Reply to The little dancing during gymnastics floor is stupid

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree, op. Watching with my teen dd and she just said “I bet the male gymnasts don’t have to jazz hands.” [/quote]

Congratulations to you and your daughter for this excellent example of internalized misogyny!

Yes, let’s always make sure to compare women to men.  In order for whatever it is women are doing to not be “stupid” it must be what the men are doing!

God forbid women’s gymnastics includes any display of athleticism that is (relatively) unique to women.  (e.g. grace)

If I want to just watch straight up feats of strength and displays of raw power, I’ll just watch the men.  They could easily wipe the floor with any of the female gymnasts any day in that regard.[/quote]

The point of this thread is that there really isn't much grace anymore. Female gymnasts aren't required to do fluffy stuff on bars and vault.[/quote]

Okay.  Those are different events, are they not?  Female gymnasts also aren’t required to swing around the beam or walk from one end of the high bar to the other.[/quote]

I would personally like to see both. People used to do weird stuff in gymnastics just to distinguish themselves. You could do a tousek into a back hip circle on the beam. Worleys. Phillips handstands. The Li spin was like a breakdancing spin on the beam. But the new scoring system doesn't reward skills like this which run a high risk of a big deduction from a fall but are generally not rated as hard enough to maximize your difficulty rating. A lot of them are basically impossible to link with other elements and that's one of the key ways that gymnasts today build routines with high difficulty scores -- link elements together in quick succession.

Uneven bars doesn't lend itself to as many weird skills because you have to be able to swing out of tricks -- you cannot walk across the bar. But there have been some wild tricks before. There used to be this mount where you did a round-off arabian over the low bar to grab the high bar. Insane. But actually not that elegant and so much can go wrong.

I am digressing but if you are goign to talk about the evolution of gymnastics one of the thngs that has happened is that everyone performs the same skills now and there is a lot less experimentation because there is very little motivation for high level gymnasts do push the envelope. Sure you might get a skill named after you but you are also likely to land flat on your face and out of contention.

That's part of what makes Simone Biles special. In an era where everyone does the same skills she has innovated and found ways to push the limits but do so consistently and successfully at top level meets. That is very very hard to do in a system that has a pretty strict recipe for success.[/quote]

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