Lieke Wevers

It’s time for the 269th edition of You Asked, The Gymternet Answered!

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Which countries would you rank as the top three on each event overall at the moment?

Vault — United States, France, and Italy, with honorable mention to North Korea (if they can figure out how to hit, they’d probably be the #2 team on vault).

Bars — Russia, United States, and China are consistently the top three and I don’t see that changing anytime soon, but Germany is close…at the highest level, they have Elisabeth Seitz, Kim Bui, Sophie Scheder, and Emelie Petz doing tremendous work, but bars tends to consistently be the strongest event program-wide even at the lower levels, so they get a mention for that.

Beam — China is miles ahead in terms of the combined quality and aesthetic of beam routines, the United States matches them in terms of difficulty and execution, and then behind them I’d say I probably go with Canada as my number three. They consistently qualify gymnasts into major international finals on beam, have two of the strongest beam workers in the world right now with Ellie Black and Ana Padurariu, and so many of their routines are just lovely…and they get bonus points for Brooklyn Moors putting more emotion into her beam category than most gymnasts put into their choreo on floor.

Floor — United States is super far ahead of everyone else, Russia is probably second right now which is fantastic considering this has been a rough event for them as a team this quad (at one point going into worlds I thought they might actually have a stronger floor team than bars team but then they ended up bringing two fantastic bar workers), and then I’m going with the Netherlands for my third. You might be thinking “they’re just pretty, they don’t have difficulty!” but that’s not true at all! They just pack their difficulty into dance elements…sneaky but it’s there, and I think they were in the top five (or close to it) in terms of combined floor difficulty at worlds this year. But I realize this is a more subjective/opinion-based thing. I think Great Britain is also up there, and produces more successful floor workers on a major international stage.

Why did Jade Carey switch her second vault? Couldn’t she be the first to do a Kaz 1.5?

She switched it so she wouldn’t have two backwards flights, which limits what she can do in the air. If she did a kaz 1.5, aka a back layout with two and a half twists (remember that  “kasamatsu” or “kaz” includes one full twist in the name, so a kaz 1.5 is actually 2.5 twists), she couldn’t also do an Amanar, which also includes a back layout with two and a half twists as its post-flight. Just as there is a rule that states you can’t have the same pre-flight in both of your vaults, you also can’t have the same post-flight.

If Jade wanted to do an Amanar, she would’ve had to either stay with the kaz full, or upgrade to a kaz double, which didn’t seem super likely. If she wanted to upgrade her kaz double to do a 1.5, then for her Yurchenko vault, she’d either again have to do a double or a triple, with the double too low in value and the triple — never-before competed in WAG — not super likely.

The other option would’ve been to keep the kaz and then change her Yurchenko vault to a Yurchenko half-on, but I don’t think the national team staff would’ve let her scrap the Yurchenko to keep the kaz. On average, judges tend to reward Yurchenkos much higher, so even though the kaz/tsuk vaults are worth 0.2 higher than their Yurchenko counterparts (e.g., a kaz full is a 5.6 while a DTY is a 5.4), the kaz/tsuk family vaults are harder to compete, harder to upgrade, and they get slaughtered by judges, so they’re really just not worth the struggle if you’re going for the podium in a world or Olympic vault final.

The best-scoring option for top WAG vaulters is the Yurchenko and Yurchenko half-on combo, which is why Jade stopped doing her kaz vaults and started training a Cheng while continuing to work on her Amanar. It’ll be cool to see her maybe go back to her kaz roots in NCAA, but for elite, it just wasn’t ideal to stick with it.

Has there ever been a deaf/hard-of-hearing gymnast at a high level?

Yes! The most well-known is Marie Roethlisberger, an alternate for the 1984 Olympic team and a huge NCAA standout at Minnesota who was almost completely deaf. She’s the most accomplished among deaf or hard-of-hearing gymnasts, but there have been others, like Aimee Walker Pond, who competed at UCLA and BYU and was both completely deaf as well as blind in one eye, and there have been many in the J.O. levels. A couple of years ago, a 13-year-old level 5 was big in the news, with the mainstream media of course being like “she will be trying for the 2020 Olympics!!!” despite her being (a) too young and (b) a level 5, but hey, it was still a cool story.

How does USA Gymnastics determine qualifying scores for elite and nationals?

