It’s time for the 24th edition of You Asked, The Gymternet Answered! We apologize if we haven’t gotten to your question yet, but we are trying to answer them in order. Something you want to know? Ask us anonymously by going through the contact form at the bottom of the page!

Has there been any indication of where the 2016 Pacific Rim Championships, American Cup, and U.S. Nationals will be held?

U.S. Classics, Nationals, and Olympic Trials were just announced! For the women, Classics will be in Hartford, Nationals will be in St. Louis, and Trials will be in San Jose. Pac Rims and American Cup haven’t been announced yet, but the American Cup is often held at Madison Square Garden in NYC during the Olympic year, so I’m crossing my fingers for this to happen again.

People always say judging is subjective. I am wondering if there is a software that can standardize how the gymnasts look, then show the routines to the judges. How different would the scores would be?

If a computer could watch and judge routines, what need would there be for human judges? I’m sure there’s some tech genius who could create algorithms for skills and whether or not it’s done correctly, but computers couldn’t judge things like musicality, facial expression, and other performance requirements for artistry. Subjectivity is what makes the sport so great because it welcomes the interpretations and opinions of several people at once and combines them into an average score, whereas with computerized judging, the sport would end up looking pretty robotic, we think. It would end up looking more like a compulsory where each detail of an individual skill is scrutinized for perfection, but none of the aspects of the sport gym fans love so much – i.e. the artistry aspects – would really matter anymore. Maybe we can have computers for the technical side and humans for artistry? 🙂

What’s going on with Victoria Moors? Is she in the gym or taking a break?

All we know is that she is not currently training for elite gymnastics, or wasn’t when we last checked. She posted photos a couple of months ago during the filming for Full Out and said something about it being the first time she’s been back in a leotard (since Commonwealth Games) so while we don’t know her exact plans, we can come to a pretty reasonable guess that elite isn’t going to happen anytime soon even if she does have a comeback in mind for the future.

How come Giulia Steingruber has only been competing an FTY for her second vault?

She wasn’t feeling at her best during Worlds this year, so she downgraded because she knew she wasn’t going to have enough difficulty to medal and decided not to risk a more difficult vault for like, a fourth place max spot in an event final and for a slightly higher spot in the all-around. Smart, although she did go on to injure herself on vault at the Swiss Cup. Frustrating! Hopefully she has some time to get well this year so she’s at her best for the big meets!

I was wondering why the U.S. has seemed to be weak on bars in the last quad. I remember the U.S. had some very good bar workers at one time. Is it because more of the U.S. gymnasts are muscular and powerful therefore not allowing for the beautiful lines, or is it more about technique? The Chinese and Russians always seem to have beautiful bar workers, but even Elena Produnova (who was more muscular and powerful) had a world class bar routine. I don’t want to take anything away from Kyla Ross, Gabby Douglas, or Ashton Locklear, but something seems to be missing.

In our opinion, it has nothing to do with body type really, but more perhaps on the developmental process of U.S. gymnasts who progress through the J.O. system. The J.O. system is not necessarily designed to produce elites, whereas I feel like international developmental systems that are in place in countries like Russia or China are more geared toward molding elite gymnasts. This creates more of a focus on putting together the kinds of bar routines that succeed on the elite level. Just look at Russia…sky-high Jaegers, clean pak saltos, inbar work, and full-out dismounts are basically compulsory bar skills for any Russian gymnast! Most Russians can do these elements with relative ease, because they’re likely part of their development as girls hit the age where they begin to enter an elite track.

At the same time, I think aesthetic plays a large role in how fans determine the quality of a bar routine. A shorter muscular gymnast could have identical technique to a tall, lean gymnast but most skills on bars just look ‘prettier’ when you have a girl with naturally lovely long lines performing them (the pak salto, for example). Technique is often confused for aesthetic, so when you have a girl who can hit a technically perfect routine but not look like 2012 Viktoria Komova while doing it, she’s not going to be as highly regarded as a bar worker. I think Locklear is one who is able to hide some of her technique with her nice aesthetic (she even fooled many of the U.S. judges!), and then I think someone like Rebecca Bross is a good example of someone who didn’t have a really nice aesthetic but who actually had a technically awesome routine.

Can gymnasts change their nationality to compete for a different country but still train at home? For example, if a gymnast lives in Russia but wants to represent Azerbaijan, is he/she obligated to move to Azerbaijan? Or if a gymnast lives in Australia but wants to represent Romania? Is moving necessary?

