Everything You Never Needed To Know About Rhythmic Gymnastics [Video]

We love gymnastics. It gets the highest ratings of any summer event. Every four years we fall in love with a new "America's Sweetheart." They get the Wheaties box. The team goes down in history.

But that's artistic gymnastics, which we're totally not talking about here. We're talking rhythmic gymnastics, which is something you've probably never watched.

In the family tree of gymnastics, rhythmic is that distant cousin you're not really sure how to act around, because they're always lugging around their favorite toys, and doing stuff like stretching their legs over their head to pick their teeth with their toes. Like this—weird, right? To prepare for this piece I asked 10 real live people the first thing that came into their minds when I said the words "Rhythmic Gymnastics." Everyone said the exact same thing: "Ribbons." Well done, highly scientific survey sample. There is a ribbon, but there's also hoops and clubs and glitter-bombed unitards and group numbers that resemble off-brand Cirque du Soleil acts. It's like Branson on ketamine.

Rhythmic gymnastics, which may not actually be nicknamed "R-Gym," but we'll pretend it is, is taking place in London RIGHT NOW. Here's what you should know, beyond ribbons.

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Rhythmic gymnastics is made up of both individual and group routines to music that incorporate dance, acrobatics, and sick flexibility with the use of multiple apparatuses: a ribbon, a ball, a hoop, and a pair of clubs. There also used to be a rope, but we'll get to the rope's misfortune in a bit.

Paradoxically, "artistic" gymnastics has roots back in the pure athletic competitions of Ancient Greece. But rhythmic is the ice-dancing to artistic's figure skating—it's always been about aesthetics. The sport has its origins back in the early days of ballet, and began to take its modern shape around 1900 with the Swedish School of Rhythmic Gymnastics. The Swedes combined exercises for dancers called "eurhythmics," developed in the 1800s by Swiss composer Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, with the practices of French polymath George Demeny, who pioneered the idea of routines set to music that would focus on graceful movement, flexibility, and good posture. What started as one of those weird turn-of-the-century fads managed to stick around, and once apparatuses were incorporated in Germany 1929, "Modern Gymnastics" was born.

After the war, when the Soviets were basically inventing sports to be good at, they caught wind of modern gymnastics (still mostly performed as exhibitions) and set about making the sport competitive. The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) officially recognized the sport in 1961, though not without an identity crisis. Originally it was called "Modern Gymnastics," then "Rhythmic Sportive Gymnastics" and then finally "Rhythmic Gymnastics." We've stuck with that name ever since, though we're still pushing hard for "R-Gym."

The first world championships in 1963 in Budapest, and only ten European countries participated. The United States didn't send its first delegation until 1973. And yet, a sport developed and popularized by the Russians only made its Olympic debut in the games where the USSR was nowhere to be found. After being included as an exhibition sport, R-Gym was formally introduced at the 1984 Olympics, where a Soviet boycott made for weak competition. How bad was it? An actual Canadian won the first gold medal. Since then, the Soviets/Unified Team/Russians have won every single all-around title except for one that went to Ukraine, which is basically the same thing. In 1996 a group competition was added, and the Russians have won all but one of those.

I know what's on everyone's mind: These chicks are crazy flexible, right? Yes, here's some shots of things they do that few athletes can:

Impressive.

The sport was originally judged on the 10.0 scale we know and love. That obviously wasn't complicated enough for the FIG, so they switched to a 30-point scale in 2003, then to a 20-point scale in 2005, then back to the 30-point scale in 2008. (Got that?) The 30-point scale requires three panels of judges that deliver scores for technical elements, artistic expression, and execution. In R-Gym, dropping an apparatus during a routine is the deduction equivalent of falling off the uneven bars, albeit less fun to watch.

And dropping happens. You can't just keep a death grip on your clubs the whole time. These things must remain in constant movement throughout the routine, and many moves involve gymnasts tossing the apparatus way up into the air and doing a series of acrobatic dance movements before catching it again. What happens if you're so amped you throw it too high…maybe it gets stuck in the ceiling? Haha, I'm joking! Except I'm not. The Code of Points has a section just for this problem:

5.4. BROKEN APPARATUS OR APPARATUS CAUGHT IN THE SMALL BEAMS OF THE CEILING
5.4.1. If the apparatus breaks during an exercise or gets caught in the small beams of the ceiling, the gymnast or the group will not be authorized to start the exercise over.

You read that right. Hit the ceiling, tough shit. Rhythmic gymnastics may look like it's wrapped in glitter and Swarovski crystals, but these judges are not messing around.

That includes the uniforms too. When it comes to the very strict rules on apparel, rhythmic gymnastics doesn't want to acknowledge its ballet roots. In the "Dress of Gymnast" section you'll find this passive-aggressive rule in parentheses:

"(The look of 'ballet tutu' is forbidden)"

Put those tutus away, ladies. This ain't The Nutcracker.

Which reminds me, rhythmic gymnastics is one of just two Olympic sports where only women take part. (Synchronized swimming is the other.) Men's R-Gym does exist, but it's far from widespread enough to earn IOC inclusion.

For the individual competition, the women try their hand with each of the apparatuses. But the groups only perform two routines, with the apparatuses rotating every two years. In London, they'll complete a routine using five balls (hold the giggles please), then a second one with both ribbons and hoops. No clubs for the groups this year, and no rope for anyone, ever again.

