Aliya Mustafina

It’s time for the 246th 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 were Aliya Mustafina’s bars deductions at worlds?

She just had a looser-than-usual quality to them, meaning she wasn’t super tight on any of her skills and had lots of little adjustments everywhere, so while overall it looked like a lovely and strong routine, she ended up having these minor 0.1 deductions for pretty much everything, which adds up.

So this is me watching on a video and I won’t be able to get the same vantage points as the judges, but in her qualifications routine in Doha, she had a 0.1 adjustment on her first kip cast to handstand, she was about 0.1 shy of handstand coming out of her stalder full, her Maloney was caught with bent elbows (0.1) and her body shape was a little loose because of that close catch (also 0.1), her Pak angle was slightly off (0.1), her feet were sickled (0.1) and legs not together on her van Leeuwen (I’d say when she caught, her legs were far enough apart for a 0.3 deduction), she was slightly short on the toe full at the end (0.1), and she had about a 0.3 hop back on her dismount. That comes to 1.3 in deductions from me, and I just checked her score and see that her average was an 8.633 so it looks like some judges were roughly where I was, but they may have found something with her Jaeger (I didn’t, I thought it was gorgeous) or something else I didn’t see (I also thought her full-in was perfection in the air).

All of that being said, her form was gorgeous on the majority of the elements she performed. Her feet are almost always pointed and she’s super clean on each individual piece…for me it was about the adjustments, angles, and positions when catching or finishing certain elements that could be better. I have no doubt these things will all become a focus for her going forward, though! Literally none of them are at all major issues, it’s just that when they exist in every skill, they add up. Literally if she just fixed her van Leeuwen and her two pirouette angles, she’d be at a 9.2 or 9.3 E score in no time because she’s so clean in her skills.

As someone who is new to NCAA, what do the terms mean, such as redshirt and walk-on?

A walk-on is a gymnast who doesn’t commit to the program as a scholarship athlete, but still participates as an athlete on the team. Many walk-ons don’t end up competing at all, a few end up doing exhibitions or getting comfortable on one event or something and end up consistently making that lineup, and a small handful will end up becoming stars within the program, sometimes getting a scholarship in their junior or senior season if the teams have an opening to give one away.

A redshirt is an athlete who gets injured and uses a fifth year of eligibility. All athletes get four years of competitive eligibility in NCAA, and they have five years in which to use them, so if someone gets injured and has to miss a season, she can still compete all four of her years by taking a redshirt year and thus staying in the program for five years instead of four.

Do gymnasts blink in the middle of routines?

Yeah! It doesn’t affect anything and they don’t even think about it.

When Nastia Liukin said she wasn’t doing floor in 2012 because “so much changed on the event” was she referring to the fact that gymnasts had to stick the landings?

I think that was part of it…but also, I think it had something to do with building difficulty and element values/connection values changing as well? I don’t have a code of points from 2006-2008 so I can’t do comparisons, but I do know that Nastia didn’t have a lot of super difficult tumbling (I believe she did a front full to front double full, double front, 1½ to Rudi, and 2½) and a routine like that wouldn’t have translated well at all into the 2009-2012 code, not in a way that would have made her competitive enough to be used in a team competition, and so it became kind of pointless for her to do it in 2012, especially because they had a good number of gymnasts with super high difficulty. That’s also part of it…not just the code changing, but the fact that gymnasts got SO GOOD on floor between Beijing and Rio. There were some good floor workers in 2008, but I think the level of international difficulty grew so much over the next quad, making a routine that was among the best in the world in Beijing pretty much irrelevant four years later when everyone could do double doubles and double layouts and a three-part combo pass like Aly Raisman’s opening line.  

Did gymnasts get more or less height with the old vaulting tables? Did it take long to adjust?

I believe they got about the same amount of height…but with the way the horses were padded, it was harder to get a good block. They didn’t really have any spring to them the way the current tables do, so the current tables make it much easier for gymnasts to get height than the old ones did.

What happened to Evgeniya Shelgunova and Yulia Belokobylskaya?

