Event
Uneven Bars

Skill type
Same-bar release

Known as
Counter-Kim
Kim

Named for
Kim Gwang Suk (PRK)

About
File this one under “You’d have to be insane.” The counter-Kim is a preposterous element, requiring a level of death-defying bendiness that only the rarest of breeds would even both attempting. That’s mostly why we don’t see it much, but the difficulty of connecting out of it is another consideration. If you’re a very top bars worker—as you’d have to be to do this skill—release elements are only as valuable as the skills you can connect them into for CV.

The counter-Kim is one of the rare elements that has been given an empty-swing pardon. On nearly every occasion, a gymnast ending a skill in an empty swing would be hit with a massive deduction, but an exception is made for the counter-Kim because…how would you not?

Now, about that name. Isn’t it weird that the word “counter” is put into the name? Yes. It is. While the skill does contain a counter salto, Kim performed this skill as is, so it should be called the Kim. Just like all other skills. We don’t put modifiers at the beginning of named skills except in the form of actual modifiers, like a piked Tkatchev. To differentiate it from the regular Tkatchev, which is not piked. But in this case, there’s no non-counter version of the Kim. The Kim has a counter salto in it. It has to. So the modifier is weird and pointless.

Value
F