Skills and Combinations I'd Rather Not See (Anymore)

My last column, "Skills and Combinations I'd Love to See," created some lively discussion, as well as some really great new combinations I hadn't thought of. And after all, that was the whole point. As a follow-up, I hereby offer a list of elements (or trends) that can disappear as far as I'm concerned.

Women's Floor Exercise

• Any full-, 1.5- or double-twisting jumps (with no somersault involved). These elements just don't seem to require any true gymnastics ability, and it's too difficult for judges to see if they are complete.

Tumbling

• Any twisting somersault that finishes in a forward landing, unless it is followed by a skill which completes the pass aesthetically. In other words, no more roundoff, flip-flop, 2.5 twist dismounts, since they are virtually impossible to stick.

Uneven Bars

• Any skill in which the feet are touching the bar but the hands are not. So no more sole circles on the low bar where the gymnast merely stands up and reaches for the high bar.

• A Shaposhnikova or Maloney that leads to nothing on the backswing. On men's parallel bars this would be an intermediate swing and incur a deduction. I am not sure why these elements get a free pass on uneven bars.

Balance Beam

• Linking acro elements that go forward to ones that go backward. A punch front salto followed by a flip-flop, layout, for example, does little for me since the gymnast can pause after the front while keeping her arms moving. Yes, it takes some degree of continuity to do this sequence, but the flip-flop, layout is not dependent on the front salto at all.

• Rulfova. It's difficult, sure, but it's just not very pretty.

• Any skill that lands on the beam with a thud. What comes to mind immediately is Daria Joura's Shushunova.

• Kochetkova. This full-twisting back handspring rarely looks fluid.

• Side somi. This skill is just plain ugly on beam. It's better suited for the circus, where an acrobat does about 10 of them in a row as he circles the ring.

• Mounts that really aren't mounts.

Parallel Bars

• Any skill in the tucked position, unless it's the dismount or a giant swing. That should solve most of the problem concerning the mushrooming trend of doubles that crash land on the upper arms. Parallel bars offers far too much variety via other skills for gymnasts to focus so much on these release skills.

• Front uprise-L and front uprise-reverse straddle cut. Neither combination really looks like it should go together.

Horizontal Bar

• High bar is a great event, so there's not much I would change other than to limit skills that are simply variations of themselves in the same routine. I'd rather see just a Kolman in a routine instead of a Kovacs, layout Kovacs AND Kolman. Same goes for the full- and 1.5 pirouettes that all finish in different grips. I realize the Code is partly to blame here, because the gymnasts have to come up with 10 skills.

• No more giants that go over the top without doing SOMETHING, unless it's before the dismount. Linking elements is what makes high bar unique, so swinging over the top with no grip change, or whatever, just doesn't help the routine at all.

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