more important – difficulty or quality?

medstudent24 started another great thread on IG forum:

… I ran the numbers to see what translates into more medals, a high start value, or a high execution score…

I looked at every World Championships since 2006 and the Oympics. The results are:

Probability that the gymnast with the highest SV will win Gold: 61.2%
Probability that the gymnast with the highest Execution score will win Gold: 54%

Probability that the highest SV will medal (place in the top 3): 68%
Probability that the highest E score will medal: 60%

http://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/PicAppPIS/JavaScript/PisV4.js

Essentially, having a high SV is more valuable than having a high E score. This is really not that surprising, but once you break it down for each event, something interesting happens:

On FX- Highest SV means Gold 74.8% of the time
On BB- Highest SV means Gold 45% of the time
On UB- Highest SV means Gold 51% of the time
On VT- Highest SV means Gold 74% of the tie.

Soooo having a high SV will serve you well on VT and FX, but no so much on BB and UB. The odds seem to be against you the most on BB, where a high enough E score is needed to come out on top.

Note- Several times, the gymnast with the highest SV failed to medal because of a fall. If those cases were not accounted for, the probabilities would rise to around 95%

click through to IG forum to comment

So, every time FIG tells us that execution is as important as difficulty, let’s quote this stat.

… Admittedly the sample size is very small. But intuitively I believe it’s correct.

Obviously we want the gymnast to win who has great execution … and the highest start value.