… Why is it that men’s gymnastics is thriving, while women’s appears to be on a downward spiral? Some people here (myself included) noted that the men’s competition at Worlds was far more exciting than the women’s. Was this an isolated incident or is it the beginning of a trend? Even going back every single event after the olympics, the men have given us better execution, more difficulty, and a lot more to cheer for.
In my honest opinion, WAG has been stagnant for awhile now, and recently has reached an all time low. Girls are doing the same skills they did 20 years ago, most of them with far worse execution. …
read more from medstudent24 – MAG vs WAG
And be sure to skim the responses on that thread.
medstudent24 is basically right. The Men have handled the demands of the open ended code much better than have the young women.
The code of points is most to blame if you feel as I do that the depth and quality of the best gymnasts in the world is in decline. The only good news is that World’s were much less horrendous and dangerous than I feared.
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MAG is only more exciting if you like MAG.
You know.. I think part of the problem is, no one is willing to take the risk of throwing a less difficult routine in hopes of hitting that 9.5+ E score, when they can offset it by tagging on difficulty. That counts for men and women.. and because of that, the difficulty is just going to increaes (as it did with MAG). UE Bars wont get much bigger than it is.. that second bar really hinders multiple release skills, and I don’t think you’re gonna get many people pushing past an Ono .5 without seeing major deductions for handstand position.
Im actually reading a book on proper training technique right now, and to paraphrase – exceptional technique is shown by performing a skill with an illusion of effortlessness.
I remember watching vids of Bart Conner, and his highbar looked effortless – clean turns, great body line. I look at high bar today, and I see super arched kovacs, fugly kovacs 1/1s, and very little variance in what people do. Sure, big skills are neat, but they should flow, or be a function in the routine. Not just another thing to throw inbetween giants. What happened to releases being the highlight of the routine, insead of just another one?
And that goes for pretty much all the events – what used to be the “big” skills are now par for the course… I feel that many of the potential skills are already played with, and there will be even less variety in the future making our sport stagnant.
But.. I hope Im wrong. I really do.
I think another problem perhaps is that in WAG, elements not performed perfectly are downgraded.
e.g. a triple twist that that isn’t perfectly around, is downgraded to a 2.5 twist, or a triple spin, gets downgraded to a double spin. on top of execution deductions.
So, if you happen to have a triple twist on floor that can be a little dodgy sometimes, it’s probably worth doing it for guys, but not for girls. A killer also for girls, is that if you have a triple twist in one tumble pass that gets downgraded, and then have a tumble with 2.5 twist, it’s seen as repetition, and you could end up with no credit for the 2nd tumble.
In MAG however, if it looks like a triple twist, but is not around completely, (up to 90 degrees for a twist before value is dropped) it will still be given the value of a triple, and just receive an execution deduction.
The girls get the execution deduction, and also hit with the difficulty value.
Same on bars, girls have to do all their turns within 10 degrees to get full credit, guys have up to 45 degrees.
Ref: Article 7 in the WAG code, Article 24 in the MAG code.
I think they need to reduce the number of skills counted in WAG down to 6.
8 skills, of as high a difficulty as the gymnast can manage, is just too many for the women to do and leads to poorer execution and inconsistency. 10 skills was just ridiculous and if that had carried on it would have totally destroyed the sport in my opinion. The code HAS moved in the right direction this year but it needs to go even further.
Girls are doing the same skills they did 20 years ago, most of them with far worse execution.
I really think that sums it up… I still watch the 1992 Olympics and think that the 2012 games will be 20 years ahead in time, but behind in gymnastics.
What more do you expect these girls to do?
1/1 shapash would be neat, but.. really? Is that the only new thing to come out? (obviously, no).
There have been plenty of new things in the past 20 years. Handspring-Handspring front on vault. round-off 1/2 on…
Really.. there have been a lot of new introductions – but most (if not all) have already been done by the men, so we see them as “nothing new.”
Right now, you are seeing the closing end of what is possible with the current equipment. You won’t really ever see a triple back on floor (with regularity). You MAY get a few double saltos on vault eventually.
