It’s time for the 99th 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.

If Russia is banned from the Olympics due to the doping scandal, would Australia then be able to send a team? Who would they put on it?

Yes, Australia is the reserve team and would be allowed to send a full team, and then Marina Nekrasova from Azerbaijan would move into Larrissa Miller’s individual spot. Australia would obviously send Miller, and then probably the alternates Emily Little and Lauren Mitchell as well as this year’s all-around champion Rianna Mizzen, most likely. I’m not sure who would go for the fourth spot…likely one of the gymnasts who competed at the test event like Emma Nedov or Georgia-Rose Brown. I know Little, Mitchell, and Mizzen have all been staying mostly prepared, so I’m sure they’d be able to throw something together pretty quickly but it would still suck for them to get so little notice.

Do you think the Canadian team can improve on their fifth place finish from the 2012 Olympics?

It’s possible but it’s not going to be easy. Though that’s more a testament to other teams gaining ground rather than Canada losing steam. Canada has a fabulous team this year, but some teams they beat in 2012 – Great Britain, Japan, Brazil, and Germany especially – are looking better than ever, so it’s going to be more difficult even for this super talented Canadian team to finish the way they did four years ago. They’ll be in the hunt, but it’s not going to be easy for them to place fifth let alone improve on that. It’ll all depend on how the other teams do in comparison.

Do you think we’ll ever see a Dragulescu vault in WAG?

Someday, yes. There are plenty of daring WAG vaulters trying to up the game and while most tend to stray from vaults like the Produnova because of the huge risk, I think eventually we’ll see someone who can hit a Produnova as well as the originator did and then maybe that same gymnast will also go tack on a half twist? Never say never. It’ll come about someday.

Do you think it’s weird that the U.S. team basically had two alternates at worlds last year seeing as how neither Brenna Dowell nor MyKayla Skinner competed in finals? If they didn’t want Brenna to compete, could Martha Karolyi have put in MyKayla or was it too late?

Martha could’ve put MyKayla in the team final if she wanted to (Italy had a similar swap with Vanessa Ferrari ending up sitting out after qualifications and the alternate going in for team finals), but I think Martha is generally against putting in alternates unless they’re absolutely necessary. And while MyKayla definitely would’ve added a few tenths on vault with her Amanar, the team was otherwise so far ahead, Martha knew it wouldn’t really matter. It’s interesting, because I think she also kind of was testing a five-member team to prepare for the Olympics, which is something she did in 2011 as well when Alicia Sacramone was injured and she opted to not use Anna Li in competition. Instead, she went with five, which gave them a good practice for how the Games work, especially in team finals where you can only choose from five gymnasts for three spots on each event. Given that four of those five are now on the Olympic team, they can take that experience with them to Rio. I noticed that at 2015 worlds, three other teams aside from the U.S. also opted to use five in team finals, so it’s possible this is now a strategy to help plan for the Olympic year?

Is Rachel Baumann an elite gymnast or a level 10? She competed at national championships but now is competing at the Nastia Liukin Cup.

Rachel was an elite gymnast last year and competed at P&G Championships, but dropped back to level 10 for the 2016 season, which is why she was eligible to compete at the Nastia Liukin Cup.

I’ve noticed that some skills seem to trend and then disappear for seemingly no reason. In this code, something like the hop full would be especially good for connecting two release moves so I don’t know why it’s not used today. The Markelov also used to be everywhere in the early 2000s but now nearly every gymnast does a Jaeger, which gets boring. Thoughts?

Sometimes skills disappear because they’re more difficult and yet their skill ratings don’t reflect that. I kind of went into that above with the van Leeuwen and Seitz transitions, both worth E even though the Seitz has an extra half twist. It could be that the Jaeger is just an easier skill and so it’s not really worth it to go for the Markelov when you don’t get much reward in comparison. Of course, you still do get some gymnasts who like to do unique skills and routines, but the majority like to stick to the same skills, which can also be traced to coaching. If you have a coach who teaches Jaegers all day every day but has never taught a different release successfully, maybe it’s because he/she doesn’t know how to teach or run drills for more of a variety? You see that a lot on bars where girls from the same clubs or coaches tend to have very similar routines, and that could just be because that’s what the coach teaches best.

