Rewriting Russian Gymnastics

I’m supposed to be taking some time for my mental health, not writing blog posts about gymnastics.   It’s not only my mental health, but that of the whole gymnastics and sporting community.  You, my readers, know that the Court for the Arbitration of Sport has reassigned the bronze medal in the FX event at the Olympics.  We finally have the right finishing order, but the FIG is at huge fault here.  The appeals system went wrong in both its substance and its process, and before that the judges had failed, giving us inaccurate marks and unfair finishing orders.   The gymnasts, Jordan Chiles and Ana Barbosu, are suffering and instead of unbounded joy and pride they feel humiliation and confusion and embarrassment.  That the judges couldn’t get the medals in the right order first time (and that there’s still one out there, Sabrina Voinea, whose question is left unresolved) is the biggest pair of oversized pants since the last time the FIG messed up.   That...

The FIG managed to do it again and set us all off talking about the scoring and how dreadful it was, rather than the performances and how brilliant they were. I personally loved that Alice d’Amato won beam with the best executed routine.    I think that the sport undervalues good execution in general, and this was a moment when the judges got it right. It’s a pity that there weren’t fewer falls overall in this final, but it’s the nature of the beam that people fall from it, and the major good thing today was that the champion was the one who stayed on the beam.   I’m an oldie.    I used to love the hushed silence in the audience that fell as the best gymnasts were performing.    The first time I experienced this in person was in the Ahoy Stadium in Rotterdam, at the 1987 Worlds, when Silivas stepped up to the uneven bars.    It reminded me of Korbut in Munich, and Comaneci in Montreal.    It didn’t happen all that often, but it...