Im not entirely sure what you’re expecting.. Yes, part of the sport is pushing human limits and seeing what we can do acrobatically. However, another aspect is taking what others can do, and doing it better. Right now, we aren’t really seeing that – we’re seeing who can do the hardest skills and stay on, and sneak by with the cheats they use to make it “pretty.”
If Im being closed minded, please let me know. Personally, I don’t see where skill advancement will be coming into play any time soon.
The most frustrating thing about gymnastics (as much as I absolutely LOVE it), is that casual viewers can watch a meet in 2009, and see the same routine from the same gymnast in 2010. There really aren’t statistics that people follow or try to capitolize on.
How about watching gymnasts and keeping track of how many releases they hit, or if they make their pass clean without “error,” and make a percentage check? Something to give some understanding about why THAT meet is so much different than every other meet.
All i can say is that i used to love watching WAG when Courtney McCool or Lilia Pod. They had great technique, it was awesome seeing skills done the way that they were ment to be done (in my opinion). Now a days, there aren’t to many girls who are actually really good at the AA, and make it look good. They girls throw they skills but it kinda looks labored, and the artistry is definitely dead in my opinion. When everyone starts doing the same thing, skill loose their freshness and appeal to the eye.
Now i like watching EF vids, because really the best stuff in done in EF, and that is where the exciting stuff happens.
I agree with you Valentin, IMHO Courtney McCool … an AMERICAN … had the best form, technique … the “full package” of any gymnast in history.
Who in recent years can keep their feet together on 2 1/2 twist on Floor?
Well if you exclude her leaps and that awful sheep jump.
I think making the gymnastics code ‘objective’ as Bruno intends to do is a waste of time. Unless a high tech computer judge is created, the sport will never truly be objective.
We should focus on the artistic side and stop changing competition formats to suit TV networks. We need fewer rules boxing gymnast’s in as far as competitive element choices/connections.
Require less, let the gymnast chose to go over and above the rules to stand out (like back in the day and NCAA gymnastics). The ten was iconic, easy to understand and made a level playing field for the AA.
While the EF portion of the MAG competition is usually exciting, the AA is a bore. We may have one guy like Uchimura, who is the real deal. Then the rest of the field is a mixture of guys who are good on some events and absolutely dreadful on others (Horton and Hambuchen), guys who aren’t that good on any one event but don’t completely suck either (Devyatovsky), and guys who are only really good on one or two events but manage to stay on the rest while the rest of the field implodes (Caranobe). I mean, the fact that Tim McNeil is a top 10 gymnast speaks volumes about the quality of the Men’s AA field.
I don’t expect the kids to be doing a whole lot more than 20 years ago, but I would expect the technique AND execution to be far superior.
Why is it that people say “wow” about a double twist, punch front but don’t seem very impressed by a double double? The casual fan knows what LOOKS COOL and ORIGINAL. They are they ones being driven away. It shouldn’t be about how hard your routine can be, but how original and well executed.
I would agree that MAG is a little more exciting than WAG especially in the event finals — which I also agree is the more exciting competition to watch.
If more gymnasts did gymnastics the way that McCool, Podko and Lashenova did gymnastics, then WAG would be incredibly exciting, regardless of the scoring system. You would still have gymnasts that would throw the bigger skills (Prudonova, Tweddle and Shawn Johnson types) to try and stay competitive with the more artistic gymnasts , but the competitions would be exciting in regards to the competitiveness of the event. Most of the coaches at the elite level, in my opinion, are more concerned with “milking” the code for difficulty than they are about gaining every tenth they can in execution. This is why the artistry has been lost, and that artistry combined with sprinkled in excitement in difficulty and enthralling rivalries are what made WAG popular in the first place (think Dawes against Miller and Zmeskal against Boguinskya or Silivas against Shushonova…as rivalries, not necessarily all of them being of the artistic vein). When the coaches start to come around and realize that the judges are starting to come back to the execution side of things, then I think you will see a much more exciting and entertaining sport. I mean, aren’t we all sick of seeing Tkatchevs that scrape the bar, rudis that twist off the ground and pike down and double layout flyaways that barely get around with a big arch? I know that I am!
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