If rhythmic gymnastics is the black sheep of the gymnastics family, then rope is the black sheep of the apparatuses. Poor rope is currently in the process of being phased out of the sport altogether. Word on the street is "Scarf" will be taking its place. So if you were looking forward to seeing some rope manipulation in these games, you're outta luck. If you get off on scarfs, just wait a couple Olympiads.

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Who's good at this?

For starters—America is NO good at rhythmic gymnastics. As a former artistic gymnast, I don't even know where you would go to learn this sport . The USA didn't qualify a single athlete for Beijing. This year we managed to squeak one in, a 22-year-old named Julie Zetlin who spoke to Time about what it's like to be an American in a sport dominated by the Russians.

"In Russia you see rhythmic gymnasts on billboards because they're the most famous athletes."

So what's the logical next step when a sport gets super-huge in a country? Juicy gossip. Gymnasts of all kinds are mega-celebs in Russia, and are followed by rumors like movie stars are here. In 2008 reports emerged that Russian President Vladimir Putin was having an affair with 26-year-old Olympic rhythmic gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva. Putin denied the rumors and in no way overreacted when he closed down the paper that broke the news. Kabaeva went on to be Vogue Russia's first cover girl, holds a cushy government job, and allegedly gave birth to Putin's love child. Awesome.

She also happens to be one of the most successful rhythmic gymnasts of all time, with two Olympic medals and 14 world championship medals. Here she is in action:

At its best, this is what you can expect to see from rhythmic gymnastics: peerless artistry, jaw-dropping choreography, and unreal body control. At the very least you'll see Russian girls fight to hold off tears after they drop their ribbon. Everybody wins.

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Women's Gymnastics Team Teaches Jenna Bush How To Dougie Like A Gold Medalist [Video]

Aug 9, 2012 9:15 AM  

I guess when you're the Team USA women's gymnastics squad and you've just completed an incredible run through the team and individual competitions, you're allowed some free time to just hang around London, chill out on the roof of a double-decker bus, and teach one of George W. Bush's daughters how to Dougie while a Today Show camera crew looks on. Because what else would you do, head out to the clubs with the men's gymnastics team? Of course not.

As for lead dance instructor McKayla Maroney, she probably wasn't impressed.

[YouTube/Kent Koven]

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How Aly Raisman, The Steady Teammate, Won Individual Gold [Gymnastics]

On the final day of Olympic gymnastics, American Aly Raisman broke through—winning bronze on the balance beam and then gold, decisively, on the floor. Till now, Raisman had been mainly celebrated for her consistency and leadership: a steady competitor under pressure, with a record of team success and individual fourth-place finishes.

But she has grown into much more than that. Raisman brings a particular athleticism to the floor: there's a towering height to her somersaults, a solidity to her landings. And that power is under control; she's not one of those gymnasts who give me acid reflux, capable of brilliance but just as likely to implode in competition.

So-called purists, the ones who go on and on about the "end of artistic gymnastics," hate her muscular performances. She may not be elegant, but there's more than one way to do gymnastics. And it's not as if any of the modern crop of gymnasts can really dance.

Raisman had beefed up her degree of difficulty this year, yet was still finishing behind teammates Jordyn Wieber and Gabby Douglas in all-around competition. Even though she won national titles on beam and floor this year—meaning she's plausibly the best American on half of the events—few people saw her as a major threat to win individual medals in London.

But at the Olympics, things seemed to change. Starting in the preliminaries, when she grabbed one of the two all-around spots, Raisman started getting the notice she had worked so long for. In the team final, she anchored the squad on her best events, beam and floor, helping lead them to the team gold.

Despite this newfound confidence and limelight, Raisman reverted to second-banana status in the individual all-around. After uncharacteristically faltering on the beam, she landed in a tie with Russian Aliya Mustafina for third place, but ended up on the wrong side of the tiebreak rules and was bumped from the podium. Fourth once more.

At the end of Tuesday's beam finals, she appeared to be in fourth again—behind Romanian veteran Catalina Ponor, who had done well but suffered a big break in the middle of her routine. The American coaches, however, challenged Raisman's start value and filed an inquiry. (In gymnastics, you're only allowed to question the difficulty score, not the execution deductions.)

After going to the replay, the judges restored a tenth of a point of difficulty, which pushed her into a tie with Ponor. This time, Raisman found herself on the right side of the tiebreaking rule—higher execution score wins—and claimed her first individual medal of the Games.

Obviously buoyed by this result, Raisman nailed every pass in her floor routine including the tricky, mind-bending one that begins with a one-and-a-half twisting somersault, continues onto an Arabian double front, and ends with a punch layout front. This pass had been giving her trouble in London—she took out the final skill in team and all around finals—but she did the full thing perfectly on Tuesday.

The BBC commentator hilariously said that Raisman used "Cossack music to leap ahead of the Russian," referring to her "Hava Nagila" routine. (Did someone tell the BBC commentators that Jews, historically, haven't been fans of the Cossacks?) Raisman posted a 15.6, the highest floor score at these Games, but had to wait through several competitors to see if it would stand.

No one could top it. Pre-meet favorite Sandra Izbasa, the defending Olympic champion on floor, fell. Ponor nailed her opening pass but ended up with the silver. Mustafina performed beautifully but landed in third. It was Raisman's gold and hers alone—giving her more medals than any of her teammates. No tiebreaker necessary.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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Fake, Jingoistic, And Stupid: Gymnastics Coverage Is The Worst Part Of NBC's Olympics [Gymnastics]

If you have a full-time job, no privacy at work, and/or a boss who cares about productivity, you probably didn't spend two hours in the middle of the day, like I did, watching the women's all-around Olympic gymnastics final. This means that you get to see it tonight on NBC, with routines sprinkled between the hours of 8 p.m. and 12 a.m. as Tim Daggett, Elfi Schlegel, and everyman Al Trautwig pretend that they are actually commenting live.

