I’d like to see the legs apart on landing deduction only be taken when the legs are apart vertically. If they’re apart horizontally, I don’t think they should get a deduction in most cases.

In regard to the perfect 10: I re-submit my comment from some previous post that a number is meaningless. It was only iconic because it WAS iconic. We will just get a new icon now, like every other evolving sport.

If the average fan tunes in and doesn’t understand that the highest score wins, and that 15 is higher than 14, that fan should stop watching TV and pick up a book. Preferably, a math book.

As far as the deductions being too low: Nothing matters but consistency. Consistency has always and will always be the problem, partly because, as pointed out already, it will always leave room for judgment (which is what judges do). Until vault becomes a speed competition and floor becomes a high jump competition, the subjective element will always be the crux of complaints as to why one girl won over another. But the closer to consistent the judging can be, the less of an issue this will become, because people can train with a better idea of the expectations.

Anyways, I don’t mind execution scores being so low if there was an actual difference. Just like in the past, scores are all lumped in the same range and nobody has the guts to differentiate between a well-executed routine and a poorly executed one (i.e., Porgras vs. Tweddle). Neither are pefect, but Tweddle tucked her Dos Santos and has loose knees in general. Porgras’ tucked full-in is sloppy but in general she is cleaner, more extended, and of course has the artistry to show she is head and shoulders above most of the field.

I would love to see what they took off for Kayla’s DTY in finals and why they didn’t devalue her Rudi, which was clearly not laid-out.

On vault her height and distance from the vault do not exist. She literally landed less then an arm length from the vault at the Olympics. She was deducted big time for her lack of height and distance.

On bars her giants are level 5. Her feet come a part on every handstand and pirouette (sp) she catches her geinger with bent arms and sometimes her feet come a part. She is short on her handstands.

On beam her skillz are code whored. That is an easy routine with not a single trick and badly done jumps with no height

On floor her cowboyed double front and crossed legs on the twists. She didn’t keep her leg in the right position on her double turn and should have lost credit for the skill because she dropped the leg short of the two revolutions.

If this is good form then the sport is the joke many of you complain it is.

The last decade of impatience in coaching and moving kids through levels at a ridiculous pace has virtually destroyed the mastery of basics. That fact combined with trying to compete “with the Jones’ (or in this case, the ’skill-chuckers’)” is creating a very dangerous situation for our athletes.

I, for one, welcome these critical scores, and would add that I don’t care if we ever get back to the mythical perfect “10.0″. It never existed in the first place except by judges that didn’t have the courage (personally, I think that judges that deduct everything they see wrong are the ones with courage–it is much easier to “go easy” on an athlete than to hit every incorrect thing) to deduct things that to an untrained eye looked perfect. The reality is, as all of us who have done this for any length of time knows, that there is no such thing as perfect. This is not a problem as long as everyone knows it and judges every athlete with the same idea in mind. The best gymnasts will be closer to perfect than the ones that are not the best, and we will have less of a problem with “sloppy” gymnasts being on the podium just because they can sometimes do a couple of skills that no one else in the competition can do. (If I accidentally see Ivana Hong do her reverse hecht or double layout flyaway or Jana Beiger do anything one more time, I am going to choke someone).

The old system didn’t work because it is ridiculous to expect one person to be able to evaluate what skills are in a routine and whether they met all of their requirements and what bonus they received and then still take execution deductions. The reason that execution scores are being hit harder is because that is all that this one particular judge has to worry about, and that is a good thing. I am always confused by how little some people expect when it comes to execution. Why is it such a bad thing to have an idea of what perfection would be if it could be attained, and then strive toward it? Isn’t that what athletics is about to begin with? The strive toward perfection?

And I cannot understand why you think this is going to raise the difficulty, when it’s exactly the opposite. People that chuck skills with whatever form (like fugly sheep jumps on beam) would be hammered now and probably people would learn it’s better to throw easier but cleaner skills (ala Koko Tsurumi…).

Personally I think gymnastics is way too difficult nowadays and no time for artistry or presentation is allowed. It’s very sad. Average people can’t barely distinguish a triple twist from a double but they know perfectly fine that Ana Porgras is gorgeous to look at on beam and Floor and rebecca Bross, well… NO. I hope this escalating difficulty would be cut short soon enough to avoid more accidents like Jessica Gil’s

I much prefered the older code with the 10, but with a much more demanding execution.