I get the idea of training to peak later in the season, but why did Maggie Nichols hold off on her Amanar at the American Cup when she seemed to perform it consistently last season? Especially when it would’ve given her a clear chance to win?

Honestly, she looked a little bit broken at American Cup and probably just didn’t want to risk injury. Given that a couple of months later she injured her knee doing her Amanar at the ranch, it was probably for the best that she didn’t risk it in front of a huge crowd in Newark. Typically the adrenaline helps Maggie get through that vault moderately well (she always looks a little off in warm-ups but then manages to hit in competition), but if she was feeling a little banged up as it was, she probably just wanted to play it safe at the American Cup.

Why does Madison Kocian miss the connection on her inbar full to Komova II? Does she decide whether she’ll go for the connection before she completes a routine or does she decide mid-routine?

I don’t think it’s ever planned but rather she needs to feel out her positioning on the inbar full to make a snap decision as to whether she can connect it right into the Komova II. If her timing is off even slightly on the inbar full, she can miss the timing into the Komova II, which could cause a fall, so if she comes in a little late on the pirouette and can’t get the second inbar in time to still get the lift up to the high bar on the shaposh, it’s better for her to just kip cast in between, giving her a second of mental relief to slow things down and get back on track. She’s been doing much better this summer with connecting the two, which definitely comes the more you compete a connection, so I’m sure it’ll be fine for her…but at the same time it’s good that they’ve trained the routine in a way that allows her to miss the connection and still make it look like nothing went wrong.

Do you think UCLA would possibly keep Kyla Ross’ floor music and choreo from 2015? It was such a unique and awesome routine and I was upset she never fully hit it last season!

No I don’t. Generally college programs don’t keep an athlete’s elite or J.O. music, and I think especially at UCLA with Miss Val running the show, Kyla is probably in for a total revamp on floor which could be very exciting to see. I’m really hoping they bring her totally out of her shell!

Since Irina Alexeeva competed for the U.S. at the WOGA Classic when in the past, she competed for Russia at this meet, does this mean she has taken up U.S. citizenship?

She has a green card now in the U.S. which means she is on her way to getting U.S. citizenship but isn’t a full citizen quite yet. She can compete at U.S. elite meets and has qualified to U.S. elite and even won the all-around title at the U.S. Classic, but she unfortunately is not allowed to compete at national meets that act as qualifiers to the national team and she can’t represent the U.S. internationally yet due to her green card status. Hopefully she’s able to get citizenship before 2020 if she stays on the elite track!

What is happening with Peng Peng Lee? A couple of months ago she posted some videos of elite skills and talked about her plans to go to Rio. Is she just going to stick with NCAA now?

She unfortunately was dealing with injuries over the past year and while she wanted to come back and make another attempt at the elite level, she was never able to physically get it together in time. It’s a shame, because they needed someone specifically for bars, beam, and floor, and she’s gorgeous on all three…but yeah, it’s just too bad she got injured literally 300 times between 2012 and this year because it really put a major limit as to what she could handle in terms of training. Unfortunately, as badly as she wanted to come back to elite, it just wasn’t in the cards for her.

Is there really a rule that only women can judge WAG and men can judge MAG? Is there a reason for it? I can’t see why, unless a lot of former gymnasts end up as judges, but that strikes me as unlikely…

No, there is no rule! At the J.O. levels you see plenty of men judging WAG and vice versa, but I think once you get to the elite level, USA Gymnastics typically nominates those they want at the international FIG level, so most of who they pick for their judging pool ends up being former elite women and that’s who you usually see at nationals. Seriously, if you’re ever at nationals, listen to the judges’ names being called out. You’ll recognize, like, 90% of them. But take it down to J.O. and there’s no rule or anything that prevents men from judging WAG and vice versa.

Who do you think is Simone Biles’ biggest all-around threat in Rio?

