What happened to the one-armed giants?

Brian Sullivan · 08-13-2008, 10:50 PM

Hi - I've been following the Beijing men's all-around and team all-around competition, and one thing I noticed is that the athletes don't seem to be doing as much single arm work on the high bar as I remember seeing in the past. I seem to remember guys doing consecutive one-arm giant swings in the past. Anybody else notice this? Anybody have an explanation? Maybe these are only done by the specialist, or maybe they are too risky during the all-around.

Thanks/ Bria

Steven Low · 08-14-2008, 12:32 PM

They're not risky at all. Just not worth as much and some athletes just don't train for stuff like that (putting more time into twisting and release moves). It's pretty much a dead end skill anyway.

If you watched the team finals and prelims you'd see that a bunch of gymnasts did it though.

FYI it's only worth a B value... and I think it MAY be connectable to another skill (to raise the level of the skills involved -- so something like D+B would become an E skill), but it's already tough getting 10 good skills on high bar anyway. Plus, other connections like D+D get more bonus points so it's worthless if you can do that instead.

Patrick Donnelly · 08-14-2008, 01:11 PM

Don't tell me I'm the only one who saw Tomita's one arm dismount from the rings. Hahah. It would have been awesome if he had landed that, even though he still would have had some major deductions.

Steven Low · 08-14-2008, 02:18 PM

Side somi dismounts are banned from rings... so even if he landed it (inadvertently), it wouldn't have counted for anything.

He almost got a bronze/silver too. Only .2 away...

Derek Maffett · 08-17-2008, 01:22 PM

So who did get gold? Jovtchev? Or is he even in this year?

Steven Low · 08-17-2008, 02:07 PM

Rings finals have not started yet.

Today (6 AM EST - already happened) there was men's floor, pommel horse; women's vault and floor.

Tomorrow (6 AM EST) are men's rings and vault, womens unevens

Tues (6 AM EST) are men's pbars, high bar and womens beam

I don't think NBC is carrying it live... those idiots.

Jovtchev is indeed in the rings final and will most likely get silver although depending on his performance (and this competitors) he can either get bronze or a very unlikely gold. Big mistakes may cost him a medal.

Derek Maffett · 08-18-2008, 03:35 PM

He got eighth. This saddens me, but in my book, he's still one of the best.

Steven Low · 08-18-2008, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derek Maffett

He got eighth. This saddens me, but in my book, he's still one of the best.

I haven't seen the routine, but it seems like he got hurt or something? Because his SV was like .7 below what he had in prelims...

I guess I'll find out tonight.

edit: bah, missed the handstand... didn't meet the required elements and got a huge SV deduction.

Derek Simonds · 08-18-2008, 08:00 PM

Yeah he did but the worst part was the silver medal Chinese guy's routine was not that good. He definitely got the home town scoring. The gold medal winner totally owned the routine.

How about the victorian pulled off twice by the French guy. Un-freaking-real!

Steven Low · 08-18-2008, 08:05 PM

Yeah, it was pretty sick (victorian). I've seen Danny Rodrigues perform it a bit better than he did in that routine though.. nice combos though.

I think we shall see many more victorians in the next quad hopefully.

There's some shady scoring at these olympics so far though:
1. Chinese women on BB/UB in AA
2. Cheng Fei on Vault over Sacramone
3. That one you're talking about.
4. The one coming up on women's unevens and men's vault (although debatable.. with the tiebreaking)... basically WTF up is with the ties.