Evgeniya competed at a regional meet in Russia in 2018, but injured her elbow shortly after and did not compete at nationals or again in the rest of the season. I believe she is still training…at least in some capacity, as I’ve seen fairly recent photos of her in a gym…but I’m not sure how realistic an elite-level comeback will be. We shall see! As for Yulia, it’s been almost six years since she has competed. After not being named to the Olympic training squad, she continued training for a bit, but then she retired in 2013 and began transitioning to dance.

In 2012, Nastia Liukin missed her Pak and basically did a messy hip circle around the low bar. Would it be possible to do that FOR REAL and do a Hindorff off the low bar? What would that combo be worth?

It would be highly improbable, since no one really does same-bar releases on the low bar, but it’s definitely possible. Same-bar releases on the low bar aren’t currently rated, so I’d have to go with what a Hindorff is rated on the high bar, which is an E. The combo would be D + E, both being flight elements, so it would get 0.2 in CV. The total value of this combo would be 1.1, but assuming they rated low bar releases a tenth higher than the same release done on a high bar, making the low bar Hindorff an F, this would be worth 1.2 total.

How do D and E scores work in the perfect 10 system? How is difficulty determined? Does this system also have composition requirements?

Requirements are pretty much the backbone of this system. In NCAA, for example, a routine has to meet certain composition requirements like two separate bar changes on uneven bars, or an acro series on beam. A gymnast who has all of the required element values and then also meets the compositional requirements will meet the minimum start value of 9.5. To get to a 10.0 start value, gymnasts then add bonus, which can be earned either from skill value (D elements are worth 0.1 while E elements are worth 0.2) or from connection bonuses. A gymnast can go above and beyond in the “bonus” section, like MyKayla Skinner does with her floor routine, but whether you do the bare minimum of 0.5 for bonus or whether you do three E passes in your routine, you still can only have your start value be at a 10, nothing higher, which is why most gymnasts will just aim for the bare minimum, because that’s easiest to keep tidy to ensure a high execution score.

What happens to your scholarship if you medically retire? Do you still get your degree paid for or do you have to pay for the rest of school yourself?

You still get your education paid for, but your scholarship spot opens up room on the team for the program to bring someone else in. I remember UCLA a few years ago had multiple medical retirements in a short space of time and since teams only get 12 scholarship spots per season I was like damn, they’re only going to be able to have like five people on the team because everyone is medically retired…but then I asked someone about that and they said a medical retirement doesn’t come out of the team’s 12 spots, so it’s like the best of both worlds in that they can keep getting a free education without compromising the depth of the team.

Do you think there are long-run advantages to the British team having so many of their stars injured given that they have a new crop of girls getting international experience?

Yes, absolutely! Like it sucks that they had so many injured this year and ended up missing the team final at worlds as the final nail in their 2018 coffin, but on the bright side it was great getting to see SO many girls get opportunities they wouldn’t have gotten if everyone was healthy. I think Kelly Simm truly stepped up as a fantastic leader this year, and I loved getting to see her and younger girls like Alice Kinsella and Georgia-Mae Fenton medal individually at Commonwealth Games. I think once Claudia Fragapane, Amy Tinkler, and both Downies are back in top shape, it’s going to make it difficult once again for these other ladies to make teams, but it was great seeing that even with every single star out of contention for most of the year, they still held their own at most meets.

If Valeri Liukin was a good vaulter, why wasn’t he a good vault coach? What makes someone a weak coach on certain events, especially if they were good on the event themselves?

Sometimes it’s not about “being a good ___ coach” but rather about having gymnasts that aren’t naturally strong on that given event. Based on the body types of almost every WOGA elite, it was clear they weren’t going to be churning out Amanars on the regular. I’m sure Valeri can coach vault just fine, but he was also pretty limited with what he was working with, and although he didn’t get a lot of power vaulters, his vaulters pretty much all had gorgeous form on the event…which is an obvious sign of a good vaulter even if that vaulter doesn’t have the power to be doing higher difficulty.

What are your favorite past or present Canadian leos?

I love literally every single leo they have ever worn, honestly. But the blue to white ombré with the maple leaf is a stunner, and I also love the one Shallon Olsen wore in vault finals in Doha. And anything that’s all red. But literally everything is great. They’re the one country I think consistently never has a leo where I’m like “uhh what are you doing.”

