Olympic Beam is boring

Arabian Punch Front bemoans the lack of variety on Beam in 2012:

… The nice thing about NCAA is that there’s a pretty wide variety in moves. Not the same can be said for elite gymnastics even at the Olympic level where different countries come together to perform… essentially the same thing. …

… The dreaded and often overused front handspring – back handspring – layout wasn’t used as often as you might think. Only Ponor, Douglas, and Afanasyeva used the skill and Douglas was the only one to do the layout step out. Aly Raisman was the only athlete not to have a front aerial in her routine. Our sport is making some progress! Five athletes competed a side somi with mixed results – some looked pretty, some looked like they were getting ready to sit down. …

read more – Where Have All the Straddle Splits Gone?

Read the comments, too.

Here’s one series singled out for wonderfulness. Deng Linlin, our Olympic Champion.

That .gif is from the terrific monigymnastics tumblr. It’s almost worth joining tumblr to follow.