I don’t know how they initially determined it under the open-ended code of points, but it has basically followed the same sort of standard going back to that point. I’d imagine they saw what U.S. elites were earning on average, and then chose a score that would allow for a good number of gymnasts to pass, but still leave about half or two-thirds at home, making these events more prestigious but still somewhat attainable. Since they initially determined the scores, they adjust slightly based on the code, so after the 2017 code was released, they brought the qualifying scores down by two points, which was about what gymnasts would be losing from their scores based on the difficulty changes on vault and on losing 0.5 CR on the other three events.

I do think they should go by numbers instead of scores, because some years you could have 50 gymnasts capable of getting the required scores and other weaker years you might only get 15, which I don’t really love…it makes things feel so lopsided, especially when they end up having to do multiple junior sessions at classics and you have gymnasts there who got their scores at a qualifier where Carol was in charge and so these gymnasts that normally would get a 45 end up getting a 52 and it’s like…no. I guess it makes sense to have a score for classics since it would be impossible to rank across multiple qualifiers, but then from classics to nationals I’d prefer something like the top 20 or 25 from classics.

Results aside, who are some of the nicest or friendliest gymnasts you’ve met or interacted with, past or present? What questions do you like to ask gymnasts when you see them?

So many gymnasts I’ve met have been absolutely lovely, so the answer to this would be literally everyone. There are a few who are a bit more…tense?…in the mixed zone because they’re under a lot of pressure or are overwhelmed by the number of people who want to talk to them, so occasionally you do get someone who is a bit short with you, but that’s pretty rare and I’ve never had a “bad” experience interviewing anyone.

A lot of gymnasts are shy, especially because I’m an “adult” and they’re usually a lot younger than me, especially when I talk to juniors, so I appreciate when gymnasts are a bit more chatty or outgoing because it just becomes more fun, and then there are a few that I’ve now known for a while so the “interviews” are more chatty than just like “how did you do today?” Morgan Hurd, Nina Derwael, Sunisa Lee, Farah Ann Abdul Hadi, Aneta Holasova, Leah Griesser, Kim Bui, Danusia Francis, Houry Gebeshian, Elisa Hämmerle…these are probably the ones I’ve had the best interviews or chats with. Aly Raisman was also super fun to chat to in her comeback…she was also very nice in the 2012 quad, but in 2015-2016 she was just so much more insightful and well-spoken. We once talked one-on-one for about 20 minutes after a nationals session and it was fantastic. Oh, and ALL of the Canadians…I do a lot of coverage in Canada and have been speaking to a lot of the girls on the team since about 2013-2014, so whenever I get to see them at meets — especially Brooklyn Moors, Shallon Olsen, Ellie Black, and Ana Padurariu — it’s always a lot of fun.

In terms of questions, I usually start out with a more general “just tell me about your day” kind of thing because that kind of helps them say what they want to say right from the start without me prompting too much. I also like to ask really specific questions based on that particular gymnast’s experiences…like when I asked Farah Ann about competing at the SEA Games on home soil, she lit up and seemed genuinely surprised that I knew that about her. We had a great conversation that came out of that. And then with someone like Shallon, at worlds last year we talked for about 15 minutes about all of her college experiences because she had just started her freshman year and she had so many stories about getting used to college life.

It really just depends on the gymnast. You can tell some want to be a bit more chatty or have fun with it, and then others are fairly conservative with what they want to talk about, or just shy in general. I usually try to figure out the vibe and then go from there.

Do you think some gyms try to push their athletes into committing to a specific college, like a lot of MG Elite girls going to Florida and Texas Dreams girls going to Alabama?

I don’t think they necessarily push their gymnasts to attend certain colleges, but I do think that gymnasts at the same club often want to continue competing with their club teammates in college and that probably affects their decision more than anything their coach says. Texas Dreams has gymnasts all over the country, and didn’t have a particularly large amount at Alabama, with Peyton Ernst and Bailie Key originally both going to Florida…and then both ended up moving to Alabama, and I think that was pretty much because they’re best friends and had nothing to do with their club gym’s influence. I think where the coaching staff comes into play is likely the Midwest/Auburn connection because the Grabas are brothers and if gymnasts trust their club coach, they’re going to trust when he recommends his brother’s collegiate program.