It really sucks to be you, because NBC's gymnastics coverage is the worst. NBC has been taking a drubbing due to its Opening Ceremonies editing choices, "virtual live" primetime broadcasts, and accidental spoilers. But all of you Johnny-come-latelies need to get in line—gymnastics fans have hated NBC forever.

The Peacock network has had a virtual monopoly on gymnastics coverage in the States for years—not just the Olympics, but nationals, world championships, and the American Cup. If you want to watch gymnastics in the United States, you must do it through NBC's prism.

Gymnastics coverage doesn't have to be stupid. Back in the early to mid '90s, ABC had the rights to the world championships. Former gymnasts Bart Conner and Kathy Johnson-Clark nimbly guided viewers through the competition without putting down foreign competitors or using hyperbolic language to heighten the drama. Even the fluff pieces were adorable, like the one from the 1993 World Championships where Conner tried to keep pace working out with a 15-year-old Kerri Strug.

NBC, by contrast, produced fluff pieces that made Deva and Round Lake, the Romanian and Russian team training centers, look like Dickensian orphanages where families abandoned their athletically gifted children—while showing America's Dominique Moceanu playing on a seesaw. (Seriously, what 14-year-old do you know that still plays on a seesaw?)

As current Olympic viewers are realizing, NBC rarely shows foreign athletes unless they are directly in competition with the U.S. During the women's team finals, the network showed few Chinese and Romanian routines, despite the fact that those two were in a heated contest for the bronze. Instead, we got endless shots of the U.S. girls and coaches on the sidelines talking, and two airings of the same exact video montage featuring poses from the five member squad—in case didn't realize just how photogenic this team is or you didn't catch their first names on the first try.

While I enjoy seeing teenage girls talk amongst themselves as much the next person does, it would've been nice if NBC had used the time to show some other countries doing gymnastics. If you really want to savor Team USA's camaraderie, just follow the gang on Twitter. They tweet a lot. The Olympics shouldn't look like a domestic meet.

As we've noted, NBC didn't show the floor routine of Ksenia Afanasyeva, the defending world champion on the apparatus, who crashed to her knees on her final tumbling pass—the moment that basically sealed the American women's first team gold medal in 16 years. Showing Russians unhappy and in tears is one of NBC's favorite pastimes, but seeing Afanasyeva stumble would've eliminated any sort of faux suspense that remained after Anastasia Grishina's enormous error.

Perhaps people would have tuned out the instant they knew the gold was secure. (Or maybe they could have turned on their computers, iPads, iPhones or any other internet-enabled device, learned the results that had been finalized hours earlier, and not watched at all.) Unfortunately for the viewers, in exchange for that slightly extended plot line, they were denied the opportunity to see one of the best choreographed and performed routines of the Games (at least until the fall at the very end).

Strangely enough, NBC also failed to show Afanasyeva's lovely beam routine from the previous rotation, which had been an important hit for the Russians after two shaky performances. Not only would the audience have appreciated seeing the Russian veteran's grace, it would have greatly added drama to the proceedings to the Americans' chief rivals nail a set.

NBC's announcing trio is supposedly doing all of the commentary live at the arena, but that's impossible to believe. At least some of it seems to have been recorded after the fact. Case in point: their coverage of the women's preliminary, in which the big story turned out to be world champion Jordyn Wieber's failure to qualify for the all-around competition. I watched the live webcast, with 1996 gold medalist Shannon Miller doing the commentary. Miller was informative and cogent throughout, but she barely mentioned the race to qualify for the all-around until the very end—when it suddenly looked like Wieber might lose out.

Yet when I watched the tape-delayed network telecast later that night, Tim and Elfi mentioned the possibility of Wieber missing the final at least half a dozen times. Either they're spectacularly prescient or they're the gymnastics-commentary version of the Terminator—sent from the future to revise the past.

The NBC trio is also unusually cruel to the foreign competitors. Back in March, I wrote about the American Cup—called the "Scam" Cup by fans for its predictably red, white, and blue first-place finishes—and noted that when Great Britain's Rebecca Tunney had three falls on beam, the trio didn't stop at calling her routine "disastrous." They wondered aloud whether the she would ever be able to mentally recover from this set, meanly suggesting she seek the counseling of Dr. Phil.

During Olympic prelims, when talking about the British girls, Schlegel mentioned that routine yet again as if it's the only piece of gymnastics she's seen Tunney do. Tunney is actually quite good at bars, and despite a rocky meet at Scam-one of her first as a senior gymnast-she has competed well for Great Britain all year. Maybe it was the only performance Schlegel had seen the Brit do. Perhaps she is contractually prohibited from watching competitions not broadcast on NBC.

This Games, the NBC crew has decided to tar the Russians as "divas," as though it's a bad thing. It's not as if the Russians are demanding the beam be made wider for them or that their favorite brand of chalk be stocked on the podium. Yet before 2010 world champion Aliya Mustafina started her uneven bar routine during team finals, Al asked Tim, "Have you seen any diva moments?"

