Gymnasts at NCAA championships qualified for apparatus finals with one vault. You need a near perfect landing to get into Finals.
Once in Finals, however, girls were required to show “2 different vaults”. In some cases gymnasts had not trained their second vault all season as it was not high priority.
I decided to videotape only landings and, as expected, there were problems.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Even the best landings are not superb technically, in my opinion. And the tradition of pivoting to present to judges on both sides of the landing podium — then rushing away — is also inelegant.
Better we study the landings shown on Floor (video) by Daria Joura 2008 at Australian Nationals.
Leave a comment if there are any other female gymnast who shows excellent landings.
7 comments ↓
I’d be beating those kids for their crappy presentation to the judges.
Back in MY DAY (when we had to walk uphill to and from the gym with no shoes) we would finish, then do an elegant arm wave to a “V” towards the judge. If there were two panels we would take the time to do the same for them.
I will be honest with you and make myself into a dork – I learned my saluting from Boginskaya.
Speaking of a woman with kickass landings and presentation …
These days Joura and Pavlova – well Pavlova used to be pretty spot-on, I think that hasn’t changed. The Romanians are generally good at it but they’ve gotten so sloppy I just don’t like watching them …
To me, it would have to be something they decided to do a particular way because it was a tradition. This seems like something they do just because they haven’t thought of doing it another way.
A problem that I have with NCAA landings: A stick landing almost always results in throwing back of the head and arching the back in some sort of triumph. It’s completely ugly and very much inelegant.
I have to say that I prefer the way the men stick and then just bow respectfully to the judges with their arms at their sides, but I don’t think the salute should have anything to do with the scoring of the vault. As long as the gymnast shows control of the landing and holds it, who cares if they do cartwheels afterwards really ???
[...] By far the worst of NCAA regulations is that gymnasts qualify to Championships Finals with one vault, then must compete two. It’s stupid, even dangerous. [...]
What is unfortunate is that excellent vaulters many times do not receive high enough scores to get into the finals because they receive severe penalties for a step or small hop. The quality of the vault should not be determined on whether or not the gymnast takes a step or not on the landing. There was more than one gymnasts that could easily do a second vault because they are experienced and well trained vaulters, many elite at one time. But, because they took a step or small hop on their landing, their score kept them out of finals. That is what is extremely difficult to uderstand when it comes to scoring at the NCAA prelims and finals.
[...] not necessarily from two different families. Yet they qualify to Finals with only one vault, a safety concern as kids (not Vanessa) “chuck” vaults they’ve hardly done all year. … Or [...]
Leave a Comment