We’re pretty sure it’s not residency, but citizenship that determines where an athlete can compete. Lots of American gymnasts have citizenship in other countries and compete under other national flags despite living and training in the United States (think Aya Mahgoub and Khazia Hislop…both live in Massachusetts and train at Brestyan’s, but Mahgoub competed as a member of Egypt’s national team and Hislop can represent Trinidad & Tobago because they are citizens of those respective countries). What ‘citizenship’ requires might be different for each country…Mahgoub and Hislop didn’t have to live Egypt or Trinidad to obtain citizenship, but Oksana Chusovitina is also a good example of the other side of things…she moved to Germany for her son’s medical needs, but she had to wait three years before she could earn her German citizenship. She represented Uzbekistan while living in Germany for those three years, but then once she obtained German citizenship was able to compete for Germany.

Why is the Amanar/Shewfelt vault worth only 6.3 in MAG but worth 6.6 in MAG? Is this a ‘popularity’ contest since it seems like women do more Yurchenko vaults and men do more handsprings so you have to downgrade the difficulty value that way? It would be good to keep all element difficulty values constant between MAG and WAG so we can have better comparison on vault and floor.

Tsuk or handspring vaults are much more common in MAG than they are in WAG, and Yurchenko entry vaults are more common in WAG because they tend to generate more power. Men are capable of generating a lot of power from tsuk or forward entry vaults so they don’t necessarily need to do the roundoff for that extra ‘oomph’. I don’t necessarily agree in making the SV equal between men and women because gymnastics at the elite level is very different for the two. An example is the Produnova vault, which very few WAG gymnasts attempt and even fewer land successfully, but then you have Dragulescu vaults in MAG that are super common, and they’re decidedly more difficult than a Produnova. A Produnova is basically the peak of women’s vault difficulty at the moment, but because it’s a vault many men can perform, it wouldn’t be fair to have it be equal in difficulty to the WAG version. Also, some of the most difficult tumbling we see in WAG is seen as just average for MAG. If a male gymnast performed the same tumbling as, say, Simone Biles, he wouldn’t come close to contending for a medal on the world stage because the difficulty of those passes in MAG isn’t as high as it is in WAG, for the simple reason that more men can do those passes, rendering them technically less difficult for men.

Do you think there’s a possibility, even a very small one, that a team can beat the United States at Worlds next year? Or is it impossible to do so? If so, which team do you think has the biggest chance?

There’s always a possibility because anything could happen, but unless the United States has a disastrous team finals meet with multiple falls – like, two on each event – or if the top gymnasts are injured and unable to compete, I don’t think the likelihood is very high, especially as the U.S. team expects to add a considerable amount of talent to the pool this year, both from juniors and from returning seniors who were injured or on hiatus. China is probably closest, as they already have a pretty strong group and then should add some great vaulting and floor work from Wang Yan, and if Russia can add Viktoria Komova and Ksenia Afanasyeva back in the mix with high-difficulty bar and floor routines, respectively, in addition to Maria Kharenkova becoming more consistent and Aliya Mustafina looking healthier, maybe they’d stand a chance as well. But the U.S. had such a big margin in 2014, and it seems likely they could widen that gap even further this year.

Who do you think are the biggest all-around prospects heading to Rio?

At the moment, Simone Biles, Bailie Key, Larisa Iordache, Aliya Mustafina, Yao Jinnan, and Rebeca Andrade stand out as the greatest all-around threats, but that’s just at this moment in time. Anything can change in the next year…and that includes athletes having rapid advancements in their development. At this point last quad, I wouldn’t have come close to mentioning Gabby Douglas’ name, so it’s impossible to say who else can jump on this list!

Do you see Aliya Mustfina continuing gymnastics after Rio and going all the way to Tokyo?

I mean, it would depend on two things…the needs of the Russian team and whether she’d want to continue that far. She seems to really like being on a team and even more than that, leading a team, so I can see her wanting to stick around to guide her younger teammates. I can especially see this happening if none of the younger prospects are able to step up to her level and they continue to rely on her work ethic and difficulty levels, though I can’t see her physically competing at her current level (i.e. a world class all-arounder) for that long. Who knows, maybe she does have it in her, but it seems to have already taken a toll on her. I’d kind of like to see her become a sort of specialist and then make these big teams to win some event medals, but stick to just one or two events in a team final so she’s not forced to carry the team as she was this year.

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Article by Sarah Chrane and Lauren Hopkins