By all accounts that aren't from NBC, the Russians have had some difficult practices, struggling with skills and routines. As a result, they've expressed frustration to their coaches. (Alexander Alexandrov, the Russian coach, seems more amused or bemused than upset by this.) Showing how you feel in practice and competition? Oh, the horror! Someone alert Mariah Carey that a bunch of Russian gymnast are zeroing in on her diva throne.

Personally, I root hard for the U.S. team. So why care that the Russians and others are unfairly portrayed by NBC?

It's because gymnastics is a particularly international sport. If you're a fan of basketball, you don't have to look outside of the United States for viewing and competition opportunities. With gymnastics and other Olympics sports, the domestic field is insufficient. There are only a couple of major national meets a year.

So to understand the sport, gymnastics fans have to be knowledgeable of and familiar with what's going on abroad. This tends to breed an appreciation for other countries' gymnasts. Even if you don't want them to win, you don't want to see them maligned, treated as cartoons, or ignored.

This could be too cruel. Maybe, after years and years and years in the broadcast both, the NBC trio is merely suffering from commentating fatigue. They are tired, traumatized (especially after seeing the Italian Vanessa Ferrari's leotards) and drained. They can't think of anything else to say aside from, "Orozco is from the Bronx," "The Russians are divas," and "She has the look international judges love."

Whether they're weary or just incompetent, it's long past time for a switch. How about Shannon Miller? Thus far she has done a wonderful job narrating the live feed from the O2 Arena—thoroughly enjoyable and informative, and critical without being mean or vicious. When competitors make mistakes, she doesn't merely say, "That's bad," but explains precisely what went wrong. She never resorts to dramatic hyperbole, saying things like "This is desperation time," as Al Trautwig said last night after Danell Leyva's mistakes in the all-around.

And Miller has stayed classy throughout. Pressed today by her co-commentator about how it must feel to win an Olympic gold medal, as the winner stood atop the podium, Miller, a silver medalist in the all-around in 1992, said that she couldn't imagine what it felt like.

Back then, the posters that lined the Olympic trials arena read "It's Miller Time," signaling the passing of the torch from world champion Kim Zmeskal to trials winner Shannon Miller. If NBC cared about gymnastics viewers, it would make primetime Miller Time.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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Women's Gymnastics: Gabby Douglas Leaves The Rest Of The World Behind [Gymnastics]

Where the Olympic men's gymnastics all-around final had been a gradual, predictable victory for favorite Kohei Uchimura, the women's final came down to the last routine and the last score. When the tabulation was done, Gabby Douglas of the United States took the title, becoming the first woman of color to do so.

Before competition began in London, I was a skeptic. I didn't believe Douglas would be the one to win the gold. Her performances at the 2012 nationals and trials were very encouraging, but not a portent of greatness. Like a lot of fans, I kept mentally rewinding to her mistake-riddled performance in the 2011 national championships, which left her with a reputation as a head case.

But that was unfair. In 2011, Douglas was coming back from an injury, and hadn't had the opportunity to train enough sets. Even so, and under the pressure of one of her first big senior meets, she made the world championship team on the strength of her work on the uneven bars—and much to everyone's surprise, hit all of her preliminary events and made the bar finals at worlds.

In March, Douglas showed up as an exhibition competitor at the American Cup with a new vault, one of the ballyhooed Amanars, and unofficially topped the all-around standings. She had a rough outing at the Pacific Rim Championships, almost topped champion Jordyn Wieber at Nationals, and then won the Olympic trials.

On the first day of competition in London, she leaped out of bounds on her floor exercise. She hasn't made a mistake since. In the American team's run to the team gold medal, she was the only team member to contribute routines in all four disciplines.

That effort didn't wear her out. During the individual all-around, she was even sharper than before. She took the lead on the vault and never relinquished it, despite intense pressure from 17-year-old Russian superstar Viktoria Komova.

Komova, the runner-up both in London and at last year's worlds in Tokyo, had a brilliant day, too. She started off on vault and suffered her only break—a relatively minor one—when she stepped to the side and off the mats. Her bars, where she is the current world champion, were stellar and her beam was very well done.

It came down to the floor, where Komova was the final competitor to perform, knowing that she needed the best routine of her life to overtake Douglas. She delivered a brilliant one. But it still was not enough.

In third place was Russia's 2010 world champion Aliya Mustafina, who completed a remarkable comeback from tearing her ACL fifteen months ago. Solid on vault and fantastic on bars—where she notched the top score of the all around competition—she hopped off the beam on her standing Arabian, then rounded out the meet with a strong floor exercise.

Also in third was American Aly Raisman, the surprise qualifier to the all around final, thanks to strong performances on the vault and floor offsetting an uncharacteristic error on beam. At least, she thought she was. Though she and Mustafina both finished scores of 59.566, Mustafina prevailed under the tiebreaking rules.

This is the second Olympics in which women's gymnastics has needed a tie broken. Back in 2008, three different tiebreakers were needed before He Kexin and Nastia Liukin's scores on the uneven bar finals could be pulled apart. It ended with He on the winner's podium and Nastia with the silver.

Raisman, understandably, looked devastated. Reportedly it was a member of the press, not an FIG official, who informed her that she would not be receiving the bronze and standing alongside Mustafina on the podium.

The Russians, long accused of being divas, were nothing but gracious in acknowledging Douglas. "She performed beautifully today," Komova said during the post-meet interviews. "And I believe that she earned her gold medal."

