Maybe it's the end ...

This is what I was thinking as I watched the slow, sad drift downwards of the Romanian team in the rankings.  I hadn't envisaged it happening, and it gave me a feeling of foreboding.  Perhaps Russia would succumb to the same forces as Romania and (relatively) quietly drift out of sight of international gymnastics.  I thought - perhaps this was the end for the old guard of gymnastics?  There has been a power shift and America has emerged the winner, while Romania and Russia, the vestigial remains of European dominance of the sport, have finally lost.

So I was very much relieved to see the team put on their game face yesterday and produce a far better showing than I had expected.  Team captain Afanasyeva more than pulled her weight and the other Olympians, Komova and Paseka, made their commitment and experience count.  The youngsters, Spiridonova, Tutkhalyan and Kharenkova, also put on a good show.  In particular Seda Tutkhalyan, whose first World Championships this is, fought hard, with determination for her team.

Would Mustafina have justified her place on the team under the circumstances, even if she had been healthy?  I doubt it.  Until the great champion is able to pull herself back to her best form, able to train fully, improve her routines and her competitive consistency, she has been outstripped by the current team.  Physical injury has hampered her significantly in preparing for these Games - and she deserves a break - but it works two ways. It is true to say that Mustafina has - through no fault of her own - fallen short of her usual standards.  It is also true to say that the current team has outstripped their leader - at least in the short term.  I hope that they realise this.  With junior Angelina Melnikova due to step up to senior level from January, Mustafina will have to fight hard to regain her position on this team.  One thing that the Russians have been able to achieve over the past four years is a relative improvement in their strength in depth and time always takes a toll in gymnastics.

The competition is not over for these girls - they will all contribute to the team final on Tuesday and then all but the unlucky Kharenkova will have all around and event finals to contribute to.  But the team has done its job - the main mission of the current competition was to qualify direct to Rio without having to go to the test event, and that has been comfortably achieved.  A real test of their competition readiness will be the punishing 3-3 format of the team final, and this is where Mustafina might have had an edge, for she always had the grit to pull out bravura performances precisely when needed and exactly when you didn't expect it. 

We still do not know the final outcome of the qualifying competition, which continues today.  The USA will compete from 4.30 pm.  They are expected to take first place easily and certainly if Biles delivers and the rest don't falter, they will have the upper hand.

There has been a strong Americanisation of the women's sport over the past twenty years and it is now considered almost inevitable that the USA will win team and AA competitions in most if not all major WAG competitions.  Other countries do have a say, and we do see some distinct styles - the sharp technical lines of the Chinese, the pyrotechnical acrobatics and stability of the Americans and the classical presentation of some of the Russians - but broadly gymnastics has become a fight to perform the most difficult 'tricks' regardless of the aesthetic, and to avoid a list of movements that are prescribed as errors. I hope it's not considered insulting to suggest that this is largely a North American construct of the sport.

Gymnastics is known as 'artistic gymnastics' in the English language and there is an assumption of the aesthetic contained within the rules and heritage of the sport.  We, as athletes, coaches, judges, fans and observers, have spent a lot of time and energy trying to understand this.  We have also tried to fathom why the sport is so much less appealing these days as an art form, than it was twenty or thirty years ago.

I do not think we can use this fact as a whip to punish our gymnasts and coaches with, but there is no artistry left any more in women's gymnastics.  I hear discussions of artistry today and the vocabulary that is used - 'toe point', 'great line', 'entertaining choreography' - is really only a superficial description of what artistry used to be like.  In practice it describes an attempt to provide an appearance of artistry that, for the most part, is merely surface.  Continuing to call the sport 'artistic' is a denial of the true status of the sport today.  I would argue that that is a travesty and is very much something that we should all be thinking about and talking about, regardless of who is winning.  Or it very well may be the end for artistic gymnastics, especially when you think that there is already a sport out there called acrobatic gymnastics, and how the Olympics so frequently look to cull and edit their lists of sports.

