It’s time for the 97th 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.

What are the dates for the U.S. Olympic camp and when will the team travel to Rio?

The U.S. Olympic team and alternates arrived at the ranch yesterday and have a nine-day training camp before traveling to Rio next week.

Hey Lauren! I thought it was interesting when you were on Gymcastic talking about Romania, and saying they didn’t have a lot of faith in their new seniors and generally rely too much on their veterans. Do you think Russia is falling into that a bit? It seems like they named their Olympic team so early and are generally making it harder for the younger girls to break into the picture.

In a way, yes. They had so much talent coming up from the junior pool this quad, with ten who basically should have been Olympic contenders, including four who turned senior this year. I think they did a good job at molding and shaping those who reached the senior level earlier in the quad – Maria Kharenkova, Seda Tutkhalyan, Daria Spiridonova – but for those who turned senior this year, no one ended up really translating aside from Angelina Melnikova and it’s possibly because they basically said eight months before the Olympics that none of them would matter.

That said, Russia does do a better job than Romania at getting talented juniors to the senior level, and they also do a good job at giving bubble girls – aka the girls who aren’t leading contenders and might never make a team but you never know – international assignments. I think it was premature to say “we want four of our five 2012 Olympians back this year!” but I also don’t think they fully gave up on other girls in the way Romania did. Right now, you could build a Russian team with all girls who turned senior this quad and they would still be competitive for bronze. Compare that to Romania, which lost most of its girls who turned senior this quad. I think with Russia it’s kinda like…here are the girls who could best fit this team, but we also have a ten-person Olympic training squad and we’re sending our back-ups out regularly, whereas Romania is like “you were crappy at worlds and because of that, we are bringing Catalina Ponor back.” Like, after 2014 aka halfway through the quad they had already given up on the young talent, whereas Russia at least stuck with their own new seniors this whole way through and never demoted them to “lesser” gyms.

I went through Romania’s new seniors for the 2013-2016 quad and they had about 25 girls with promising junior careers turning senior in these past four years, and really none of them made it to a respectable senior elite level aside from a small handful. So that’s more about their ability to take girls to the next level than prematurely naming a team. Russia is mostly good at getting the girls from point A to point B, and then it’s up to the girls to beat out any returning Olympians for team spots. Russia hasn’t had an ideal quad, but there’s nothing as endemically wrong with the inner workings of their program compared to Romania, which needs a redo from top to bottom if they ever want to get close to their former glory.

In a fantasy world, the U.S. could send two (maybe even three!) full teams to the Olympics. Given the depth of the U.S. field, who would you assign to create two (or three!) well-balanced teams which could potentially land on the podium in team finals?

I wrote this out before Alyssa Baumann was injured and had to withdraw from trials, so she’d be out, but I’m keeping her in anyway. 🙂 I also wanted a full team from Texas, so I’m including Bailie Key and pretending she’s where she was circa last summer at nationals. I used a three-up three-count situation using scores from this year’s nationals for everyone except Bailie and Maggie, who are going by 2015 nationals and we’re just going to pretend they’re in that same condition of health. I tried to evenly space them so that everyone would go up on at least one event in finals. Naturally, any team with Simone is skewed because her scores are superhuman. But all three of these teams would easily challenge for the podium in Rio.

TEAM ONE – 183.75 average

• VT- Smith, Baumann, Key, Biles
• UB- Smith, Biles, Key, Kocian
• BB- Key, Baumann, Smith, Biles
• FX- Kocian, Key, Smith, Biles

TEAM TWO – 180.6 average

• VT- Gowey, Douglas, Hernandez, Skinner
• UB- Skinner, Douglas, Hernandez, Locklear
• BB- Skinner, Gowey, Douglas, Hernandez
• FX- Gowey, Douglas, Hernandez, Skinner

TEAM THREE – 179.2 average

• VT- Hundley, Dowell, Nichols, Raisman
• UB- Raisman, Hundley, Nichols, Dowell
• BB- Dowell, Hundley, Nichols, Raisman
• FX- Hundley, Dowell, Nichols, Raisman