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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Gabby Douglas's Beam Performance Gives Us The Defining Photo Of The London Olympics [Gymnastics]

Aug 2, 2012 11:55 PM  

I'm just not certain how sports photography gets any better than this. Greg Bull of the Associated Press deserves every Sports Photo of the Year Award coming his way in a few months' time. Gabby Douglas gave a historic performance today in the women's gymnastics all-around, and this is a photo worthy of that accomplishment. (Click to embiggen for a larger version.)

h/t Jim Roberts

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NBC Aired A Promo Featuring A Monkey Doing Gymnastics At The Most Inopportune Time [Video]

Aug 3, 2012 12:38 AM  

After Bob Costas wound down tonight's Olympics coverage by editorializing about Gabby Douglas's all-around gold medal ending stereotypes and tearing down racial barriers, NBC followed it up immediately with this promo for Animal Practice featuring a monkey doing gymnastics. That's... unfortunate.

h/t to Mike & John

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Immediately After Winning Gymnastics Gold, What Was On Jordyn Wieber's Mind? Her Tampon [UPDATE: Or Her Tape] [Video]

It's been quite a week for U.S. gymnast Jordyn Wieber. First, the favorite to win the all-around title missed qualification and had her disappointment broadcast throughout America. Then things took a positive turn last night and the U.S. women took gold for the first time since 1996.

Amidst the elation upon reading the final results upon the scoreboard, though, it looks (and sounds) like Jordyn Wieber had another pressing and personal issue on her mind. This is revealing in a number of ways. First, it reminds us that despite the media painting a picture of Olympic heroes as superhuman (and our personal desires to see them, somehow, as titans) they are indeed fully human; they have the same bullshit personal bodily processes to deal with that we do. This is especially the case for a teenage girl. I've never been a teenage girl, but my female friends who once were all tell me that having a period sucks and it especially sucks when you're young. The physical and emotional effects of a cycle, I'm told, are really disruptive. (Being 17 and on television around the world, too, probably screws with you a bit.)

So if Jordyn Wieber's competed so strongly this week while on her period, that's really impressive. It certainly shouldn't be used to explain any kind of subpar performance at qualifications; she finished fourth overall, for crying out loud. The only reason she isn't in tomorrow's individual all-around is because of Olympic rules. And anyway, "I gotta take out my tampon" is a way-better response to being a champion than the usual "I'm going to Disneyland!" [NBC]

Update (2:10 p.m.): We ran this video by a dozen people and they all agreed with some iteration of our conclusion, but some of you have since suggested she's saying "take my tape off," which would of course make sense, and if that's what it is, well, I'm a dumbass. Right after it went over the air, Twitter was sure it had heard tampon (examples: this, and this, and this, and this.)

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U.S. Women Win Team Gymnastics Gold [London Olympics]

Jul 31, 2012 1:50 PM  

Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Alex Raisman, Kyla Ross, and Jordyn Wieber left little doubt during the team gymnastics competition, winning three of the four events to propel to U.S. to an easy victory over Russia and Romania, which took silver and bronze, respectively. It's the first gymnastics team gold for the U.S. women since 1996. Be sure to check back later for more from our gymnastics correspondent, Dvora Meyers.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

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Happy, Healthy, And Hitting Their Spots: How The American Women's Gymnastic Team Won The Gold [Gymnastics]

Today, the U.S. women's gymnastics team, which entered the Olympics as the heavy favorite for team gold medal, did what every commentator predicted it would—won the title in a commanding fashion, topping the Russians by five points, 183.596 to 178.530.

That point spread belied just how close it got at one point during this competition. The Americans rocketed into first place on the vault, as all of them stuck their Amanars—with McKayla Maroney doing perhaps the most perfect one ever. But on the uneven bars, they gave much of the lead back. The Russian team, which has superior difficulty scores on the apparatus, performed incredibly well to move within 0.4 points of the United States.

Then the U.S. went to beam and all three Americans hit, with nothing worse than a few small wobbles. Russia's Aliya Mustafina had breaks on several elements, and Viktoria Komova took a significant step on her dismount. That sent the United States into the floor exercise, the final event, with a lead of more than a point. It would have taken Russian perfection and mistakes from the American team to flip the standings.

Neither thing happened. The Russians weren't even close to perfect. Mustafina had a solid opener, but then Anastasia Grishina nearly put her hands down on her opening pass, then had to bail on her second tumbling run, scoring in the 12s. Then Ksenia Afanasyeva, the reigning world champion on the floor, crashed to her knees on her final pass.

And the Americans didn't put a foot wrong. Gabby Douglas, who contributed four routines for the team tonight, corrected her out of bounds error from the preliminary round. Jordyn Wieber also stayed in, and performed joyously throughout. Finally, team captain and floor anchor Aly Raisman was practically in tears of joy as she landed her final double pike. That's when the celebration began in earnest.

This team entered as the defending world champions. But that was not a guarantee of victory. Twice before this, in 2004 and 2008, the Americans came in as world champions and left with the silver.

What was different in London? Health, first of all. This team didn't endure many major injuries over the last year. In 2004, Courtney Kupets and Courtney McCool were both hampered by injuries after dominating the domestic qualifying events. In 2008, the situation was even worse: Chellsie Memmel broke her foot during pre-Beijing training, and Samantha Peszek sprained her ankle during preliminary warm ups. And even Alicia Sacramone, the team captain, was taped up and hurting all over.