What makes Riley McCusker’s technique so great that she doesn’t have a ton of built-in deductions?

Her attention to detail is beyond what we see from most gymnasts, in pretty much everything. If elite had compulsories at the international level, she’d win by a lot. She is so precise and exact absolutely everywhere, and I think it’s clear she’s a perfectionist, so she takes all of the fundamentals in her gymnastics and applies them to her more difficult skills in a way that most gymnasts aren’t really able to do. Sometimes a gymnast could have the perfect building blocks, but these little things get sacrificed when you’re doing a super difficult skill that requires power, timing, balance, and so on. But Riley only loses her basics on a couple of skills, like her bars dismount when she first releases or on her DTY (which I think is too difficult for her to do with a focus on every little detail, though a skill like that is still going to score better than an FTY thanks to the vastly higher difficulty, so losing a few tenths for the little things is ‘worth it’ there). Generally, almost every skill she does has textbook technique, and so where other gymnasts might get deducted for a lack of leg extension on every beam skill, Riley gets almost nothing deducted there, and the majority of her deductions come from actual mistakes/wobbles.

Could Jade Carey have been a contender for 2016 if she had been performing at her current level?

I think she would have been a contender, but she would have been in the exact same boat as MyKayla Skinner and likely wouldn’t have made the team.

Do you think Giorgia Villa is going to be the next Vanessa Ferrari?

Yes! This has generally been the feeling about her since she was 12, and it’s amazing to see that she’s following through with the expectations everyone had for her. It’s a ton of pressure to be called the next big thing at 12, and most don’t end up making it happen. She’s had her bumps along the way, but she’s had great growth throughout her career, and even if a world all-around title isn’t as likely given that the competition is a million times tougher than it was in 2006, I think if she can get her beam a bit more consistent and bring her bars execution up, she will be right up there, especially if she continues into next quad.

Who are the women’s artistic Olympic favorites right now? I know Simone Biles, but I’ve heard of “the four” talked about and I’m not sure who that is. Is there a chance for someone random to sneak in?

I haven’t heard of “the four” as a reference to anyone in the United States specifically…you’re probably hearing “the four” because the team is four people in 2020. I think as worlds selection proved this year, there are a great number of gymnasts who are going to factor in, and whoever makes it will just come down to who’s looking best at trials. I’d say aside from Simone, it’s going to be Morgan Hurd, Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum, MyKayla Skinner, Riley McCusker, Kara Eaker, Leanne Wong, and Kayla DiCello most solidly in the mix for the team and non-nominative individual spots, but I do think we still have time for someone to show up next season like “surprise!” and slip in as a dark horse contender. Emma Malabuyo has slipped out of contention for most people due to her injuries over the past couple of years, but I could see her getting back in if she’s healthy.

Why do you think EVO was selected as the interim training spot for the U.S. women’s team? Does it have to do with Aimee Boorman working there? Is it a notable program in Florida?

I don’t think they would have in any way ended up at EVO without Aimee being there to kind of facilitate that process. EVO isn’t a super well-known gym at all at the higher levels, but it’s a super new gym (it opened in 2016) and it already had a very strong and growing J.O. program. I’m guessing once the ranch closed and the women’s program started scouting various gyms to use for camps, Aimee probably got in touch and was like hey, brand-new facility here! It was beneficial for USA Gymnastics to have that connection, and beneficial for EVO to get press as the temporary national team training center, which I’m sure boosted its registration numbers.

Do coaches receive any rewards for their athletes’ successes? 

Yes, lots! There are lots of ways for coaches of successful athletes to be recognized, with the most notable in the U.S. being the “coach of the year” award they give out at nationals, but there are also lots of award for various club coaches throughout the year, and many federations and NOCs around the world have similar awards for top coaches each year.

We often hear commentators mention that an athlete catches the high bar a bit close or a bit far, “by their fingertips.” If gymnasts aren’t bending their elbows or doing anything else funky, do they get deducted for catching slightly far or close?