Is artistry a mere frippery, an adjunct to the main thing; even - given the emphasis on women's gymnastics - a degradation of sport designed particularly to hobble strong, athletic women in obtaining the correct esteem and credit for their participation in an incredibly demanding sport?  A way of insisting that women comply with their defined societal role as ornamental, fragile and pretty chattels of a masculine society?  I think that to try to come up with the answer, we have to look more broadly than just gymnastics.

Maybe readers will have more examples to contribute, but I can draw on a film I saw quite recently, Red Army, a documentary about the Soviet ice hockey team of the 1980s.  They won almost everything, and were wonderful to watch.  Listening to the stars speak about their training and competition strategy - coach Tarasov drew ideas for the team's game play from ballet and chess - you came to realise that the artistry you saw on the ice came from an utter, intimate grasp of the most complex shots and manoeuvres.  It involved complete commitment - physical, mental, emotional - from the players and the coaches.  There was no room for mercy and only sacrifice led to these great, unforgettable performances.   I'm no expert on ice hockey, but watching them compete on the big screen was mesmerising, entertaining, captivating.  Artistry here was not about a deliberate, contrived aesthetic, but about a consummate grasp of the sport that elevated its performance to a point of perfection that was capable of appreciation on many different levels, beyond the sporting.


In gymnastics, you don't have the same game play and unpredictability as in hockey, but you do have a combination of the breathtaking and inconceivable - I will call it the technical dimension (difficulty) - with the intangible elegance of movement - I will call that the aesthetic dimension.  Neither dimension, taken on its own, is artistry.  Toe point and line contributes to the aesthetic dimension but is not artistry.  You cannot contrive to be artistic, you simply have to be brilliant beyond all belief.

But there aren't any female gymnasts who can achieve both technical and aesthetic artistry these days.  The sport has simply reached a point that it is out of balance and the demands of difficulty are so great that only one or the other can prevail.  What's the point of gymnastics, unless it looks great?  Biles, the great trickster, is amazing and captivating in her reliable performance of ultra difficult tumbling, but her work lacks a certain aesthetic dimension.  Afanasyeva has great posture, line and expression but her work is less strong on a technical level.  Combine Biles and Afanasyeva and you have artistry.  Anything less than that is merely satisfying different levels of artistry.

Is there something wrong when the sport's Code is demanding more than can be delivered on a technical level, whilst maintaining the aesthetic?  In men's gymnastics, there is - somehow - a better balance, and so gymnasts like Kohei Uchimura - well, Kohei Uchimura - can present the more consummate grasp of both technique and the aesthetic that amounts to artistry. That's my way of saying that, fundamentally, men's gymnastics is now, by and large, more artistic than women's.

Female gymnasts who can combine the aesthetic with the technical - such as, for example, Elena Produnova - exist in the past. No gymnasts can compete with the advancing levels of difficulty whilst also maintaining the aesthetic appearance of the work.  The technical dimension has outgrown the aesthetic.  There is too much difficulty and the aesthetic is relatively too unimportant.  This is a problem with the conceptualisation and operation of the Code, not the fault of the judges, coaches and gymnasts.  Can we find a way of improving matters? 

So I have drifted and meandered through a wide ranging discussion of the current state of the competitive field in gymnastics, the likely winners and losers of the competition, and the state of gymnastics today.  What I would really like to say, from my heart, is 'take heart' to the gymnasts of Romania.  You are too good to remain the shadows for long and I am sure you will do better very soon.  I would like to say 'well done' to the Russian team, and to encourage them to keep working in the same way.  We will be supporting you every inch of the way.  I would also like to say 'good luck' to the rest of the teams competing, because it is always so nice to see everyone do their best.

To my readers, if anyone has got this far, I would like to say, 'keep thinking and chatting' as you all have valid opinions about the artistry debate.  Also, 'enjoy the world championships' - because they happen all too rarely, and because once they are over, we won't be able to wait for the next big competition and we will be chatting and opining all about what will happen in a few months' time in Rio.  Every cloud has a silver lining, and in a very selfish sense at least Romania's problems will mean that we will be able to see a good competition in six months' time, at the Olympic test event.  I would also like to think that whatever the final outcome of this competition Russia will go home, train hard and, in their inimitable way, find a way of combining difficulty and artistry so that they can take gold in Rio.