This time around only, Maroney seemed to report any sort of physical problem, a relatively minor issue with her toe. She rested most of the week and only participated in podium training before the start of competition. Her vaults are assured enough that she didn't need intense practice.

In 2008, the Chinese team had more difficult programs than the rest of the field. This time, it was the United States that had prepared routines with an impressively high degree of difficulty. And unlike other teams, which were testing out new skills in front of the Olympic audience, the Americans didn't need to chuck any of their hard moves. They had already performed most of their elements for almost a year, in pressure situations. There was little doubt as to whether they would hit when it mattered most.

The team was well-trained, healthy, and supremely confident. Many other teams would've crumbled under this sort of pressure; they seemed to revel in it. This group didn't miss a single routine—that's 28 hits so far at the Games.

After Jordyn Wieber was beaten out of a spot in the all-around by her teammates, there had been speculation about her state of mind for the team final. There was something unfair and inappropriate in this, and it seemed unlikely that a male athlete would have had his resolve questioned under similar circumstances.

But Wieber nailed her sets. And she cheered her teammates on throughout. She was more emotive and expressive than I'd ever seen her during a meet. Her smile didn't just appear after it was obvious that the U.S. had it in the bag. She started smiling the moment her name was announced at the start, and she never stopped.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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Men's Gymnastics Team Final: Team USA Stumbles, China Soars, And The Officials Vault Japan Over Britain [Video]

After exceeding expectations in the men's gymnastics preliminaries, the United States fell below expectations when it counted, in the team final. A squad that had hoped for gold, if everything went right, finished out of the medals entirely.

Veteran Jonathan Horton, the weak link in Saturday's top-ranked team preliminary performance, was solid in the final. It was the youthful side of the roster that faltered. Sam Mikulak got things going in the wrong direction by putting his hands down on the final pass of his floor exercise. Danell Leyva then fell off of the pommels, and the usually steady John Orozco chimed in with a fall of his own.

With two events gone, the chances of gold were dashed, and the ones of any medal were fading. And then Orozco sat down his vault, and the goal changed from reaching the podium to staying out of last place.

But Horton, the team leader, rallied the demoralized group, and they hit well on the parallel bars and high bar, their best events. In the end, they came out fifth, 1.759 points shy of the bronze.

They were 6.045 points behind the Chinese team, however. China's performance in London was the opposite of the Americans': After a distant sixth-place finish in preliminaries made them look vulnerable, they methodically put away the competition in the final. Without being flashy, they executed cleanly, at a high level of difficulty. After a few rotations, their position was never really in doubt.

The Japanese seemed equally secure in their silver medal—until, in the final rotation, they suffered two major breaks, including an out-of-control dismount from their superstar, Kohei Uchimura. Uchimura's score dropped Japan out of the medals altogether. The surging British team, led by pommel-horse gold-medal favorite Louis Smith, was set to take silver. The Ukranians celebrated a team bronze.

And then the Japanese team challenged Uchimura's score. Judges and officials debated his routine for several minutes as the three teams paced nervously. In the end, they revised the score upward by 0.7 points, vaulting Japan back to silver after all. Great Britain was bumped to bronze, and the Ukraine fell out of the medals.

Though the Ukranians were understandably devastated, the British were still jubilant. It was the country's first team medal in men's gymnastics in a hundred years, won in front of the home crowd and Princes William and Harry. Last time the British men won a team medal in gymnastics, the athletes competed on events like rope climbing and the royalty in attendance actually mattered.

The tight outcome of the men's team competition demonstrated how much talent and depth there is in this field. Russia, the Ukraine, and Great Britain were in the hunt for the bronze up until the end. And while the Americans fell short, this is a young team. Horton, at 26, already has a team Olympic medal and can retire on that. Of the others, two are 19, one is 20, and another is 21. None of them has indicated any plans to retire after London.

It's not as simple as just training another four years, in an injury-plagued sport like gymnastics. And there is always a crop of younger athletes looking to topple the veterans. But for this crew, another run at an Olympic medal seems very possible.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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U.S. Gymnastics Favorite Jordyn Wieber Outscored Nearly Everyone Else In Preliminaries. That Wasn't Enough To Qualify Her For The All-Around Final. [Gymnastics]

As expected, in the women's gymnastics preliminaries, the United States topped the field. Less expectedly, the margin was only 1.4 points.

And completely unexpectedly, world champion Jordyn Wieber failed to qualify for the individual all-around final, to compete for the most coveted title in gymnastics.

Wieber didn't have a meltdown or fall off the equipment. She had a very good meet with a few minor errors, breaking 60 points. Her 60.032 was the fourth-highest score in the whole preliminary field, 0.6 points behind the leader, Russia's Victoria Komova.

But the rules stipulate that only two gymnasts per country advance to the all-around final. And two of Wieber's teammates, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas, edged her out for second and third.

This means that a whole pack of gymnasts who did worse than Wieber will be competing for the all-around medal, while she sits out. Wieber even outscored the second-ranked Russian, 2010 world champion Aliya Mustafina, who is in fine form after tearing her ACL last year.

Yet while the 28th-ranked gymnast (Australia's Ashleigh Brennan, with a 54.232) gets a shot at all-around title, the fourth-ranked one is out.

The former Soviet Union used to get around this rule by faking an injury to one of the qualified athletes. Back in 1992—when the top three per country advanced to the all-around final—pre-meet favorite Tatiana Gutsu fell off the beam and failed to make the top three on the powerful Unified Team. So the team simply claimed that Roza Galieva had a knee injury and subbed in Gutsu, who ended up winning the whole competition. It was only a few years later that Galieva herself revealed that she in fact had not been injured.

