Category: judging

Steve Butcher on Rio

“This was my fourth Olympics as a judge. For us, it was the best-judged Olympic games that I can recall. Out of hundreds of competitors, we only had two inquiries from coaches who disagreed with a score. One was a case of a Chinese coach who wanted to know why the degree of difficulty was lower than expected for an athlete on the rings. We explained why and there was no problem. The other case was a competitor from Cuba whose degree of difficulty was graded too high and had to be adjusted.”

Top gymnastics judge reflects on Rio 2016

Steve

Thanks Cordelia.

4 new named elements from Rio

• The Dick II – Beam
• The Gebeshian – Bars
• The Nguyen – P Bars
• Shirai II – Vault

FIG

Click PLAY or watch The Dick II on Facebook.

Shirai II

Courtney McGregor now 13th on Vault in Rio

The 2016 Rio Olympic Games Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Jury of Appeal, has upheld a protest lodged by GymSports NZ on behalf of it’s athlete, Courtney McGregor. The protest concerned McGregor’s score on the vault apparatus, specifically her second vault.

After Courtney completed her second vault, the score for this vault, and then her average of the two vault scores was shown. Approximately 20 minutes later, the second vault score was amended which consequently brought the average score down.

“We protested on two key points of the competition rules.” said Tony Compier – GymSports NZ CEO. “Firstly, that neither the coach nor the athlete were afforded the opportunity to challenge the down-grading of the score before it was changed. Secondly, the competition rules state that once a score is ‘published’, i.e. shown in the arena, it cannot be changed at a later date.”

The result of the successful appeal is that McGregor is elevated from 16th to 13th position. …

GymSports New Zealand

Courtney McGregor

men’s Gymnastics landing deductions

Some of the deductions are summarized in this video tutorial.

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

interview with Stella Umeh

24 years after her own Olympics, the Canadian and UCLA superstar reflects on Rio. Code changes. The decrease in “artistry”.

A very interesting discussion.

The Skating Lesson – “I’m having a hard time watching only NBC coverage”: A Conversation with Stella Umeh

Stella Umeh

toes together, heels apart

Though it’s less aesthetically pleasing, I don’t think we should deduct for this kind of position.

Many gymnasts cannot keep heels and toes together due to their anatomy.

https://twitter.com/babychochee/status/762366516306120704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

(via Couch Gymnast)

Vault: Biles, Paseka, Steingrueber

Yet another Olympic Gold medal for Simone Biles. Well deserved.

1. Simone Biles 🇺🇸 15,966
2. Maria Paseka 🇷🇺 15,253
3. Giulia Steingruber 🇨🇭 15,216

4. Karmakar 15.066
5. Wang 14.999
6. Hong 14.9
7. Chusovitina 14.833
8. Olsen 14.816
full results

Clearly FIG rules reward difficulty too much relative to execution. There’s too much incentive to chuck double fronts and Yurchenko triple twist despite a very low chance of landing safely. I’m embarrassed for FIG WTC. The E-score judges are ranking, not judging. Ranking in a very small range.

Men’s pirouetting deductions

The rules on Men’s Horizontal Bar are stupid. 1 1/2 pirouetting elements are overvalued so almost every gymnast uses them.

Deductions are not as severe as in WAG, but they are severe. It’s very easy to suffer a 0.3 or 0.5 deduction.

pirouette MAG deductions

tumblr_inline_obq8qgN5Ho1t58o6u_500

FIG graphics via papaliukin

The problem had been that FIG judges were not enforcing these rules. Instead of a 0.3 deduction, they’d take only 0.1, for example.

But at Worlds 2015 evaluation suddenly became more severe. I asked judges at Worlds if a message had been sent to start enforcing these rules more accurately. They had not.

Here’s one of the best you’ll ever see. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Nobody likes messy late regrasp skills. Not even this cat.

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

It’s obvious that those overused elements should be devalued. Unfortunately they’ve not been devalued in the most recent DRAFT Code of Points. We’ll suffer another 4 years. 😦

Oleg v Kohei

I’ve not yet had a chance to go back and analyze all 12 routines from the AA Olympic final. Many others have and most feel the ranking was correct.

Gennady Sartinskiy (Oleg’s coach) feels the judging and end result were fair.

Verniaiev Uchimura

Kohei:

Uchimura trailed Oleg Verniaiev of Ukraine by 0.901 points heading into the final apparatus — the high bar — but the six-time world champion kept his nerve while Verniaiev stumbled to hand Uchimura the gold with a score of 92.365. …

“I knew it would come down to the high bar. My performance was good, so if I had lost I wouldn’t have had any regrets. …

Uchimura successfully defends all-around title

It was an Olympic AA we’ll never forget. Quite possibly the best ever in Men’s Gymnastics.

Uchimura will be 31 when Tokyo hosts the 2020 Olympics. He’ll try to continue through that meet, perhaps as a specialist.

NBC started Men’s gymnastics at 11:37 p.m. The gold medal was decided at 12:19 a.m. If you missed it, here’s the FIG write up – Long live the ‘King’: Kohei Uchimura continues reign with second Olympic All-around gold

Men’s AA Final results

1. Uchimura JPN 92.365
2. Vernyayev UKR 92.266
3. Whitlock GBR 90.641
full results

It was a thriller. Men’s Gymnastics is almost always more exciting than WAG.

The big battle was Kohei vs Oleg. Both hit 6/6 very well. It could have gone either way.

Kohei-Uchimura-160810-Celebrates-G300

Many are debating the 6th apparatus – Horizontal Bar.

I thought the judges got it right.

FIG rules are stupid on that apparatus. Uchimura has a huge routine with difficult overbar releases performed with amplitude and excellent leg form. His angles on regrasps are much better than most. Daniel points out that he caught with bent elbows. A fair point.

But in reality Max and Oleg’s routines are Mickey Mouse in comparison. If the three were training together in the Gym all would agree that Kohei is far, far better on pipe. FIG MTC truly has to fix the rules on that apparatus. The cheap difficulty skills must be devalued.

But I would like to go back and watch all three on all 6 apparatus. Seems to me Max was evaluated most generously of the three. His E-score on Rings?

Please leave a comment if you disagree.