I agree with you here. If it requires a panel of judges to determine the ‘artistry’ or ‘perfection’ of a performance, it belongs on a dance floor, not an olympic stage.
Of course if you did that you would eliminate some of the the most popular sports from the olympics: gymnastics, diving, and figure skating. (You’d also have to eliminate synchronized swimming, but I don’t think that’s nearly as high in popularity) Since the IOC is all about profit, that will never happen. But part of me thinks that true olympic sports should all have a clear objective criteria for winning: fastest run/swim/bike/etc., strongest lifter, best fighter, etc.
It was a good routine and well executed but honestly, the level of difficulty is rather pedestrian compared to Olympic level competitions. I see that she was competing at elite level prior to injury and decided to just compete at the collegiate level instead. Olympic levels don’t use the single 10 point scale anymore. They now use 2 separate 10 points scales - one for difficulty and one for execution with the combined score of both.
For a comparison, look at Simone Biles gold medal routine and look at the degree of difficulty involved. She does double layouts with a full twist a good 10 feet in the air. Many men at her level can’t do that.
I did gymnastics for years and competed in high school many years ago. The level of difficulty has gone thru the roof in the last 10-20 years. Some of the moves they’re able to do these days is simply unreal. Some has to do with much better equipment than what I had in my day but mostly the improvements have come with advancements in training and athletic conditioning.
As for why men’s routines don’t include dance elementa I can’t say for sure but that’s always been one of the separations. Men’s programs focus on strength and balance while women’s routines always have a level of artistry. Men’s floor routines aren’t set to music either and we have 2 extra apparatus than women (floor, pommel, vault, parallel bars, rings, and high bar vs. floor, vault, balance beam and uneven bars).
It’s a fantastic sport and I loved the feeling of flipping and twisting while controlling my body in space. It’s definitely a young persons sport as it’s very hard on the body and injuries are very common. That’s one of the reasons why Oksana Chusovitina competing in the last Olympics at age 41 is unbelievable.
Edit: great. Now I’m sucked into a YouTube black hole looking for gymnastics vids.
You want to see some insane shit check this out (turn sound off unless you like 80’s hair band rock)
If it can’t be measured, weighed, timed or otherwise quantitatively assessed, I personally don’t consider it to be a conventional sport. But that’s just my personal semantics. People can define sports any way they want. I don’t care. I also couldn’t give a toss about whether-or-not these activities are in the cesspool of personal, political and corporate corruption, and self-dealing that is the olympics.
Origins of gymnastics goes back to Ancient Greece as training for battle. It’s one of the original Olympic sports. There’s always been an element of artistry involved so it requires some degree of subjective measurement in scoring. However, there are strict guidelines for judges just like any other sport. It’s not just looking pretty or dancing well that gets the high scores.
And I challenge anyone to attempt these moves and not appreciate the absolute athleticism involved.
We used to challenge the wrestling team who practiced next door and thought they were hot shit to try just a simple muscle up on the rings (to go from hanging below to supporting yourself above the rings using nothing but arm strength). None could ever manage it while I’d have to do this move dozens of times each practice.
I hopefully don’t underestimate how fantastic and hard this stuff is to do. To be world-class at any human endeavour takes commitment and talent beyond belief. I generally contend that you have to actually try a sport seriously to truly understand the level of the world-class competitors. That’s likely true here, too. No matter what sport, it takes full-time commitment and some serious talent.
Maybe I don’t have any inkling of how hard gymnastics is. Nevertheless it is truly impressive. (Just not to my taste as a spectator - too much poncing and wiggling in the case of the women’s floor routine.)
So many complaints about “judged” sports… how subjective it all is, unlike sprinting (which, until recently, had judges determine if a runner left the blocks early) or other “quantifiable” sports. The level of judging seems to be highly subjective. Balls & strikes in baseball? Unsportsmanlike conduct? Basketball fouls? At what point does judgement become too much?
Give me a break with this. It was a flawless routine with some pep and personality. Your comments–intended to diminish the woman’s accomplishment–suggest at best some pure pettiness, at worst… well, politeness, even in this company, prevents me saying.
Wow… it seems like there’s a lot of judgmental ass-hattery up in this thread; over impressive physical feats that I’d be willing to bet most of us (including myself) could never even hope to pull off.
Indeed it was. And despite your flawed interpretation, my comments were not intended to diminish her amazing gymnastic accomplishment, which I applaud (all the more for once having practised some of those moves in my youth). And given this was not my intent, I do not believe it is petty to point out how much of women’s gymnastic floor routines are focused on what you euphemistically call ‘pep and personality’ and that this is the flaw in women’s gymnastics as a ‘sport’. The whoops and hollers for some of the non-technical moves were as strong as for the really amazing gymnastic feats. Being a good ‘dancer’ and somehow having ‘personality’ are important pre-requisites for gymnastic success, if you are a woman doing a floor routine. I prefer it when it is a more ‘technical’ discipline. That’s all. And yeah, that’s just my opinion.
