I am just working backward through a terrific, little known gymnastics blog posted by janghwa_hongryeon somewhere in the USA.
(… anyone else tiring of cryptic pseudonyms on the internet?)
Quality commentary on Women’s Artistic Gymnastics around the world.
A good sample post — Code Tweaking in 2009 — concerns rumoured changes to the international judging rules:
Finally. No, they’re not bringing the 10 back. It’s dead and its corpse is a feast for the maggots now.
The biggest change for the WAG side is the change from counting the 10 highest skills to 8. Still too many, IMHO, because BB will still be skill-pause-skill-pause and UB will be hour long sets with gymnasts trying to fit in a bunch of D and E elements, but hopefully this will end the side double full pass on FX. I doubt it’ll be the end of the double pike dismount, though.
“Gymnasts from all disciplines will have to show exemplary mastery in their exercises. Execution will be favored.”
These principles are not new, and exist within the philosophy of the current Code of Points. However, beginning in 2009, the women’s Code will reduce the number of required elements from 10 to eight. That should lead to shorter routines and longer careers.
…
The “longer careers” comment is debatable. That’s not happening as long as they keep putting emphasis on risky high level elements and chucking skills that are beyond a gymnast’s capabilities.
Actually, the change to fewer counting elements will likely lead to better routines. The most difficult skills will still be included. But there will be easy, clean connecting elements between them.
… Nellie Kim in an International Gymnast interview had said that when they picked the original number for skills to be counted, they picked some arbitrary number and it ended up being 10. Glad they all thought this through before putting it into practice. But she also felt it was too many and wanted it to go down to six. Six is a much better number. The gymnasts can put in a few big skills, don’t end up getting tired halfway through, don’t have to have five tumbling passes, can have their skills connected and flow much better on BB and UB, etc. Speaking of tumbling passes, I’m hoping they’ll put a cap on the number of passes in a routine, four being the max. Five is just excessive.
read the rest of this post
I like 6 counting skills better than 8, as well. At least on Floor. Perhaps on Beam. Not necessarily on Bars.
Nellie Kim’s first comment is nonsense. Counting 10 skills was included in the original concept as developed by Hardy Fink over 20yrs. There was nothing arbitrary about it. (Hardy is no longer involved in the code revisions. And is NOT happy with the current rules.)
Other excellent posts include:
On the VOX network, Lightbulb Hands – The Perfect 10 Lives is a pretty blog as well. I have to visit the site directly — Lightbulb Hands — as Google Reader cannot seem to find an RSS feed. THANKS. If you click on the RSS link in the right hand navigation, you can subscribe. (Auto-find did not work.) It has no “subscribe by email” function. We’ve linked to it under BLOGS in the right hand navigation.
Check it out for yourself: Lightbulb Hands
Gymnastics Coaching.com 