It’s time for the 103rd 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.

Does WOGA have any talented up-and-comers? Do you think they’ll continue to be successful?

WOGA has a few really talented young gymnasts at the junior level, including this year’s Secret U.S. Classic champion Irina Alexeeva. Unfortunately, Alexeeva couldn’t compete at nationals because she doesn’t have U.S. citizenship, but hopefully that’s in the works and she’ll one day be able to compete for the U.S. They also have some younger up-and-comers like Sloane Blakely, Audrey Davis, and Deiah Marie Moody. Sloane is very promising, and she has a totally different style from some of the more successful WOGA gymnasts we’ve seen over the years, so it’ll be interesting to see if they get her to the next level. Morgan Trevor is also quite good, though didn’t compete elite this year (she showed a decent beam routine at the WOGA Classic and then competed HOPES this summer, where her beam was again a standout). She only just turned 12 a couple of days ago, so it’s possible we’ll see her in elite next year!

Do you ever think that the U.S. selection process is a little unfair? It almost seems like the girls have to be ready a year beforehand and those who aren’t but peak at the right time don’t have a fighting chance.

I mean…yes, in the sense that you can have the best day of your life at trials and it won’t matter, but at the same time, gymnastics isn’t a sport in which you can judge athletes based on one single meet. Say a gymnast is known for great skills on beam, has a 7.0 start value, amazing technique, but she can’t mentally compete and falls on every single beam routine in the quad. Then she shows up at trials and hits it for the first time and gets a 16, the highest beam score of the quad which would be automatic beam gold if she hit like that in Rio. But would you really want her on the team with a hit record of one or two out of however many routines she had competed? You could argue she’s peaking right when it counts, but you could also argue that based on her past history, those hit routines were a fluke.

I like Canada’s selection system because it assigns weights to meets similar to how grades are weighted in school…homework is 10% of your grade, quizzes are 15%, the final exam is 30%, etc. In that system, a gymnast could literally kill it at trials, but the rest of her meets also factor in pretty heavily. The U.S. system doesn’t have set percentages weighing each meet, but it is similar in that how you perform at trials is important, but your entire body of work leading up to that one meet counts more.

Trinidad & Tobago made a big mistake last year in saying that “whoever gets the highest score at worlds goes to the test event!” because Marisa Dick, their stronger gymnast, was dealing with injury and ended up a few tenths behind Thema Williams. Dick had the overall better body of work, but Williams happened to win that one decision-maker meet six months before the test event. Had they said “whoever is the stronger gymnast overall goes to the test event” Dick would’ve been the clear shot, and in the end, they realized this and opted to give her the berth last-minute. Had they never made that “whoever is better at worlds” statement, they wouldn’t have had that problem going forward, and that’s why the U.S. never says anything that definitive like “top five at trials go to the Olympics!” because so much goes into it beyond that. From what I heard, Martha Karolyi was reluctant to even say “whoever wins all-around at trials gets an automatic spot” hahaha, but usually obviously that gymnast will more than likely be on the team as a given.

If you were to make the 2016 Olympic team using any five U.S. gymnasts from all-time, who would be on your team?

Hmmm…tough one and I’m sure I’ll leave people out because I always do accidentally. I’m not going to go by what would be the highest-scoring team because it’s impossible to say how gymnasts from the 80s or 90s would’ve competed as gymnasts in 2016, but rather one I would’ve chosen based on personal preferences among the top gymnasts the country has seen. That team for me includes Kim Zmeskal, Shannon Miller, Simone Biles, Nastia Liukin, and for the last spot…probably Aly Raisman, because I love Aly, because she’s the epitome of a team leader, and because she’s one of the most decorated female U.S. Olympic gymnasts of all time! (And because I love her, in case that wasn’t clear.)

Are gymnasts required to do the all-around at the test event if they want to qualify as individuals? Or can they qualify as event specialists?

Yes, they unfortunately had to compete all four events, which is why we saw Oksana Chusovitina casually bust out bar routines this quad! They not only had to compete all four at the test event, but also at the previous year’s worlds in order to earn a spot at the test event, which really sucks for specialists because the only way a specialist could get to the Games was by winning an event medal at the previous year’s worlds, which really sucked for someone like Krisztian Berki, the 2012 Olympic pommel champion who missed the final at worlds last year in a fluke. He probably could’ve medaled this summer, and yet he didn’t even get the chance to be at the Games. Thankfully that will change in the coming quad, so hopefully he’ll continue and be back for 2020…he just won the pommels final at the world cup in Szombathely today with a 15.833, a score that would’ve tied for silver on the event in Rio, so something tells me he’s definitely not done!

What allowed Yelena Produnova to consistently land her eponymous vault? I’m surprised no one has been able to mimic her success there!

I think it’s because she was the only one of her caliber to ever compete that vault. Today, the only gymnasts who go after such a scary skill are those who wouldn’t otherwise do well in finals and so go balls to the wall with difficulty even if they don’t really have the strength/technique to back it up. I wrote about this a little bit for SB Nation this summer, because there is a definite correlation between gymnasts from countries with fewer resources/strong coaches and gymnasts who do the Produnova. A Produnova doesn’t take much skill or finesse and you don’t need world class coaches to teach it in the way that you need them for more intricate skills. The good technique and coaching would make it more consistent and clean, more along the lines of Produnova’s, but you can get by on this vault without either as long as you have power and guts. Even if you sit it or butt graze it, you’re looking at a 15+, which is higher than most would get with a hit DTY, DTT, or Rudi, vaults with lower start values but that require more technical expertise.

