It’s time for the 60th edition of You Asked, The Gymternet Answered! We apologize if we haven’t gotten to your question yet, but we try to answer in the order in which they were received (unless they are super relevant and need to be answered in a timely manner). Something you want to know? Ask us anonymously by going through the contact form at the bottom of the page.

Why does Simone Biles not have a second vault with higher difficulty? She’s arguably one of the strongest gymnasts in history and I find it hard to believe she wouldn’t be able to land a second vault with a 6+ start value. In my opinion such a vault would make her unbeatable in a vault final.

She’s been working on a Cheng, but she’s done remarkably well without it so I don’t think there was any real rush to add it in. She’s probably taking a lot of time to perfect it because she doesn’t really NEED it right now, and there’s no sense in pushing for a higher difficulty when she can get on the podium without it and keep the stress on her body at a minimum.

Do you think that Gabby Douglas has a realistic shot at making the Worlds team?

Absolutely. She has an incredibly good shot at making the team as a core member! She and the other four gymnasts who are high up in the mix have been top five at every meet this season and it would be really surprising to see any of them left out at this point. She could help out on bars and beam especially, but with a great all-around score, also has the potential to be one of the U.S. gymnasts with a chance at the all-around final.

Do you think Romania can come back to the level they were at before? What Romanian gymnasts are more likely to receive a good result at Worlds and who do you think will be able to increase their difficulty to achieve a 7.0 start value?

Well, I don’t know if anyone can get a 7.0 start value anywhere…Larisa Iordache on beam is probably most likely but I don’t know if it’ll actually happen. Their problem is depth and no strong juniors rising up into the senior ranks, so one or two 7.0 routines won’t be a solution to getting them back to their previous level. They rely too much on gymnasts from previous quads instead of pushing for better development programs, so really they need more restructuring at that level, especially once Catalina Ponor and Sandra Izbasa get too old to keep making comebacks every few years. To me, it seems that they give up too easily on juniors who don’t immediately become superstars when they join the senior ranks, and so a lot of gymnasts with potential tend to slip through the cracks. Hopefully they’ll be able to fix this with some of their younger generations because Ponor isn’t going to be around forever!

I know that Rio is still far away, but in your opinion do you think anyone can actually challenge Simone Biles for that all-around gold or do you think she is unstoppable?

I don’t think there’s anyone in the world who can hold a candle to the combination of high difficulty and clean execution. There are gymnasts with high difficulty and gymnasts who are clean, but I don’t think anyone has the combination of the two to the extent that Simone has. So yes, if she stays healthy, she is unstoppable.

How do you think Gabby Douglas handled the move from Chow’s to Buckeye’s in terms of media interviews? Do you think she somehow entirely blamed Chow for “having” to switch gyms?

I don’t think she really blamed Chow at all…and whenever I’ve spoken to her and the move has come up, she has been entirely respectful (and her coaches also have a very good relationship with Chow). Switching gyms in the elite world is always weird because it’s such a tight community, so the majority of splits tend to happen with as much respect as possible and that’s all I’ve seen from Gabby in my experience. Even if there’s more to it, the way she’s responded to it with the media has been respectful.

Three-ish years ago, there was a period of time that the Caquattos left Legacy and went to go train at Texas Dreams. I’ve always wondered what happened with that. Why did they decide to leave Legacy and head to TD for that brief time? I believe Macko was already in school. Any insight?

I had always heard that they weren’t satisfied with the level of coaching they got after Anna Li came back to elite, since Anna was the daughter of the Legacy Elite coaches/owners. At this point, Macko was both injured and at Florida so I don’t know if she ever actually trained at Texas Dreams, but rather just changed her affiliation in her national team bio for the 2011-2012 season. I did hear that Bridgey trained in Texas until she went to Florida the next fall, but didn’t train elite, just spent her time there preparing for college.

Why is it that gymnasts who create difficult skills seem to have an easier time competing them than gymnasts who try it afterwards (i.e. Produnova, Patterson)? Surely it should get easier to compete a skill rather than harder, as there is previous experience and technique to learn from?

Using Produnova as an example…someone like Produnova had a lot of power and a great propensity for forward-flipping skills, which is why she decided to take advantage of these talents and put them into a very difficult – but dangerous – skill. Most of the strongest gymnasts in the world who have a similar propensity for this type of vault tend to put their focus elsewhere, which is why you don’t see girls like Simone Biles or McKayla Maroney throwing Produnovas, and then the only other ones doing it are the ones without the correct technique or training to land them well but who realize that it would be worth it for the high difficulty value involved.

Aimee Boorman and Christian Gallardo were saying that girls like their gymnasts, Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas, can absolutely throw big vaults like Produnovas on vault or triple doubles on floor, but they’d also rather get through their careers without major injuries which is why you don’t see gymnasts doing the maximum of what they’re capable of. So those with that good technique and power could probably compete a Produnova but don’t because it’s not in their best interest, and instead you’re basically just seeing gymnasts who aren’t as qualified.

That’s the case for most of the absolute most difficult skills…but then there are some top level gymnasts who do compete these skills and who do them very well, sometimes as good as or even better than the original, like Aly Raisman with the Patterson, Simone Biles with the full-in off beam, everyone who does great double doubles on floor, etc. I think the Produnova is just a special case because it’s SUCH a risky skill…any skill can result in injury but some, especially vaults like the Produnova or the TTY or the Yurchenko double back, basically come with a death warning. 

What would you think of gymnastics having a Four Continents Championships for non-Europeans like in figure skating?

I think it’d be awesome…but possibly difficult logistically? And they’d have to really put limits on how many a single country could send because otherwise the competition would be overwhelmed by the same gymnasts who basically run the show at Worlds and the Olympics so you’d have like, the U.S. on one team, Russia and some Romanians on another, and then the Chinese and some Japanese…and then some Aussies on their own. So it wouldn’t be as fun…with figure skating there is a three person per country limit but because there are more disciplines, it’s easier to spread the wealth…with five or six person teams in gymnastics, to make it more inclusive they’d need to do something like one per country. That would actually be a cool event to see every two or four years or something.

Any news on Nica Hults? I know there was lots of teen girl drama recently, and I heard she got grounded and lost phone privileges. But I love her gymnastics and would love to see her really step it up and make a bid for Rio!

She has said she wants to continue with elite going into the next season and seems to be working very hard in that respect, doing extra training outside of the gym (working with a personal trainer and running), eating healthier, and even going to inspirational speakers as motivation (she talked about going to a Tony Robbins seminar on her ask.fm account). She also recently got a new floor routine choreographed by Dominic Zito so I’d say she’s really invested in coming back to elite and can’t wait to see it happen! I think if she wasn’t competing with an injury last year, she would’ve been a lot more highly regarded so hopefully she’s able to stay healthy and at least make a run for Olympic Trials next year.

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Article by Sarah Chrane and Lauren Hopkins