Note that I made some qualifications decisions (like Skinner over Gowey and Raisman over Schild on bars) for all-around purposes like Martha Karolyi would have to do if these were actual teams. Of course much of this scoring is domestic and I don’t like comparing between meets (especially fake team scores to real team scores), but for reference and as a kind of fun guide, Team One (aka the Texas team) would’ve defeated the 2012 U.S. team by two tenths, and the other two teams would’ve placed ahead of the 2012 silver medalist Russian team. Basically, scores aside, all three of these teams would be highly competitive at the Olympic level.

At what age did girls like Ragan Smith and Laurie Hernandez start gym? Did they start in the usual preschool class? I read Ragan’s mom coached her so surely she was working on big skills fairly young.

Many gymnasts who are at the elite level begin the sport in “mommy and me” classes at recreational gyms when they’re toddlers, mostly around age two but some go even younger! Then others, like Alicia Sacramone, don’t start gymnastics until they’re around eight but they quickly are able to progress through the levels due to a combination of natural talent and hard work.

For those two gymnasts specifically, Ragan was four when she started and it’s because her mom was a coach. She would play around in the gym as a toddler until she was old enough to start taking legit classes. Similarly, Laurie was five when she started in recreational gym. So yes, they start in the usual recreational non-competitive preschool classes just like everyone else. I don’t think Ragan would start working on big skills super early just because her mom was a coach, and she didn’t even come to elite with a ton of “big” skills – just really good basics and technique that would make it easy for elite-level coaches to mold her into a someone who could someday do big skills.

That’s how it is for many…you might not even know they’re going to be on an elite track until you see they’re able to do 300 leg lifts in a row and have perfect form on super basic skills, and then they test through the roof at TOPs and can do great compulsory work…those are the kids you know are ready to move on to the big elite skills, and back when Ragan and Laurie were about ten, that’s how they started getting attention from national team staff. Both had super low difficulty at that point, but you could see that they wouldn’t have a problem adding big skills as they continued to grow.

Is the toe-on 1.5 named for Ashley Priess after she did it at 2006 worlds? I remember Ivana Hong also did it but it was by accident…and yet she still connected it to a Tkachev.

The first to do this skill was Anneke Lucke of the Netherlands at world championships in 1999, and the skill is officially named for her in the code of points as an E level skill. I don’t know why commentators and fans don’t refer to pirouette skills by the originators’ names in the way we do with releases, but that’s probably why when Priess (and Hong, accidentally!) did this skill, we didn’t realize it had already been done and named in the past.

At this year’s NCAA Championships, in the floor final, I heard the commentators mention how the more difficult the routine, the better your chance is at winning. Does the difficulty in NCAA matter?

Not really…as long as you meet all requirements, you’re all starting off on the same page at a 10.0 as opposed to elite whereas if you have a 5.0 SV on floor at the elite level, you’re starting out at an almost two-point deficit behind Simone Biles on the same event. So a routine with the most basic tumbling possible can outscore a routine with multiple E passes, though I think judges do tend to appreciate the extra difficulty and depending on the judge or the meet, they might be more lenient with form deductions if you’re doing a piked full-in as your last pass when most girls are doing double tucks. I think this year, Talia Chiarelli had one of the most difficult floor routines at nationals this year, but she got a 9.7125 to place 80th. In Michigan, that same routine in front of a home crowd maybe would’ve gotten a 9.9 if performed well, with some of the more nit-picky form deductions ignored if she otherwise did a great job with the level of difficulty she competed.

I have a question about NCAA beam routines. Are gymnasts expected to perform with their beam music? Does musicality count towards beam artistry?

