Plan B Forum

Wow ! You Tube has lots of coverage of Simone Bile at the Gymnastics championship going on today. She now has four different movements with her name on them. This new vault is so complex I could not begin to follow it on camera. If I have her age right, she will be 28 at the summer olympics next year. Does this mean the era of the skinny, tiny 15-year olds winning international competitions is over? Bile glows with power just prancing on the balance beam.

snailgate

Burning Petard wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 02, 2023 2:13 am

Does this mean the era of the skinny, tiny 15-year olds winning international competitions is over? Bile glows with power just prancing on the balance beam.

snailgate

Biles was a skinny 16 year old when she won her first world all around championship, so I don’t know that the era of young female gymnasts sweeping awards is over - rather that Simone is a GOAT on the order of Serena and that football player who used to play here in New England.

I have to agree that she is one of the best women gymnasts ever, and the best of right now, but she is also benefiting from the changes to womens gymnastics which emphasize strength as well as flexibility, and the advances in women's strength training. the skinny 15 year olds (and younger) were unbelievably flexible and quite skinny to give them a strength to weight ratio would be the envy of most male athletes. As the strength became more important (and one need only look at the complex vaults, and bars and floor skills to understand that), coaches developed better strength training techniques for women. Yhis also opened he door for older gymnasts. But , being a relatively fluid sport, that may well change as the sport progresses. We've seen the same thing in figure skating where women routinely perform multiple jumps that were performed previously.
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I think the other change is that there are more ways to support oneself while training (and retaining "amateur" status) than ever before. Training at an elite level takes hard work and nearly all your time; by the time the women graduated college (if they went) they needed to make money to support themselves (living in a dorm or coach's house lost its allure--but now they are permitted to earn more so they can support themself. Thsi has kept some in the sport longeT.

As the straight became more important

Preferencism! Preferencism!

Thanks Meade--I corrected it. I always appreciate the diligent proof reader.

Katelyn Ohashi gets my vote. Better sense of rhythm and that move where she explodes up off a full split is otherworldly.

Wow

No criticism of Simone biles.

Yrs,
Rubato