What happened to Deanne Soza?

It’s a long and complicated story, but it seems she picked up a parasite from a pool or hot tub in Pittsburgh. The parasite likely got underneath her contact lens and into a scratch in her eye, and over time, created a serious infection. After several weeks of misdiagnosis, Deanne lost her vision completely and was reportedly only hours away from permanent vision loss until her doctor went into emergency action to save her sight. She began recovering around the end of September, with the vision in her left eye getting stronger though there was a lot of damage to her right eye, which wasn’t healing as quickly. She returned to the gym last week and was able to do some limited strength and conditioning training, but then had a relapse when a bump shown up on her right eye. She’s still fighting really hard to recover and we hope it happens soon. We can’t believe what it must be like for any child, let alone a gymnast of her talent and passon, to be bedridden with such a scary prognosis for so long. Our thoughts are always with her!

In her beam is Skinner performing a standing layout or an open pike? Because her form is very piked, but then so are 50% of the girls who compete a layout to two feet.

Skinner performs a standing pike. Pretty much no one performs a standing layout…you’ll see some gainer layouts on beam but not just a straight up standing layout.

Hearing the news about Brenna Dowell not making the Worlds team reminded me of something I’ve been wondering about since last year – why did Martha keep her out of qualifications while having McKayla compete all-around? Were McKayla’s bars that much better that she would have had a better chance of going to finals?

McKayla didn’t have a better bar set than Brenna last year but they seemed to think Brenna wouldn’t make it at all, so it might be worth it to have three potential all-arounders. There are other reasons related to their decisions but they’re confidential…however, I bring up the general idea of them because I wanted to emphasize that more went into the decision than just how the athletes trained or looked going into the competition. Sometimes it’s not always about who is best on each event, but rather what makes sense in the long term.

Why doesn’t team USA send its athletes to World Cup competitions or smaller meets?

They do. Elizabeth Price competed at five World Cups over the span of two seasons, Brenna Dowell competed at a small meet in Mexico in 2012 and then at the American Cup this year, Peyton Ernst and Maggie Nichols have competed in Tokyo, as have juniors like Bailie Key and Laurie Hernandez…they don’t send their athletes out to every meet (i.e. the World Cup Challenges) because most meets don’t offer legit competition for the U.S. girls, which is one of the reasons why they didn’t send a junior like Nia Dennis to the Youth Olympic Games. Dennis had more competition from her own U.S. teammates than she would have at the YOGs, so it made more sense to keep her in the states.

Like Jordyn Wieber, Kyla Ross was almost always the only elite gymnast in her gym. Do you think it’s different for her since California has so many elite gymnasts nearby?

I don’t think so…I think it depends on the temperament of the gymnast. Jordyn has said millions of times that she loved being on a team and that’s why she ended up choosing college over going back to elite training, even if it meant she could no longer compete – she loved the team atmosphere and after an entire career of being in a gym with basically just herself and her coach at that level, she wanted more to be with other gymnasts. Kyla is a different animal, however. She’s quieter, more introverted, and seems to enjoy having a low key atmosphere where she can train without distraction. She probably gets enough of the team environment from training with the L10s at her gym and then from the days spent at the ranch, but then enjoys the one-on-one situation as well. They’re definitely two different people with two very different training mindsets, so it’s probably more an individual preference than anything.

How does Simone Biles’ floor meet the ‘two different saltos’ requirement?

Do you mean the requirement of having saltos that go in both directions? There is no two different salto requirement, but there is a requirement of having at least one forward/side salto and one backward salto. This is to prevent gymnasts from doing all forward or backward tumbling. It doesn’t really work, though, because you bring up the example of Simone’s routine. Though she only does backward tumbling, she still fulfills the requirement by doing a side aerial as part of her choreography. Even though it’s not part of her tumbling passes, a side aerial is a side salto, and so it fulfills the requirement.

What were so many elite girls doing at Abby Lee Dance Company this summer?

The Abby Lee Dance Company is in Pittsburgh, which is where the P&G Championships were held in August. It seems most of the gymnasts are big fans of “Dance Moms,” and made pilgrimages to the dance studio when they were in town for Championships! None of them really did anything aside from just visit the studio and take photos outside, though a couple of them did meet one of the dance moms.

Has Enus Mariani retired? She was the junior European champion and looked like she could be a great gymnast for Italy but she seems to have vanished off the gymnastics scene.

Mariani missed thirteen months of training at the elite level due to injuries she sustained early in her final year as a junior. She competed at the Jesolo Trophy in  2013 but then dealt with several injuries and only began training again this past May. Though this is her first year as a senior, it’s likely she was unable to factor into Italy’s international decisions this year due to coming back from a long time away just four months before Worlds.

If Aly Raisman was competing against Simone Biles on floor, who would win the gold? I know Simone’s U.S. Classic score was the same as Aly’s Olympic score. But who overall is stronger on floor?

That’s a tough one. As of right now, I would say Biles would beat Raisman, if only because we haven’t seen what Raisman can do in over two years and Biles shows much higher levels of artistry (more important in this quad’s code of points than last quad’s). They’re both really strong and clean tumblers with about equal dance ability. However, Raisman has more variety in her tumbling than Biles, and I do think on a good day in top shape, Raisman could be capable of beating Biles. Like, if it was 2012 Raisman against 2014 Biles, Raisman would likely win, but it would probably be super close.

Do you think Mykayla Skinner could go all the way to Rio? I know it’s very early, but she seems to have her mind set on going.

Here’s the number one rule about gymnastics – ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. In 2010, never in a million years would I have thought Gabby Douglas would make Olympic Trials two years in the future, let alone win the all-around gold. Bridget Sloan on the team in 2008 still blows my mind. Alicia Sacramone’s transformation after 2004 makes zero sense to me. Last year Jazmyn Foberg didn’t make nationals, this year she was the junior champion. Again, anything can happen. Skinner improved a billion percent between 2012 and 2013, another billion percent between 2013 and 2014, and another trillion percent between U.S. nationals and World Championships. If she focuses on cleaning up a bit more, on nailing her landings, and on adding some artistry into the routine, you never know what she could be capable of.

Questions answered by Sarah Chrane, Lauren Hopkins, and Jackie Klein