But the American team isn't working up any orthopedic fictions to save Wieber's spot. Though most of the media hype had surrounded Wieber and Gabrielle Douglas, it's Alexandra Raisman who enters the all around final as the top-ranked American gymnast. She, like the rest of the Americans, did great on vault and she more than survived bars, her worst event. After that, it was smooth sailing on beam and floor exercise ahead of Douglas, who had a significant stumble on the floor.

While Wieber's elimination was shocking and weakened the all-around field, Raisman's ascension is not all that surprising to viewers who've been paying attention all season. Though she will never be a strong bar worker, she has steadily improved at it, and she has the highest difficulty scores on beam and floor of the Americans. And she rarely ever misses in competition.

(Kyla Ross, the youngest member of the U.S. team, was fantastic too, despite having very little international experience. If not for the two-per-country rule, she would have made the beam final, and she was close on the bars.)

Raisman placed second overall, right behind a reinvigorated Komova, who competed with new elements on all of the events except floor exercise. With Wieber out, Komova looks like the favorite to win the all-around gold.

The rest of the Russians competed with the same energy and ease that Komova displayed. They also beefed up their vault rotation, which is key if they're to top the U.S. in the team finals. Komova landed a nice Amanar, and Maria Paseka, who was named to the team purely for her ability to do that vault, also stood hers up, albeit very sloppily. While the U.S. remain the favorites, they will have to fight harder than they previously thought for the team title.

There was quite a big dropoff after the top two. The Chinese gymnasts landed in third on the strength of their bars, but the had very weak vault and floor rotations. And Romania, which had competed so assuredly against an injured Russian squad at the European Championships, didn't have a good outing either. Their all-around favorite, Larisa Iordache, fell on floor and had lackluster efforts on the other events, failing to qualify to a single apparatus final. Still, she placed ninth overall, 2.5 points behind Wieber. And none of her teammates beat her out—so, unlike Wieber, Iordache will be going to the all-around final.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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Men's Gymnastics: Fierce Competitors, Stuck In Second Place [London Olympics]

The United States men's gymnastics team is currently trying to achieve what no American men's team has ever done: win a team gold medal at a non-boycotted Olympics. The favorite is Japan, led by three-time world champion Kohei Uchimura, who is possibly the best male gymnast of all time. But the Americans have a realistic, if slim, shot.

Nevertheless, the lion's share of the media attention has been and will be bestowed on the American bid for gold on the women's side.

When I was a young gymnastics fan, the inequity in coverage did not bother me. Though I spent nearly every Sunday afternoon watching VHS tapes of the women's competitions until I had all of the scores memorized, I fast forwarded through the coverage of the men, if there was any at all. Broadcasts of men's national championships were often reduced to mere ten-minute recaps of top competitors and routines or marooned in the worst spots on the television schedule.

Back then, I could scarcely name any U.S. male gymnasts and would have struggled for a few minutes to come up with all six of their apparatuses. But as the American men started winning more medals in the early 2000s, I started paying more attention, and I realized what I had been missing for years. The personalities on the men's competition floor are bigger and more compelling as are the skills.

Male gymnasts aren't totally marginalized now—their meets are now televised in their entirety, if not in prime time—but they still trail the women in popularity. Why?

Female gymnasts aren't simply athletic competitors. The greatest ones become popular icons: Olga, Nadia, and Mary Lou. Their fame extends far beyond their Olympic events, and it lasts much longer. Every four years, Nadia and Mary Lou are dusted off to go on talk shows and speak to reporters about the current gymnastic field.

That doesn't happen on the male side. "No male gymnast has ever been Nadia. Or even Nastia," said Rick McCharles, a Canadian coach and blogger. "That has been the biggest problem." When he was in Japan last fall, McCharles said, he was shocked by how few people in Tokyo outside of the gymnastics community knew of Uchimura, despite the fact that he's on track to becoming a true legend.

Can casual viewers even name a past men's champion? Maybe Paul Hamm, but that has more to do with the start-value controversy that dogged his win in 2004. The only notable male champions who have maintained recognition—1984 Olympic gold medalists Tim Daggett and Bart Conner—achieved this not by presenting themselves as objects of nostalgia, but by getting jobs as commentators. They're in the public eye because they're always working.

The female gymnasts' youth and petiteness helps make them icons. Their power—and their tolerance for pain and danger—seems impossible in such childlike forms. They can be treated as tiny, ideal embodiments of whatever the narrative of the moment may be. The men's gymnastics blogger Uncle Tim wrote:

Right now, in an era of American exceptionalism, we are eager to prove that we can beat the other countries at their own game. The U.S. can have a centralized training program, but our very young girls—and we are obsessed with how young they are—can still be teenagers, which, as you know, is different from the Chinese and the Romanians.

Watching muscular, grown men perform feats of extraordinary strength and athleticism is exciting, but it's not at all surprising. And the men, by virtue of their age, are less malleable, narratively speaking. Many are at least in college before they make it to an Olympic Games; some have completed their higher education and are married.

To see a Nadia or Mary Lou years later, as a grown woman, is startling and nostalgia-inducing. Now, the cute, smiling teenager has become an adult—but old video and photos are always cued up, like childhood snapshots at a wedding. The effect is transporting.