Absolutely no one. Unless she falls probably twice, she will win the all-around title. A few could beat her if she does have multiple falls (namely whoever ends up getting in second from the U.S. team and then probably Shang Chunsong and Angelina Melnikova and then maybe a couple of others depending on how they look on that given day, though these are the ones who at the moment look best to get that close), but no one is a “threat” in the sense that they could sneak in and beat her if she has a great day.

How long ago did you know Kyla Ross was going to retire from elite? What are your favorite routines of hers?

I had no idea it was coming, honestly. I mean, I knew she wasn’t going to be able to hack it in terms of challenging for an Olympic spot, not with this much depth on the table…but I assumed she might wait it out until at least the summer and then either decide from there, or go through the nationals/trials/team selection process and fight for a spot but just not get one.

My favorite routine ever was her Olympic team finals beam because she went out there, did exactly what her job was, and then basically allowed herself to be in the moment afterwards and realize how important what she did was. Her moment with her coach and her tears and her teammates all congratulating her and when she said “Aly, I cried!” was just one of my favorite moments ever. I first started paying attention to Kyla in 2009 and watched her go from a talented but robotic kid at 12 to a gorgeous, mature, incredible 18-year-old throughout her elite career and have missed her so much this summer! But she’ll be incredible at UCLA and the world is so lucky we get to continue to fangirl over her for the next four years.

What’s the deal with NBC and the deduction stoplight thing? They don’t seem to understand that deductions can exist in a good routine.

They’re basically trying to help the more casual viewers understand how this scoring system works without going into a whole detailed explanation and at its core, it’s a great idea. I think what they do makes sense, though my one issue is that the average deduction size for a good routine differs depending on the event…like, I believe they have 1.3 as the cutoff for deductions on all four events, which would mean an 8.7 e-score. An 8.7 e-score on vault isn’t that great at all when the stronger vaults are all getting 9+ easily, but on floor, an 8.7 e-score is kind of incredible and is rarely seen at the international level. It would be far too complicated to get into all of that so I get why they tried to simplify it but really, if they put someone in the “yellow light” zone for getting 15 on floor with a 6.4 D and 8.6 E, I’d be like, uh, that’s actually a pretty great routine! And then similarly, a DTY getting a green light for a 14.5 when the strongest DTYs tend to land somewhere around 14.9 or higher…it just doesn’t make sense. I get where they’re coming from because they’re clearly just trying to simplify the scoring for people who aren’t familiar with the sport (it works for my mom!) but it can get a bit misleading not taking the scoring variations between each event into account.

What do you think it would take for gymnasts to not have to adhere a bubble number to the back of their leos using safety pins? Couldn’t they hold it up to salute? Or write it on a shin like a tattoo?

At the bigger NCAA and J.O. meets they have them sprayed on the outer thigh or somewhere else on the skin so they don’t have to bother with safety pins. Beyond the aesthetic of the leo being covered up or the fabric ruined, there’s also the fact that they fall off from time to time which can be super distracting to the gymnasts. I think holding it up to salute and then handing it to a coach would be the best option.

Is there an equivalent to “Brestyan legs” for the upper body?

Not really…most tend to have similarly rigorous upper body training and I can’t think of a gym that gets as into upper body training as Brestyan’s gets with leg training. The reason for Brestyan’s crazy plyos is because skills are landed on legs, and so toughening them up makes sense to protect them, whereas with arms/shoulders you’re not really needing it to be as intense I guess? You condition what you need in order to vault, tumble, swing bars, etc, but you’re not really landing on them and causing as much damage. With so many wrist injuries it’d be cool to have like, super crazy intense wrist ligament/muscle training, haha.

Is it true that Andreea Iridon retired? She had such lovely lines in her gymnastics.

I believe she did retire following the Olympic Test Event, according to this article. Andrea Raducan told the journalist here that “most of the girls are still training, but Iridon retired.” She went on to say that she wants the girls to understand what a shame it would be to retire after a year of bad results. “I think they should work together and prove that they can do much better than their performance at the test event.”

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