Winning/Medalling with a fall

[kitty]

I hate it when a girl medals with a fall, yet everyone who has complained time and time again about Kui YuanYuan not getting gold for her extremely difficult yet wobbly beam routine over Gina Gogean who "code whored" her way to gold, really wants it both ways.

Do I think that Becca should have medalled with a fall? No. Does Becca have a huge SV over Koko Tsurmi? YES. Koko only did a FTY (which was the vault of choice in 1992) and it was just okay. Should she win the Worlds with such a low vault? I don't think so. I feel that Bridget rightfully won because she had a higher SV and does have much more height on her skills (I still hate her toe point though).

I am trying to really not sound like a hypocrite about this because I was the first one to jump up and down about Ferarri winning with a fall in 2006. However, in my defense, the judges really fell down on the job in Ferarri's case because her full was not really completed and they obviously did not take any deductions for the skill itself (just the fall which was only .8 at the time).

In 2007, Bronze was shared by two girls with falls. Silver was given to an extremely sloppy Nistor. What ends up being right?

Why do people harp on and on about Kui YuanYuan's beam versus Gina Gogean, then get upset when a gymnast that has a huge SV over another one beats that gymnast with a fall?

Thoughts?

[larahine]

My thoughts:

I don't think comparing the Gogean/Kui controversy is quite the same as winning/medalling with a fall.

Why?

do I want to see people win/medal with a fall? No! Absolutely not! I want to see gymnastics that is well done. Not sloppily done. I think that at the elite level, gymnasts should be showing mastery of the sport, which means no falls, or at least no falls on tricks that should be old hat.

That being said, I don't like "easier" routines winning over "harder" routines either (such as with Kui and Gogean). Being an elite is about having the biggest and the best tricks. (hopefully nicely put together/nice choreography as well). If Kui can successfully perform a better or more difficult routine than Gogean, that should be rewarded. IIRC, neither gymnast fell, both competed pretty cleanly. Both performed their routines successfully. Difficulty was the biggest distinguishing factor between them, which is why I (and probably others) feel that Kui should have won.

A winning routine with a fall might not be ideal, but if you follow the logic that a huge part of elite gymnastics about performing the biggest and best tricks, then you have to reward the difficult routines accordingly. Unfortunately this means that the difference in difficulty sometimes more than compensates for the deduction for a fall.

I hope I made sense. . . I've been studying so long at this point I'm entirely cross-eyed and I'm not sure I'm writing clearly.

[Action-Sam]

What people really want is to see a considerable number of gymnasts hit and challenge for the gold so that falls automatically relegate you. I mean, think of how many contenders there were in Sydney: Raducan, Amanar, Olaru, Lobaznyuk, Khorkina, Zamo, Yang Yun.... EXCITING stuff compared to now, when I could have told you who would win in about March. Two of the podium were epically predictable.

People don't mind that falls medal as much as they mind that there are no better performances to puch those with falls out of the medals.

[sareliz86]

Personally, I don't want to see the gold medalist have a fall, but I couldn't care less about the rest of the podium.

I think, especially in today's code that is conducive to chucked skills and poorly constructed routines in favor of high SV, that I'd rather see the cleanest gymnast win.

A fall on a skill does not necessarily mean lack of mastery of skill. It could be a fluke, over or under rotation, a hand slipping, anything. A skill done with poor technique and execution, even when the girl manages to keep her @$$ upright, can often be worse than a fall and show a complete lack of mastery.

I'd rather see a generally clean gymnast under rotate a skill and fall and end up on the podium than somebody who is chucking skills they haven't mastered yet.

However, that also doesn't mean a gymnast should be able to play it incredibly safe. An FTY is not an elite level vault anymore. At least not one that should put a person in medal contention (unless it goes 10 feet high and gets 10 feet of distance). Just like somebody who chucks a skill they're not ready for, doing a simple skill shows that VERY SAME lack of mastery of the more difficult skill. There should be some reward for the gymnast giving a damn about aesthetics and doing the skill that looks better (in this case, Koko deserves something of a bonus for doing an FTY rather than a messy or unsafe 1.5 or double).

Sigh. This is going a million places and I don't have the attention span to tie it together nicely at the moment.