Well, if you catch close, your elbows are going to bend a bit to accommodate being close, so it’s almost impossible to avoid catching close without your arms also being incorrect. Otherwise, in addition to the bent elbows, you’d likely also get a deduction for not getting the amplitude in your release. But I think if you catch a bit far and have to really stretch to grab the bar, it’s usually almost subconsciously a good thing because it basically shows the judges that you got great air on your release, and so they’d be less likely to deduct for lack of amplitude. Obviously you want to find that happy medium between big air and being close enough to catch, so some of those fingertip catches are a bit nerve-wracking,  but if you manage to hold on, you’re pretty safe from huge deductions.

Do you think if event finals in Beijing had been in Olympic order, the results would be different? Why did it go in a different order for that Olympics?

I don’t know if changing the order of how the events happened would have changed the results all that drastically…I mean maybe having vault and floor in the same day made Cheng Fei a little off her game, but aside from something like that, I don’t think things would have been too drastically different.

I’m not sure what the reasoning was for changing up the order for Beijing, but the Olympic order is always a bit weird with sometimes putting two events on one day, or sometimes just one event. For Tokyo, it’s going to be vault and bars on the first day of event finals, then floor on the second, and then beam on the third, which like…why? Some weird TV scheduling thing? It can’t be arena timing, since artistic gymnastics is the only thing happening in that arena on those days.

Has Gabby Jupp retired/gotten injured again?

Gabby just announced her retirement a couple of weeks ago, sadly! I think the nonstop injuries just became too much for her, and although it was admirable to see her to continue pushing through into her early 20s despite all of those injuries, I’m glad she is  listening to her body and doing what’s best to stay healthy.

Is there a reason nationals are in the summer and worlds are in the fall? Wouldn’t it make more sense to host nationals later on and use the scores to determine the worlds team and do away with the selection camp? Especially if they’re doing upgrades at camp…why not do them earlier in front of a major audience?

My guess is that they hold nationals in the summer because it’s not just for worlds contenders; there are many gymnasts eligible to compete at nationals who won’t be in the mix for worlds and who don’t sacrifice school to do elite, especially at the junior levels. To accommodate the amped up training and travel related to meets in the U.S. elite season, it makes sense to do them during summer vacation and then have a separate trials immediately prior to naming a team for world championships.

When does a bars pirouette finish in terms of when they measure the angle? Is it when the gymnast is facing the right way or when her hand is back on the bar?

It’s kind of both? My instinct answer was “when it’s complete!” but I realize that doesn’t really answer you when you’re asking when is it complete, lol. Basically when it’s entirely finished, including all aspects like direction and hand placement, that’s when the angle of completion is measured.

Are forward layouts really more difficult than backwards on beam and floor? Or is it just a personal preference?

On beam, yes! MUCH harder. No one has ever competed a front layout. You need a bit more momentum than you do for a back layout, and that compared to the blind landing on a four-inch-wide surface makes it insanely difficult to master. Front layouts in general aren’t super hard, and a front layout on floor is fairly easy for most gymnasts. But because you can’t get the same kind of momentum into front skills on floor that you can get with a roundoff back handspring into backwards skills, the front counterparts of all backwards skills are much harder.

Some do prefer front acro to back acro, and some really do excel at forward elements, but the best front tumblers are always going to be a step behind the best back tumblers because they don’t have the means for generating  the momentum needed to do the more difficult passes. We’re at a place right now where a few gymnasts have competed 3.5s, with the back quad next on the horizon, but for a front layout, the triple full only just got named a few weeks ago. Simone Biles just did a back triple double, but the most we’ve seen with a double front in WAG is just a half-twist (though I’m gonna need Brooklyn Moors to eventually get a full-out).

Do you think the FIG will ever ban or discourage straddle casts?

I don’t think so? I don’t think there’s any reason to ban them.

Why are there no uneven bars releases done in tucked positions and no floor skills done in straddled positions?

There are uneven bars releases done in tucked positions, but they were competed much earlier in the history of the sport and have been kind of phased out since more difficult release positions became more popular. There also used to be straddled tumbling on floor, and I don’t know the exact reasoning why we saw these leave the code because I wasn’t following the sport that far back, but I’d guess like many other skills, they were a trend of the time and as the sport changed, so did some of the skills. Also, I think you couldn’t really do like, a double straddle back or whatever, so the straddled tumbling that I’m picturing is like, side straddle flips, and the fact that no side tumbling exists at all on floor anymore, it could’ve been something like no longer allowing any side elements meant all straddle elements were dead.

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Article by Lauren Hopkins