Girls from countries with stronger programs like the U.S. could probably produce some incredible Produnovas, but they don’t even bother to try them because frankly, they don’t need them. Simone Biles was a couple tenths from vault gold at worlds last year with a 6.3-valued Amanar and a 5.6-valued Lopez; she didn’t need a 7.0 start value to boost her in the rankings. Could she probably land a Produnova with relative ease once she began training it regularly? Yeah. Absolutely. But for her, it’s not worth it to go for something so risky when she has similar levels of difficulty from vaults that won’t physically destroy her body. I think if top gymnasts started training and competing Produnovas, you’d see them surpass the level even Produnova reached herself, but because the only gymnasts doing them are those without the technique, talent, and expertise we see from top programs, it’s not surprising that these vaults wouldn’t be as strong as the originator’s.

Oksana Chusovitina kind of falls in the middle here, because she definitely has plenty of resources and great coaches so she doesn’t fit that whole “I’m doing a Produnova to bring attention and funding to my country’s developing/struggling gymnastics program” trope that the other three with Produnovas fit. For Chusovitina, her technique isn’t as strong on her twists, so she’s heavily deducted compared to others when she performs things like her Rudis and DTTs. But Chusovitina has a lot of pride for Uzbekistan, where she was born, and both of her Olympic medals came when she was representing other countries (the Unified Team made up of former Soviet states including Uzbekistan in 1992, and Germany in 2008). Her goal is to earn an Olympic medal for Uzbekistan, and so she really had to up her difficulty for Rio if she wanted to make that happen. The Produnova was the only way she knew how to do it, and while she got close at times — her attempt at the world cup in Mersin was actually pretty great! — she just doesn’t have the power/technique needed to make it a consistently strong vault.

Was the team final vault competed by McKayla Maroney in 2012 really perfect? Do you think she did a true stick?

I mean, I don’t think anything done in this sport is really literally perfect. And obviously Maroney’s wasn’t perfect in 2012 because if it was perfect in the judges’ eyes, it would’ve had a perfect score and it didn’t. Literal perfection aside, that vault was about as close to perfect as we’ll ever see, and you can say the same about some Amanars we see from Simone Biles. If you break Maroney’s down and start picking it apart, you can notice little things like leg separation on the pre-flight, one foot crossed over the other in the air, and a super slight bend in her body position on the last twist (so slight that some judges may have said “I’ll take a tenth” but others would’ve ignored it…a total judgment call, especially when it happens so fast in real-time, some might not even have seen it). But yes, I think it was a true stick…she held it long enough before jumping to the side for her salute. You don’t have to stand there for several seconds or anything to “prove” your stick, you just have to show that you’ve absorbed the landing without your feet moving and she did exactly that before saluting.

What is the jump that men do out of their tumbling passes? It looks like a stag jump with flexibility deductions. Can they be deducted on it?

Haha, it was actually really funny during this summer working on “Daily Dismount” because we had a big crew of people who didn’t know a lot about gymnastics and they found this little jump out so funny and we had big crew guys doing it like “omg can I be in the Olympics?!” Jon Horton kind of explained it to us a little and from what I remember, it’s something to do with not being unable to take “unnecessary” steps, so when one pass is finished and they have to move into the other, they do the little jump to move into the next element rather than just walking over to it. It’s not a jump or leap or really a skill at all, so they don’t get deducted for lack of flexibility on it. It’s just a transitional move…I guess if you tripped and fell while doing it, you’d get a deduction just like the women would get a deduction if they tripped and fell during their choreography. So think of it more as choreo than an actual skill.

How were there two Egyptian gymnasts at the Olympics in London 2012?

The continental representation rule for the Olympics states that every continent must be represented by at least two gymnasts (aside from Oceania, which must be represented by at least one). Generally, it has been rare to see gymnasts from the African continent qualify to the Games, so even if they don’t qualify outright, it’s still guaranteed that two will get Olympic spots. In 2011, the only gymnasts from Africa to compete at worlds were from South Africa and Egypt, and no gymnasts from either country qualified in their own right. Originally, one spot went to each country, but the South African Olympic Committee typically doesn’t fund Olympic spots for athletes who qualify through continental representation because they see it as a “pity” spot, and so South Africa had to turn their spot down. The FIG still had to fulfill the two-per-continent rule, however, and so the top two gymnasts Egypt had at worlds ended up getting both of these spots.

What happened to Cuba’s Yesenia Ferrera between 2014 and now?

She suffered an injury on vault at the world cup in Anadia last spring, the only time she competed in 2015. She hoped to make it back for worlds, but that summer was apparently kicked off the national team due to disciplinary issues, according to this article.

I watched a video of Rachel Gowey’s 3.5 on floor and there was an extra mat when she landed it. Why is this?

Gymnasts are allowed to have an extra mat on floor for some passes if needed because if they’ve been dealing with injury or whatever, the extra padding helps absorb the shock of the landing. You see it more often in NCAA where they compete every single week…as long as the mat has the floor boundaries drawn or taped on so the judges can see if they go out-of-bounds, it’s totally okay to have the four-inch mats out there.

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