, enjoyment, and safety. 

I'm not sure how I feel about this proposal. My gut instinct says I hate it but I can't find a definitive reason why i think it's a bad call. I think it could possibly make the sport more exciting but I also think nervous gymnasts (ahem, all of our Russians) would be even more tense if they had to go up after a routine from their competitor, especially a hit one. Trying to hold your team together when things are bad, and building on each other's scores when it's going good, is a team dynamic that I'm sure I would miss if it we start alternating the gymnasts. And I would say that nothing is more nerve wrackingly interesting than when the next gymnasts has to perform the 'do or die' routine for their team, amirite? Switching between teams destroys that effect; can you imagine GBR's historic win being half so memorable if it was disjointed by China interrupting the magic with their vault rotation? It's exciting to watch that type of momentum build! But I dunno, maybe it could work? What are your thoughts on this?

The night I cried tears of joy and pain over RUS and GBR
Source: FIG

The FIG always performs an assessment of the judges after they host an event, and biases were traceable, but only in non-damaging amounts, the report claims. 

• Generally speaking, the judges were very consistent in the evaluation of the exercise and as a result, the ranking of the gymnasts was correct.
• A verbal warning was issued to one judge, and she has been removed from the draw for the next phases of the competition.
• Shortly after Competition - I, the WTC (Women's Technical Committee) carried-out a video evaluation of the selected exercises as well as all routines where a country had a judge in the Panel at the respective apparatus and the routines where the R-judges’ score changed the Final score. All the exercises (100%) from C-IV, C-II and C-III were evaluated by the WTC.
• Some judges showed “Small or medium” bias for a gymnast from their own country.

Just for clarity, C-IV is team finals, C-II is AA, C-III is apparatus finals, and JEP is the judge's execution panel. The FIG also says it was impossible to avoid the historic 4 way tie on UB, noting that "the position of the judges helped a lot to have a common view of the mistakes, and therefore the deductions were closer to each other and it led to good results in the JE (judge's execution)."  

It's been said by one gymnastics coach/fan on Twitter that Kocian was rewarded for having the better handstands among the group (eh, i guess she did) and having superior height on releases (um, no she did not). To me, those things don't balance out form errors on pirouettes, shap, and dismount, without mentioning her bent arms when catching those superior releases and her unpointed toes. Fan and Daria has underwhelming performances too, but their mistakes weren't as egregious as Kocian's. Vika wasn't as perfect as she could be but she did enough to be better than the rest. 

I could almost accept the FIG's explanation of events, except to whom do we turn to explain how Vika came away with identical scores from quals and EF when the former featured two huge breaks that almost made her fall? I mean, if everyone tied at 15.5 then I at least could say that she was rewarded for improvement but it appears she was shorted in EF's...or overscored in quals. Either way, the over or underscoring of a gymnast is a major flaw in the JEP. Every year when this assessment comes out, I wish they would publicize who the judges are that needed reprimanding and/or suspensions. Public shaming goes a long way in reducing repeat offenses. 

Well, these were the most interesting things covered in the newsletter. Peruse, and be amused, by how many gymnasts fell per apparatus (lol,BB) and other statistics. I hope your day shines as bright as Aliya's hair glitter, readers.