INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The starting gun fires, and a kaleidoscope of sparkles shoots across Rat-Breath Arena as an army of little robot-babies, each clad in her own shiny leopardtard, marches onto the gymnastic court.

On this day, when the U.S. Olympic Team of Gymnastic Girls would be named at the U.S. Classical, one sparkle seemed to shine brighter than the rest: the sparkle coming off the left hoof of a shiny goat emblazoned on the lower back of the Greatest Of All Time. That’s right. Simone Biles was back in the building.

At 24, Biles is the oldest person ever to have tried a gymnastics. Her teammates, most of them 6 or 11, affectionately call her, “Nana” and “That old hag-witch.” But while most gymnasts would have long since been required to hang up their gymnastics gloves and start popping out babies, Biles’ accomplishments earn her special consideration.

The star of the Rio Olympics, who bounced into houses all across America in the summer of 2016 because her bouncing, is widely considered the best to have ever done flips, having won world championships (it’s impossible to know how many) and long since eclipsing the records set by Soviet star Svetlana Khokrina or some Chinese girl probably.

Continue reading Simone Biles Got a Negative Zero at Gumnerstics. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next. →

A. Who’s Going to the Olympics?

The women’s competition at the African Championships finished up earlier today, giving us two brand new Olympians to add to the pile. In an upset, Zeina Ibrahim Sharaf of Egypt won the competition to get an Olympic spot over her countrywoman Farah Hussein, who ended up in second. Both had some strong moments early in the day with Ibrahim looking very poised on beam, and Hussein having to wait 784 hours for her own beam routine before pulling out a confident set without major error. Going into the final rotation on vault, Ibrahim led Hussein by just 0.3, so it could have gone either way, but Hussein crashed her Yfull while Ibrahim landed hers, giving the competition to Ibrahim.

Because it’s just one per country, Farah Hussein will not get an Olympic spot, nor will Egypt’s Jana Mahmoud, who finished in 3rd place. The second Olympic spot on offer from the African Championships instead goes to Naveen Daries of South Africa, who fell on all four routines she attempted to finish 4th in the all-around but nonetheless gets an Olympic spot because no one (who wasn’t from Egypt) did better than her.

For fans of negative scores, we did have some at this competition, but it looks like they just showed up as zeroes on the final standings.

Ibrahim and Daries will be the second Olympians from their countries as Mandy Mohamed of Egypt and Caitlin Rooskrantz of South Africa already qualified at 2019 worlds.

The men’s competition is tomorrow.

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This week also brought the announcement of four more Olympians on the men’s side, with Great Britain naming its team of James Hall, Joe Fraser, Giarnni Regini-Moran, and Max Whitlock.

The only member of the 2019 worlds team who did not make this squad was Dom Cunningham, who is understandably having his moment about it, but his results from the various trials this year really weren’t putting him in the highest-scoring team permutations, where Regini-Moran has passed him as the most useful FX/VT contributor, to join their typical top AAer James Hall, PB world champion Fraser, and Whitlock’s pommel horse.

Becky Downie also competed in her individual trial redo. I watch that first bars routine and say, “That’s all I needed. Put her on that team.”

Continue reading Things Are Happening – May 26, 2021 →

A. Classic Podium Training

Someone showed up to Classic podium training and did a lil ol’ Yurchenko double pike.

Simone Biles just landed her Yurchenko double pike in podium training and we are SPEECHLESS. 😮 #USClassic@Simone_Biles @OnHerTurf pic.twitter.com/S9YsasXoXu

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) May 21, 2021

So, this is like…too good. It’s not supposed to be this good. She did a second one after this and fully ran backward out of it.

Simone didn’t have to show up looking the most prepared of anyone at Classic podium training, but she kind of did.

Now, to the most important question: What’s it going to be valued? Timmy the Dags said on twitter that is has been given a 6.6 for this meet. And keep in mind that this would be a provisional US rating and can change once the women’s technical committee gets hold of it at the Olympics (like when the beam dismount got an I nationals but then an H at worlds).