On Gymcastic, they mentioned that Peng Peng Lee sometimes makes an adjustment with her leg after the double turn on beam. It doesn’t get deducted in NCAA, but probably would in elite. How would you think her beam from this year’s Super Six would’ve scored in elite in terms of E score? Which deduction would have been taken? What about bars?

Yeah, I remember live blogging and seeing that and being like “adjustment after the turn” but then she’d get a 10 and I’d get so frustrated that the judges never took it, but there are a ton of things in NCAA that the judges don’t seem to care about so I just have to LET IT GO. Watching her beam now with a SUPER PICKY eye…I’d probably take a tenth for the prep into her back handspring and at least three tenths for the landing on her layout because her feet were apart and her chest was horizontal (slash her layout would probably get downgraded to a pike in elite). Her turn would have a couple of 0.1 deductions, including one for the adjustment, and then she’d probably get some minor body shape deductions on her layout, but like…super minor. Literally all of these pickier deductions are deductions they almost never take in NCAA, with the exception of her layout landing, though. Going back and watching, I would think even NCAA judges would take away for that. But I get it. Heat of the moment. Peng. It’s impossible.

With the ability for athletes to qualify individually through world cups, what if a country wins more than two individual apparatus titles and they also already qualified as a team?

There is a tie-breaker procedure in place for countries that win more than their share of apparatus world cup titles. If a country is eligible to qualify two nominative apparatus spots, but they end up winning on three events, the gymnasts with the highest FIG score totals will win the tie-breaker. This will be determined at the final apparatus world cup meet in the series so that there is no confusion – everyone will know whether they’ve qualified or not on that day, as opposed to having to wait for the federation to choose or whatever the original plan was.

Do you think any of the high-performing college gymnasts – Maggie Nichols, MyKayla Skinner, Sarah Finnegan – would either come back to elite or try it again?

I doubt it for most. I don’t know why people always think the girls who were elites will come back to elite after college but it happens for maybe 1% of the elite gymnasts who go to college because by that point, not only are they mostly physically and mentally done with the sport, but they’re also just ready to move on with their lives. Many get married, go to grad school, get jobs, and have financial responsibilities, so going back to training just isn’t an option even for those who really want to come back. If anyone was to come back, I’d say MyKayla would be the most likely based on her saying she’d like to and considering the fact that she has basically done elite difficulty in every single one of her 120 or so collegiate routines over the past few years, and her body is in better shape than pretty much ever, which I don’t understand at all.

Is Canada planning on sending gymnasts to the individual world cups? Do you think someone could get an Olympic spot?

As far as I know, they might send a couple gymnasts in 2019 but I’m pretty sure they know the likelihood of qualifying gymnasts this way is slim. It makes sense for them to send them this year, but then it’s going to come time for them to send a team to qualify to Tokyo at worlds in October, and they’ll have to weigh whether they want their apparatus cup gymnasts to go as individuals or if they’d rather have them help qualify them. Like, Ana Padurariu proved in Doha that she could be a legitimate contender for an apparatus spot, but they’d more than likely want her on the worlds team this year. To me, it makes sense to send her to a couple of the apparatus cups and see how she does. If it looks like she’ll be a no-brainer to qualify a nominative spot, then maybe they’ll choose to keep her off the worlds team, but I doubt it. I think they’ll want their absolute top squad for worlds this year and then anyone left over can try the apparatus world cups in 2020. Really, though, their best options for qualifying additional Tokyo spots are the all-around world cups and continental championships. They have a strong shot at getting two non-nominative spots this way.

If Simone Biles had gone to UCLA, do you think she would have been as dominant as she is in elite or do you think it would cut that opportunity for her to pull so far ahead? What if elite was still under a 10 system?

It would depend on whether they kept her training her elite difficulty throughout the NCAA season, or how quickly she’d be able to get it back once it came time for elite season again. She’s someone I can definitely see taking an extended break for NCAA and then quickly switching back over to elite, so I think she could still be pretty dominant, especially at worlds, though she’d probably not want to do a full NCAA season and then the Olympics a few months later, so she might just take a year off in the Olympic year or something. If elite was under a 10 system, she’d definitely be a star in both, no questions asked.