Male champions, years later, mostly look like they used to—with some wrinkles, some gray, and perhaps less muscle. (Bart Conner, who looks practically the same as he did in 1984, has a definite Dorian Gray quality.) They don't evoke a lost past, unless their highlights include a really bad, decade-specific haircut.

Against all this cultural backdrop, too, there's the plain fact that the U.S. women have been more successful than the men. Over the past decade, the U.S. women have won an unprecedented number of international medals and titles, including two consecutive Olympic all-around gold medals.

But what is often not brought up is the less competitive nature of the women's side of the sport. There are really only four teams that routinely occupy the team medal podiums at world championships and the Olympics: the U.S., Russia, Romania, and China. Back in 2003, the Australians got bronze, after a fluke deduction against the Chinese women for flipping while they waited to start their routines.

And with Romania in the doldrums for the past three years, the Americans, Russians, and Chinese have been playing a game of musical chairs in which there are always enough medals for everyone. A similar situation was in place from 2005 to 2008, when Russia was faring poorly.

On the men's side, China and Japan have been consistently ranked 1-2 for years, but the battle for bronze has been fierce for the past four years. From third through sixth place, the United States, Germany, Russia, and France have constantly reshuffled the pecking order—and in the prelims this time, Great Britain showed it has a shot. So there are more true team medal contenders.

Team competition aside, the men's apparatus finals offer many opportunities for gymnasts from smaller, less dominant nations to get on the podium. "[Tomas] Gonzalez from Chile truly is as good as the best Americans. But there's no female gymnast from Chile as good as the Americans," McCharles said.

"Historically the [women's] judges would only give medals to certain nations.," he said. "[Men's] judges have always been more willing to recognize and reward anyone from anywhere."

Uncle Tim noted that in addition to the teams with a chance at team medals— in London, the U.S., Japan, China, Russia, and possibly Germany or Great Britain-countries like Hungary, Romania, and the Ukraine have potential apparatus medalists. Even a Polish gymnast, Leszek Blanik, has managed to win several international medals on the vault.

Because the men have been competing in a more competitive field, their successes cannot be viewed through the lens of dominance as the women's can; rather it is often cast in terms of luck. "Were we expecting Trent Dimas to win a gold in 1992?" Uncle Tim asked. "Nope. Did it seem like Tim and Elfi thought that the men would win a bronze in 2008? Nope."

The luck narrative doesn't get as much attention in advance; it's hard to predict which team will be lucky. But it sure was more fun to watch the U.S. men win their "lucky" bronze in 2008 than it was to see the women win their expected silver.

For a handy master schedule of every Olympic event, click here.

Dvora Meyers is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Tablet and elsewhere. She writes about gymnastics and Judaism at Unorthodox Gymnastics, and she is the author of Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. She blogs about woman-y stuff over at The Anti-Girlfriend.

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Men's Gymnastics Preliminaries: U.S. Wins, Britain Has Best Hair, None Of It Really Counts [Gymnastics]

Michael Phelps wasn't the only athlete to prove he was a mere human today. While Phelps was finishing out of the medals in the 4x100 individual medley, three-time world gymnastics champion Kohei Uchimura—dubbed "Superman" for his dominance—fumbled through the men's preliminaries, logging two falls on his six apparatuses. The star of the Japanese team qualified for only one event final, and made it into the all-around final in ninth place.

The Japanese men had been predicted to be neck and neck with China, the defending Olympic and world champions. And they were—because even as Japan was finishing fifth in the qualifying rounds, China was landing in sixth. Days before this competition began, China lost pommel horse gold medalist Teng Haibin to a torn muscle and had to fly in alternate Guo Weiyang from the team traiing site in Northern Ireland at the last minute.

So first place in the qualifying rounds was claimed by the American men, with a commanding victory in the second of three subdivisions, competing head-to-head with Uchimura and Japan. Olympic Trials winner Danell Leyva topped the men's leaderboard, and national champ John Orozco came in fourth place. Overall, nearly all of the American men landed in an apparatus final.

There were still mistakes, including a fall on pommels and shaky performances on rings and parallel bars from team veteran Jonathan Horton. Like Japan and China, they have room for improvement.

In the first subdivision, China was defeated by the hometown favorites, a British team led by Kristian Thomas and 2008 Olympic bronze medalist Louis Smith, who not only was the top qualifier for pommel horse, but has already won the coveted best "coif" title. (At least according to me.) According to a tweet from AP's Will Graves, Smith got special permission to leave the Olympic Village to have his hair properly tended to.

When asked by Graves why, he responded, "I trust my barber. He knows what I want. I like to change it up but still keep it professional. I don't want to look like a blanker."

I hope that if he wins pommels, he thanks his barber along with his parents and coaches.

As to what "blanker" means—I have no idea (and I tried Googling it). But learning about other cultures is what the Olympics are all about. Perhaps Smith actually said or meant to say wanker, but Graves was too polite to tweet it that way.

A resurgent Russia, competing in the final group, qualified in second right behind the United States.

But finishing first in the qualifying doesn't mean much. The eight teams that reached the final will all start from zero again on Monday. And the team final has a different set of rules than the preliminaries. During each preliminary event, a team used four of its five gymnasts, then threw out the lowest score. So Horton's fall on pommels and Sam Mikulak's low mark on the high bar didn't count.

In the team final, though, the lane bumpers are removed. Only three gymnasts go on each apparatus, and all three scores count. Falls in the final will be much more damaging to the team total.

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