Basically. I don't give a crap about a fall. I want the person who has the higest skill level and the greatest mastery of those skills to win. The best gymnast. Just because a gymnast falls does not mean that they're not that person, or that their sin is worse than somebody who for all intents and purposes got lucky.

I don't remember Barbosa and Ferarri's performances in 2007, really, but there's a decent chance that one of them deserved a higher place than Nistor, is basically what I'm saying. Or maybe Nastia and her fall. Although she had a clear lack of mastery of that back pike, so I don't know.

In the case of 2009. Bross went through cleanly. Showed some really great, really solid stuff. She had a fluke fall on her last tumbling pass. She deserved her medal. She went through basically cleanly. Nothing chucked. Nothing she wasn't ready for. If we were to combine 2007 and 2009, I would hope to god that Bross would have beaten the crap out of Nistor.

[TrampVille]

Currently, a gymnast receives the DV for a skill if they land on their feet first even if they fall after they land. I don't think gymnast should receive DV for a skill they fall on, regardless of whether or not the hit their feet first. I think many of the things that I have read in this thread would have resulted differently otherwise. What do you think?

FOR EXAMPLE--Vanessa Ferrari's fall on balance beam in 2006, she was awarded credit for doing a bhs-full twisting tuck on BB and credit for the connection with the BHS (0.2). With the fall, she was deducted 1.0 from her E-score, but nothing changed with her D-score. As we know she went on to score a 14.900 and eventually she won the AA. I think she should not have gotten credit for the full twisting tuck or the connection value since she fell, and had to count another skill in her routine. Her D-score would have fallen at least 0.5 and the AA standings would have been different.

Can you think of other situations where this would have applied? Do you agree or disagree?

[Muffy]

Originally Posted by kitty

Do I think that Becca should have medalled with a fall? No. Does Becca have a huge SV over Koko Tsurmi? YES. Koko only did a FTY (which was the vault of choice in 1992) and it was just okay. Should she win the Worlds with such a low vault? I don't think so. I feel that Bridget rightfully won because she had a higher SV and does have much more height on her skills (I still hate her toe point though).

I'm a bit confused by your point here. Are you or are you not saying that Becca should have placed ahead of Koko? First you're saying that Becca shouldn't have meddled with a fall, and then you're saying that she had a huge start value advantage over Koko w/ her ok FTY. If you don't think Becca should have meddled, what do you think the podium should have been?

I'm torn on this issue. So are other ppl, although they may not admit it. For instance, there was, understandably, lots of outrage over Ferrari's win in 2006. However, ppl didn't seem to care so much about her (or Barbosa's) bronze with a fall in 2007. Instead, everybody griped about Nistor's silver, even though all three ppl below her fell. Would it be possible to create a code of points to appease gymnastics fans in both cases? I don't know. Furthermore, would it be possible to create a code that emphasized execution over difficulty while still preventing the 1997 beam final and 2004 high bar fiascos? I don't know.

[TrampVille]

My point is moot when considering Bross & Tsurumi. Bross didn't hit her feet first, didn't get credit for the barani, or the connection bonus with the 2 1/2.

Tsurumi had great execution but I think Bross is a much better gymnast than she is, and deserved to beat her. In my opinion its a sad day in gymnastics when someone is medaling with a FTY in today's level of competition.

[Muffy]

Originally Posted by TrampVille

My point is moot when considering Bross & Tsurumi. Bross didn't hit her feet first, didn't get credit for the barani, or the connection bonus with the 2 1/2.

Tsurumi had great execution but I think Bross is a much better gymnast than she is, and deserved to beat her. In my opinion its a sad day in gymnastics when someone is medaling with a FTY in today's level of competition.

But isn't that another irony? We look back at the good old days with nostalgia, when the routines were generally easier, and then complain about today's standards not being hard enough!

[TrampVille]

Gymnastics has to be a blend of high level skills and a high level of execution, its not exclusive

[alattejava]

Originally Posted by TrampVille

Gymnastics has to be a blend of high level skills and a high level of execution, its not exclusive

I agree. Most people here think it has to be one or the other. There are a lot of people that combine both. Even under the last quad's code there were gymnasts that managed to combine the two: Anna Pavlova, Nastia, YYL, Semy,...