Steven Legendre – Floor Exercise – 2011 Winter Cup Challenge Day 1. Score: 15.500
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Steve does some of the most difficult and impressive tumbling int the world. But his non-tumbling ‘exercises’ remind me of a 9yr-old beginner, still embarrassed to be out there.
No style.
Dennis Desormier has some suggestions for the FIG Men’s Technical Committee on how to improve the rules:
I agree wholeheartedly that FX has become ridiculous. Yet, even with 5 and 6 passes in a routine, many gymnasts never perform even a single double salto, instead performing combination after combination of twisting saltos and roll-out skills. Is the solution really to change from 10 skills to 8 skills? I suspect this will just cut just one combination pass, which won’t be the huge improvement we need. We won’t see too many additional big tricks, nor will we see more non-acro skills. To improve FX, 2 or more of the following changes needs to be made together:
1) Limit to 8 skills.
2) Make one of the 8 or 10 counting elements a composition element — 0.1 for each skill used strictly for aesthetic purposes, not difficulty, up to 0.7 (a “G”)
3) Have a deduction of 0.1 for “lack of fluidity or creativity throughout routine between tumbling passes”. (I think that 0.1 would be high enough incentive for most gymnasts to make the effort, yet small enough to avoid this being used to sway scores).
4) Break the non-acro into two groups: static non-acro (balance and strength skills) and dynamic non-acro. This will give every routine a pause as well as a jump, russian, flare, or other “dance” skill. (There are ways to deal with the extra group, but that is for another discussion.)
5) Make lack of a double salto a composition deduction of 0.3 or 0.5.
6) Count the hardest double salto twice to (a) encourage a big trick and (b) effectively cut down the number of elements from 10 to 9.
7) Raise the value of many of the double saltos, particularly double layouts and the twisting variations. (USAG Junior rules already do this to great effect.) These skills are both harder to land upright and very hard to connect. They merit an extra tenth to accommodate the execution deductions gymnasts are avoiding by not doing these skills.
8) Count the dismount twice to (a) encourage E dismounts and (b) cut down the number of elements from 10 to 9 (or 9 to 8 if used in conjunction with idea #6.)
So… Which combination of these ideas would be best? why? Any other ideas?
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