Event
Floor exercise

Skill type
Acrobatic

Known as
Double tuck
Double back

Named after
Nellie Kim (SOV) LOLOLOL

About
The double tuck may be my mosty mosty favorite of all the skills Nellie Kim went back and named after herself because it’s absolutely the most brazen. Girl, you did not invent the double tuck. The double tuck went unnamed for years and year until the mid-2000s when Nellie went back and was like, “IT ME.”

What makes this so juicy is that when Nellie competed the double tuck at the 1976 Olympics, she did so in a whole lineup of Soviet teammates like Filatova and Korbut who were also competing double tucks right next to her.

I adore that Nellie would actively go back and name the double tuck after herself knowing full well that she wasn’t the first woman to do this skill in competition. And none of the Soviets were. I mean, Nadia did a double tuck at American Cup earlier that year. And she wasn’t the first either. It had been a thing for a few years already, just not at naming competitions.

Naming skills after not-technically-the-first-person happens all the time now—in the moment, when you need to submit the skill for valuation and entry into the code because you’re going to do it at worlds. But going back and decades and decades later and naming a skill after yourself that you definitely weren’t the first to do is a different thing. You didn’t need to submit the double tuck for valuing in the mid-2000s, Nellie. It was there.

Value
D