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| The Fab 5 with Nicki Minaj on the Today Show. |
Gabby Douglas is set to be on America's Got Talent results show tonight at 9/8 central.
McKayla Maroney talks about her new found Olympic fame.
Britain's Strictly Come Dancing wants to recruit Beth Tweddle to rumba for their next season's show.
The Fab Five tours New York
Max Whitlock and Louis Smith spend some time having fun after the competition in London.
Feature on Fab 5's impact on young girls
Leyva's triumphant welcome home in Miami
Orozco says he put too much pressure on himself in London
This is a dumb question, but I haven't figured out why there were 7 last time we won, but this time only 5. Rule change?
ReplyDeleteBruno Grandi being an evil dictator. I think it's to allow more gymnasts from other countries to qualify and also give countries the opportunity to be able to field a full team.
DeleteI'm waiting for 3 member teams with 3 up 3 count and then 1 member teams 1 up 1 count. Can't wait FIG!!!
Part of the reason for the team size shrinkage was
Deletethe IOC deciding that it would not expand
the number of Olympic athletes for the FIG if they
wanted to add trampoline as an event, so the
slots came out of the artistic gymnastics roster.
The "3 up, 3 count" setup was indeed Brandi's
idea, as a way of making things more exciting
(and leveling the playing field). I have mixed
feelings about that, but one thing I don't
understand is why the corresponding change to
lower the number of entrants into the AA
final from 36 to 24. If you've already limited
the field so much by lowering the team size, why not let more of the athletes who are there
advance to the AA finals? (And in keeping the
36-entrant AA finals, you could also have
kept the per-country limit at 3, which would
have been good not only for the US but for
Romania in the London Olympics women's field.)
"which would have been good not only for the US but for Romania in the London Olympics women's field."
DeleteAnd Russia. And China.
And, as it happens, even Great Britain!
Deletehttp://gymnastics.about.com/od/olympicgymnastics/a/OlympicGymnasticsResults2012Olympics.htm
I have a dumb question too. If onlly 3 scores count anyways, and a country can't field a 5 person team, but it can field 4 or 3 - would that be allowed? Or would they need some benchwarmers?
ReplyDeleteI can't remember which team it was, but I believe
Deletethere was indeed a recent Worlds where a team
of only 4 competed, so everyone had to go up
and be counted during qualifying.
This may be the incident to which Anon @ 9:28 is referring: Worlds are slightly different from Olympics, in that countries can field 6-person teams, with 5 gymnasts competing on each event in qualifications and 4 scores counting. In 2011, the US women's team competed with a 5 person team, meaning that every gymnast had to compete on every event in qualifications. Incidentally, they all hit, beginning team USA's current streak of, I believe, 60 routines without falls in team competition.
DeleteOn second thought, probably not the same thing, since the US technically didn't have to put 5 gymnasts up per event in qualifications, since only 4 scores counted (as compared to the 2008 Olympics, when the US put up 4 people on every event but bars, meaning all 4 scores counted).
DeleteAt the world championships 2011, Alicia Sacramone tore her Achilles just prior to competition. She was technically counted as one of the 5 members of the team even though she was on a plane to get surgery. So in reality the US had only 4 gymnasts, which meant they each competed on all 4 events in team qualification. And they all hit.
ReplyDeleteNo, they had 5 gymnasts left - Vega, Maroney, Douglas, Raisman, Wieber.
Delete