Gymnasts aren’t expected to perform with beam music, and at meets with four teams going at once, the gymnasts on floor have their music playing so the gymnasts on beam aren’t able to use their “beam music” at the same time. Mostly, beam music exists as a way for the girls to get comfortable performing their routines and to cue them for certain elements or choreography bits. Some girls really do perform when their music is on, notably Chayse Capps of Oklahoma and I absolutely died at one of LSU’s Erin Macadaeg’s performances this year as well. Like, they had the rhythm down and performed every skill to the music like the whole thing was choreographed to fit it. But most, like I said, use it as a guide and tend to go with calming/soothing choices, or more upbeat songs that inspire confidence. One girl this past year used a recording of her brother singing “Hallelujah” which was awesome. Musicality doesn’t count toward beam artistry, but with artistry being a factor, music can help you get to a point where your artistry can grow so that you don’t need the music to perform well once you get to regionals or nationals.

Does Shawn Johnson have any skills named after her in the Code of Points?

No she does not. It’s funny because the switch side on beam is named for Kathy Johnson and whenever I see “Johnson” in the code of points I always think, like, “Shawn Johnson was the first person to do a freaking switch side?! How is that even possible?!” but then I remember and I can relax.

Looking at the code, what are your thoughts on the devaluation of the Amanar to 5.8 and the Produnova to 6.4? Also, how a jump full turn on beam is the same as a sheep jump (C)? Do you think the FIG is trying to encourage different mounts and dismounts by upping the value? Why did they take out the D dismount requirement?

The devaluations of these – and all – vaults doesn’t actually mean much because the CR for bars, beam, and floor were all knocked down by five tenths, so they brought most vaults down by about 3-5 tenths in order to have them match up more evenly with the remainder of the events. So, like, a 6.5 UB routine now minus the D dismount CR is going to come in at 6.0…so it wouldn’t have been fair to do that to bars, beam, and floor and then keep an Amanar at a 6.3 and a DTY at a 5.8 and so on. They’re basically just having the vault start values reflect the changes of the other start values, rather than pushing to devalue vault on its own.

I can’t be sure what their reasoning is for changing various skills, but often what comes into it is like…the popularity of it? If a skill is rated an E, but everyone does it easily, maybe it shouldn’t be worth so much…whereas a skill rated a D that no one does probably should get a boost to make it more worth the risk, if that makes sense. I’m also not sure why they decided to dash the D dismount…I think those with harder dismounts are still going to do them, because if they’re doing an F or a G dismount, they’re still going to get those extra tenths for the skill value…but at the same time, it does encourage a greater number of dismounts aside from the 2.5, double tuck, and double pike we usually see, and it also will allow girls from programs that aren’t as strong to do a C dismount without taking a huge 0.5 hit on their routine for missing the CR, which could make things more competitive.

Do you think it’s a good idea that China won’t be sending any of their top gymnasts to international competitions prior to Rio? With all the injuries happening, I’m starting to think it’s a good thing to do.

In theory it sounds like it would help them reduce the chance of injury, but I think injuries tend to happen more in training than in competition, as we saw with Liu Tingting’s freak injury on her pak. Personally, I think it’s always a little scary to come out and compete without any kind of dress rehearsal. They did have their nationals, which are on a big stage in front of a crowd and involve a team competition aspect, so I guess they consider that just as valuable as going to an international arena…and aside from European countries who competed in Bern or those who traveled to the test event, there are really no big “preparation” meets that offer that much more value than nationals. Like, the U.S. competed at Jesolo and Pac Rims, but neither of those fields replicated the kind of competition they’d see in Rio this summer, and they probably could’ve just stayed home and been fine doing domestic meets only. While I personally am nervous for China to not be able to get their feet wet at an international meet before the Games, their reasons for following this strategy are likely to stay in their bubble with no “distractions” before the big show. It also allows them to keep expectations intriguing, pretty much…

Have a question? Ask below! Remember that the form directly below this line is for questions; to comment, keep scrolling to the bottom of the page. Keep in mind, we sometimes get about 50 questions a day and can only answer usually around 30 or so a week, so don’t be discouraged if we don’t get to you right away. We do not answer questions about team predictions nor questions that say “what do you think of [insert gymnast here].”

Article by Lauren Hopkins