A 6.6 is little low for me, though not quite as disastrous as it might have been (and again, we’ll see what the WTC does). I had it at 6.8 based on precedent. In the men’s code, the Yurchenko double pike is a 5.6 vault, so we can compare that to vaults that exist in both codes like the handspring double front, which is 5.2 in the men’s code and 6.4 in the women’s code. So keeping the same 0.4 progression that the codes lovvveeee, that would have put the Yurchenko double pike at 6.8. Which is where I came up with the number.

Comparing the men’s and women’s codes in this case does have its limits, however, because the Yurchenko layout 2.5 is a 5.2 in the men’s code compared to the Yurchenko double pike at 5.6. Using that logic, the women’s Yurchenko double pike would be only 6.2, which would be comically low compared to the recent 6.4-valued inventions like the Biles I.

(Meanwhile, if the double pike is 6.6, does that mean the tuck version would be 6.2? Because that’s also comically low in comparison to other vaults. Though they are redoing all the vault values for 2022, so they have a chance to address the prospective difficulty discrepancies. Ha ha ha, I do like to kid.)

A few notes on some of the other people who were there and did some things.

Chellsie Memmel – The Memmeling is happening. She participated in all four warmup rotations but showed actual full routines on two—a Yurchenko full on vault, as well as her beam with the same content as in the mock meet from her last video. She looked understandably tentative, but beam and vault should bring competitive scores. Memmel is not competing bars here, though she actually showed more content than I expected in podium training, including her double front dismount. On floor, she didn’t do any tumbling but did give us a very important dance through.

Continue reading Things Are Happening – May 21, 2021 →

A. US Classic Roster

The roster for the US Classic has been released, and she’s a big old girl. This year, 42 seniors are registered for Classic, which is extremely high for an Olympic year. At this point, the crop of senior elites has usually been winnowed down to only those who are legitimately in contention for the team or are too young to have been destroyed. The last couple Olympic-year Classics had 24 and 21 seniors, so we’re nearly doubling what is typical, which can pretty much entirely be attributed to the Olympic delay and two whole years of new seniors who are just getting their first shot now.

The size of the senior roster has forced a format change and the addition of a second senior session. The junior session will now be Friday, May 21st at 6:45pm ET (FLO), so that the first senior session can replace it on the 22nd at 1:00pm ET, with the second senior session following at 7:00pm ET. Neither senior session will be on FLO, with the first session on Peacock and the second on NBCSN. So you’ll all survive.

SESSION I	SESSION II
Skye Blakely	Ciena Alipio
Sophia Butler	Sydney Barros
Skylar Draser	Simone Biles
Addison Fatta	Jade Carey
eMjae Frazier	Jordan Chiles
Laurie Hernandez	Kayla DiCello
Shilese Jones	Amari Drayton
Hailey Klein	Kara Eaker
Temple Landry	Aleah Finnegan
Emma Malabuyo	Karis German
Grace McCallum	Morgan Hurd
Konnor McClain	Alonna Kratzer
Chellsie Memmel	Emily Lee
Elle Mueller	Sunisa Lee
Katelyn Rosen	Lauren Little
Jamison Sears	Riley McCusker
Ava Siegfeldt	Zoe Miller
Faith Torrez	Kaylen Morgan
Mya Witte	Anya Pilgrim
Lexi Zeiss	Lyden Saltness
	MyKayla Skinner
	Leanne Wong

The only significant absences in this senior field are Olivia Greaves and Lilly Lippeatt, both of whom already have their nationals qualifying scores. I do like that they didn’t fully hand-curate the sessions (if they had, Hernandez and Memmel would have been in the TV group with the other specials) because it will slightly reduce our fury at who is being shown and who is not during Simone Grip Hour.

I’ll preview the competition in the main next week, but the big deal here will be the Memmel moment, making her return to competition with some serious stakes attached because as far as we know she does not have a qualifying score and will need to use her performance at this meet alone to try to avoid another 2012 situation. Based on the last camp scores we got, Hernandez would also be qualified to nationals only on vault, beam, and floor and would need to get an AA score, but we also didn’t get scores from the last camp, so…

Continue reading Things Are Happening – May 14, 2021 →