Yearly Archives: 2020

Stuff and Nonsense

Things Are Happening – May 12, 2020

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A. USA is canceled

USAG announced today that the 2020 editions of Classic and Nationals are officially off and that we all just have to reset for the 2021 editions instead. Sigh. Previously, the party line had been that these events were postponed and that USAG would reassess possibilities for holding them in late summer or fall, but that always seemed like a pipe dream. You can’t really set a date (or venue) for nationals if you can’t set a date for athletes to return to their gyms first.

In a statement, USAG said, “Listen up, pee heads, we have literally no reason to try to organize these meets without crowds because then we can’t charge 8 million gold bars per ticket—or, I mean, after consulting with public health experts and in an effort to protect of our community and the wider world, we will not hold nationals this year.”

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Gymnastics History

Olympic Beam Finals: A History, Part 2 (1976-1996)

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Part 1

Montreal 1976

1.Nadia ComaneciROU19.950
2.Olga KorbutSOV19.725
3.Teodora UngureanuROU19.700
4.Ludmila TourischevaSOV19.475
5.Angelika HellmannGDR19.450
6.Gitta EscherGDR19.275

Nadia Nadia Nadia. Much Nadia. With an extra dash of Nadia. The Olympics of Nadia—in which Comaneci came away with three of the five individual gold medals—also produced perhaps the least controversial Olympic beam champion of all time. I mean…uh doooyyy.

Comaneci’s beam routine in 1976 raised the difficulty stakes well beyond the “OMG an acrobatic element” world of the 1972 Olympic by incorporating a front aerial, a side aerial connected to back handspring, a series of back handsprings, and a cartwheel into a layout double full dismount in an event-final routine that easily outpaced the rest of the competition in both difficulty and execution.

Awarding a 10.000 to her event-final routine really prickles the old anxiety muscles given her not-close-to-stuck dismount, but the superiority of Comaneci’s routine compared to the rest of the field is indisputable.

The race for gold may have been ultimately uneventful (Comaneci ended up needing only 9.800 in the final to win, and home girl wasn’t getting some 9.8 on beam like a common farmhand), but the race for silver proved dramatic, coming down to the beam queen of the previous Olympics—Olga Korbut—against The One Who Wasn’t Nadia—Teodora Ungureanu.

In 1976, Korbut was still a strong gymnast and not the “why is she so old and gross now?” bucket of bolts of popular conception whom the New York Times evaluated as follows: “At times her hair was messy and her smile a hollow grin. She was an also‐ran.” Great.

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Stuff and Nonsense

Things Are Happening – April 30, 2020

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A. Bad Maggie

Oof. I’m out of practice with this, it’s been so long. How does one…say…the things…that are happening?

A week on from when USAG told those involved that it would be announcing a verdict in the Maggie Haney affair (CALENDARS ARE HARD, Y’ALL—what with the days and the boxes), we learned today that Haney has been suspended for eight years for ruining the life of national treasure Laurie Hernandez. Haney can apply to be reinstated after those eight years and would then be on probation for a further two, but eight years is a loooong time…

Laurie discussed the mental toll of training with The Haney in an instagram post today, and everyone went, “You could tell by that leg pose.” Burned into my brain.

In the most recent information about this case, we also learned that Riley McCusker was among the athletes who affirmed to the hearing panel that Maggie sucks, which had not been confirmed during the initial hearing. Remember when we were playing the “but Riley could stay with Maggie because she’s 18” game? Ye…no.

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Gymnastics History

Olympic Beam: A History, Part 1 (1952-1972)

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1952 Helsinki

1.Nina BocharovaSOV19.22
2.Maria GorochovskayaSOV19.13
3.Margit KorondiHUN19.02

The first Olympic medals for excellence on the best apparatus (see: website, name of) came at the 1952 games in Helsinki. Because when you think of a celebration of summer, you think of Finland.

Team gymnastics had appeared in three previous Olympics (1928 Amsterdam, 1936 Berlin, and 1948 London), but those games did not award medals for individual performance to women the way it did to men because women existed only as sentient collective globs until 1952, when science figured out how to break them off into individuals.

While beam medals were handed out for the first time in 1952, no separate event finals were held at these Olympics. Individual medals were based entirely on scores from the team event, much like the current NCAA format.

In another olde-tyme departure, competitors in 1952 were permitted a second attempt of their compulsory routines if they didn’t care for the first one and wanted to retake the SATs to see if they could get a better score—though the second score had to count, even if it was worse than the first.

Most significantly, the Soviet Union made its Olympic debut in 1952 and immediately went, “I WANT ALL THE MEDALLSSSSS,” taking both gold and silver on beam, but also charitably allowing Hungary to win a bronze because of throwing scraps to the peasants.

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