Gymnastics – Artistic

Olympic Gymnastics (artistic)

• Total Gold Medals Awarded: 14 for women; 14 for men
  • 98 men and 98 women will be competing for these medals

Rules:

• Athletes will the highest score in each event wins
  • Scores are composed of a Difficulty score + Execution score
    • Execution scores are maximum 10 and points are then deducted for mistakes
    • Difficulty scores have no cap and are determined by skill requirements, difficulty values and connection values
      • If an athlete misses a connection, then that score can drop as well.
  • For the All-Around that is after all apparatuses are completed
    • For the Team All-Around, each team has 4 athletes but only 3 compete on each apparatus and all scores count
    • Individual All-Around, all scores count
• During the Olympics there will be a qualifying round, scores are just used to see which teams (or athletes) will move onto the final rounds where medals will be awarded
  • For the Team All-Around, each team will compete all 4 athletes each apparatus but only the top 3 scores count
  • For each apparatus, the top 8 gymnastics in each will move onto the Event Finals to compete for medals in each event
    • Only 2 athletes from each country may advance

Events:

• Women’s
  • All-Around (“AA”)
    • Team
    • Individual
  • Vault (“VT”) – skills performed onto and off of the table after a running start
    • Runway is 82ft long
  • Floor (“FX”) – skills performed on a springy floor
    • Women are allowed music; men are not
    • Men must touch each corner of the floor
    • 39ft x 39ft
  • Uneven bars (“AB” for asymmetric bars) – 2 bars places at different levels where women perform skills
  • Balance Beam (“BB”) – 4in wide beam where the women performance routines

• Men’s
  • All-Around
    • Team
    • Individual
  • Vault
  • Floor

• • Pommel horse (“PH”) – rectangular apparatus with handles where men perform scissors and both single and double leg skills
  • Parallel bars (“PB”) – 2 bars placed at 3.5m where men perform skills
    • 75m (5’8”) off the ground
  • Horizontal bar (aka the high bar) – one bar ~8ft from the ground
  • Rings (“SR” for still rings) – 2 swinging hallow rings suspended 19ft above the ground

Vocab to Know:

• All-Around – when an athlete (or team) competes in all the apparatuses
• Apparatus – the different events in gymnastics (ex: floor, vault, etc)
• Deduction – points that are taken off of the athlete’s score
  • Full list with videos!
• Dismount – at the end of a routine, leaving the apparatus
• Execution – how well a routine is performed
• Front Handspring – when athletes run, place hands on ground as if they were going to do a handstand then kick a leg over and push off the ground
• Front Tuck – jumping off 2 feet, turning in mid air and landing on 2 feet
• Full – a flip that turns fully mid air
• Gainer – back flip while moving forward (usually on uneven bars)
• Layout – when the body is stretched out
• Olympic Order – the order of events for the top contenders in the All-Around
  • Vault, Uneven Bars, Balance Beam & Floor
• Pike – when the body is bent over more than 90 degrees with the legs straight and bent at the hips
• Release – to leave the bar before regripping
• Roundoff – cartwheel like move but gymnast lands on 2 feet facing the way in which the move was initiated
• Salto – flip where whole body rotates as if the waist were the axis and feet come up over the head
• Sequence – 2 or more skills performed together
• Specialist – a gymnast that does not do the all-around and only does specific events
• Start Value (“SV”) – max score gymnast can receive for that combo of skills and required elements
• Stuck landing – no movement in the feet after dismount
• Tuck – knees and hips are bent and draw into the chest
• Twist – axis is the spine and the athlete rotates around
• Yurchenko – round off entry onto the board, back handspring onto the vaulting table and flipping off the table
  • This has been made a more popular term because Simone just landed the first double pike Yurchenko in competition last month

Qualifying:

• Top 2 women in the All-Around at Trials will automatically make the team
• Top 1 man in All-Around will make the team
• A selection committee picks the other spots on the team (Total: 6 women & 5 men)
  • They will use the scores from trials as well as the most recent world championships but they are also free to include other factors like injury, recent performance, what the team needs are etc
• Each team at the Olympics will now only be 4 members (instead of 5 in previous games)

 

Deets on Deductions:

*Please keep in mind these are simplified for viewers – there are pages upon pages (p. 32 for table) of specifics for each phase of a move. I simplified it.

• .1 ankles/legs crossed in twist
• .1 small balance check
• .1 small step/hop after dismount (each step is .1)
• .1 arm swing balance check
• .2 slight leg separation in twist/tuck/landing
• .2 big step/hop after dismount (>1m) – can be up to .4 deduction
• .3 big balance check
• .5 if hand (or two) touches apparatus to issue support
• .5 fall

Specific apparatus Deductions:

• .1 landing on side of center line (vault)
• .1 leg separation at any point (uneven bars)
• .1 missed handstand aka not perfectly over the bar – up to 30 degrees (uneven bars)
  • .2 if further
• .1 arch in back in handstand (uneven bars)
  • .2 if further
• .1 dead hang (uneven bars)
• .1 falling out of a turn (floor)
• .1 stepping out of bounds per foot, each time (floor)
• .1 finishing routine after music ends (floor)
• .2 hitting feet in bar (uneven bars)
• .2 pause longer than 2 seconds (balance beam)
• .3 both feet outside the corridor (vault)
• .3 both feet out of bounds (floor)
• .3 grab beam to prevent a fall (balance beam)
• 1.0 words in song (floor)
• 1.0 no music (floor)

‘Dumb’ Questions about Gymnastics?

• Has the USA always been dominate in women’s Gymnastics?
  • Heck no! The USA has only won the Team All-Around in the 1996, 2012 and 2016 Olympics. If you haven’t seen the courageous actions of Kerri Strug in the 1996 games, you need to check out this video. In the women’s individual All-Around, the USA has taken home gold since the 2004 Athens Olympics. Prior to that the Romanians and the Russians (by their multiple names) were the dominating countries.
  • The men have only won the team All-Around in 1904 and 1984, both Olympics were on home soil (St. Louis and LA, respectively). The only individual All-Around American men are Paul Hamm in 2004 Athens and Julius Lenhart in 1904 St. Louis. JPN and CHN have been dominant on the men’s side in recent years.
• What about the Perfect 10 system?
  • The scoring system changed in 2006 from the ‘Perfect 10’ system your parents know to the current one we have now. This encourages athletes to perform harder moves to be rewarded more highly rather than executing an easier routine more flawlessly.
    • This is also why Simone Biles is so dominant. In the last Olympics, her floor SV was a 6.8 when the rest of the field only hit 6.5. That gives her 0.3 deductions to play with before she would be equal to the other gymnasts.
    • An interesting fact from the Washington Post at the time of the Rio 2016 games, Kerri Strug’s vault (video linked in the previous question) would only have been out of a score of 15.2 today – which only would’ve put her in 4th in the qualifying round in Rio.
  • You can still see a perfect 10 execution score but it
• Who scored the 1st Perfect 10?
  • Nadia Comaneci in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. She is considered the person who scored the most in competition. You will still see some, but mostly in college gymnastics.