Is it true Rhonda Faehn lost the U.S. a medal in the 1988 Olympics?

It was Bela Karolyi’s fault, not Rhonda’s…Bela asked her to move a springboard during Kelly Garrison’s routine, so Rhonda moved it but realized she’d have to cross in front of the judges to go down the podium stairs, so she crouched in the corner of the podium for the rest of the routine. It turns out this is a five-tenth team penalty, which the judges – led by the East German judge, which was shady because the East Germans were in fourth place three tenths behind the Americans – decided to vote on. It passed 3-0, and the Americans were bumped from the bronze medal position to fourth place. Bela claimed he had no idea that this rule existed, and he and Martha both blamed Rhonda for the penalty in front of the rest of the team. Now, Martha fully blames the East German judge, because apparently it was common practice for someone to move a springboard and then wait in the corner of the podium, but they only took the penalty for the Americans, not for any other team doing this. Either way, it wasn’t Rhonda’s fault…it was partly Bela’s for not knowing the rules, and partly the East German judge’s for realizing what was at stake and playing the shade game.

Why has Daria Spiridonova’s gymnastics kind of crumbled?

Everyone goes through periods where they’re not as invested in their sport and I think that’s really all it was for her. She said on an Instagram post at one point that she got really out of shape and gained weight, but laughed it off like it didn’t really matter to her, so like, good for her. She said she was gonna work on getting back into shape, and she actually looked so much better at Cottbus compared to the Russian competitions in the spring and summer, so I’d say she’s back on track and could someday again be able to contribute for the team, at least on bars.

What were Larisa Iordache’s chances of medaling at worlds last year if she wasn’t injured?

I thought she had a great shot at all-around and floor medals, and then possibly also beam as well, though it’s hard to say how that routine would have been scored given the insanity that was happening with beam scoring last year. It was a shame…I think it was her best shot to really be dominant at the world level and I still can’t believe her bad luck.

What is Gabby Douglas doing now? Do you think she will compete in 2020?

I believe she’s going to be on a celebrity reality show or something? She’s definitely done with gymnastics and we won’t see her in 2020.

Do you know where they found Lauren Mitchell’s 2011-2012 floor music?

Well I have no idea how they personally discovered it but it was a Freddie Mercury song called “Besame Mucho” and since a ton of gymnasts were trying to go with London/British vibes on floor, so she was probably like “I want something British-themed” or “I want Queen” or whatever to keep with those vibes.

Based on their final vaults, do you think Shannon Miller should have won the 1992 all-around over Tatiana Gutsu?

OOOOF. I can never answer this. For me it was one of those “could’ve gone either way” kind of finishes, which were common in finals without open-ended scoring because titles ended up being decided by hundredths of a point, as was the case here, with Tatiana winning by 0.012. They were almost identical throughout the entire meet and I hate ties but this is like the one instance where I would have been absolutely fine with one.

They were both fab on bars, they both had adjustments/bobbles on beam, they both had some landing issues on floor (Tatiana notably getting a big hit on her split-leg double layout, Shannon on a couple of her passes)…it was like an identical day and I’ve watched this final a few times now and find it impossible to separate them to determine who should win.

Coming into the final rotation, Shannon was fourth, so she had a lot to make up for on vault and she MORE than did her job, but Tatiana had the lead and did what she needed to do to keep it. Shannon would’ve needed a 10 on vault to win, and while her first vault looked pretty close to perfect, I agree with it not getting a 10. Tatiana’s second vault (the better of the two) wasn’t as perfect as Shannon’s first, but they were separated by what made sense back then with her getting a 9.95 to take the gold.

I just went back and rewatched the vaults and think with Tatiana’s leg separation and chest down, there maybe should have been MORE of a separation between her and Shannon on that event, giving Shannon the gold, but you could also say that there could’ve been more separation between her and Shannon in the other direction on other events so I guess yes, if this competition was decided JUST on that final rotation, Shannon wins it, but if floor had been last, I would’ve given it to Tatiana. Really one of those “impossible to decide” competitions for me.

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Article by Lauren Hopkins