American gymnast Simone Biles' future at the Tokyo Olympics. I’m talking here about the handspring double-front, aka the Produnova, aka the “ vault of death.” (Nobody has actually died doing it, but because of the hurtling flips forward, risk of neck breakage is unusually high, hence the epithet. After a low score on vault, Team USA pulled a key gymnast from the competition. And so in recent years, gymnasts have tended to throw the most difficult trick possible, even if it wasn’t perfect. Classic in Indianapolis, she stunned audiences with an unprecedented feat in her vaulting routine: a. Since vault has only one skill rather than a routine full of them, there are relatively few form deductions an athlete can get, and so there is a high return on investment for high-difficulty elements, execution be damned. In May 2021, when she returned to competition at the U.S. While this concern is mostly overblown, particularly when it comes to Biles, it has been a legitimate issue in the vault. Namely: Because the system prizes difficulty, an athlete can theoretically win the Olympics with an ugly routine full of falls if only that routine is hard enough. Given that the difficulty of Biles’ routines would allow her to win every competition she enters with a fall on all four apparatuses-which she would never do because her execution is superior-she could potentially be seen as exposing the flaws in the sport’s “new” scoring system that replaced the “perfect 10” in 2006. Deadspin’s Dvora Meyers talks about this in great detail in her definitive book about gymnastics scoring.) (If you think international judges’ notorious favoritism of this “look” seems racist, you are correct. that of a Russian ballet dancer run through a de-bigifier. I can only surmise that as an American-style “power gymnast,” Biles does not get due praise for her form because her body does not have what is euphemistically called the “international look,” i.e. On this vault, her body is perfectly straight in the air her legs together, toes pointed. The Team Trying Very, Very Hard to Be the Worst in Baseball HistoryĪnd yet: While there is no shortage of Simone hagiography (I’ll happily claim it as a subfield of my own oeuvre), and while nobody ever forgets to praise the 21-year-old’s sheer power and superlative “air awareness” (what allows a gymnast to know where she is in the midst of a big twisting trick), mainstream accounts of her greatness often fail to emphasize her polished execution. Watch video of the vault Simone Biles performed at the gymnastics team finals before withdrawing at the Tokyo. What Every Sports League Should Learn From the New Stanley Cup Champions The Historic Thrill of Baseball’s Greatest Hitting Stretch in Years The Biggest Misconception About the Trans Athletes Debate After returning to competition a couple weeks ago for the first time since 2019, Biles stunned by becoming the first woman to do a Yurchenko double pike an intense, powerful and jaw-dropping.
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