Things I Don't Entirely Hate: 2014 Uneven Bars Edition

The early-summer lull. It can be a difficult slog to endure with so little interesting gymnastics going on, but we have had the pleasure of the World Cup and watching Miroslav Klose eat it on a punch front goal celebration (best part by far). There was also a web-streamed Pro Gymnastics Cup debacle that I skipped through most of. Katherine Grable did a comaneci, Luiza Galiulina is from Pakistan now, Jake Dalton's eyes and Chris Brooks' nipples did some high bar, and it was extremely pointless.

We're at the bottom of the barrel. But that's about to change soonish. The US women are heading south to the Theater of Broken Dreams for their final camp verification before things become real, a camp which has taken on a little more interest because of the Gabby Douglas comeback. We don't really know anything yet, but Martha's positive reaction from last camp has people mildly optimistic because she didn't give the old, expected "It's very difficult to come back. Just because you won in the past, that doesn't guarantee you anything" routine, what we'll call the Shawn Johnson treatment.

A somewhat in-form Gabby Douglas would throw a very pleasant little wrench into the whole post-Elizabeth Price elite landscape. The most interesting part of the Douglas comeback for me is bars because it's the event I really enjoy her on, and it would be the biggest asset event (both for herself and the team) if she could perform at even 3/4 of her 2012 self. To be honest, she could sit on the low bar and knit a tea cozy and I would want her on the Worlds team to do bars.

USAG did produce a video about her return with some blips of her training bars and, at the very beginning, getting some brief shaposh action on to the tune of a music clip obviously called "general uplifting while overcoming obstacles #2." The shaposh is new, but of course she would be training it. This is the quad of the shaposh.

Did you like that segue into a discussion of bars composition? Because I did.  

As much as it pains me to say it, the FIG's adjustments to the uneven bars code for the 2013-2016 quad are smart and have produced better and more entertaining routines. I know. I'm sorry. I won't make a habit of it.

The emphasis on rewarding flight combinations more than pirouetting combinations has forced gymnasts to compose more dynamic routines, which is what uneven bars is supposed to be. The bars final was the best part of Euros this year, and not just because Beckie Downie won and then everyone cried. Only mostly. 

Bars is my event for 2014. I have a different event every year. Last year it was beam. In 2012 it was vault. This year it's bars. It hasn't been floor in a long while. Let's work on that. And by "work on that," I don't mean introducing more rules requiring people to look backward before starting a tumbling pass (ARTISTRY!)

Uneven Bars and Vault Champions Showdowns

Courtney Kupets has overcome her second place finish in the floor champions showdown to put on a near-McCullough display of dominance in the beam showdown. Can she keep it up on bars?

I didn't plan these polls out particularly well, so I'm including both bars and vault in the same post because after today will come time to start thinking about preseason rankings and the coaches poll and team previews and all of those delicious morsels.

2013 NCAA Bars Champion – Alaina Johnson (I just wrote Alabama Johnson on the first try. Ugh, me.)


2012 NCAA Bars Champion – Kat Ding (routine begins at 17:30)

Skill Frequency 2013

A few months back, I began looking at the frequency with which skills appeared in US WAG routines in 2012 with the idea that I would then do the same thing for 2013 and compare the numbers to see how the code change was affecting routine composition. Then, I never did that. Fortunately, Uncle Tim tweeted me saying, "If you don't do those goddamn skill frequencies for 2013, I will stab you in the eye with a grapefruit spoon." (It may not have been exactly that. Who can remember?)

So, here we go. While you take a break from speculating about McKayla Maroney's bars capabilities and Aliya Mustafina's floor endurance, enjoy some charts. With colors! The colors are supposed to be red and blue, but you never know with me, so if they're actually purple and orange, just deal with it.

As before, the percentages next to the skills indicate the proportion of gymnasts who performed each skill at National Championships, and skills are sorted by the frequency of their appearances in 2013 senior routines. Some basic skills like giant swings and back handsprings are not included because, obviously 100%. Numbers from 2013 and 2012 are listed side-by-side for easy comparison. Cells highlighted in blue reflect an increase in frequency of at least 10 percentage points over 2012, while cells highlighted in red reflect a decrease of at least the same amount. For the most part, any change less than that is statistically insignificant given the small number of routines we're working with (especially for the seniors). Even some of the larger changes may be attributable to normal variation in routine construction rather than code influence, but I'll talk through some of the larger changes as we go.

NOTES: Because there were so many more juniors, the junior routines have a much larger bearing on the total frequency column. Also, the charts include only skills performed during 2013 Nationals. Many skills dropped off the charts from 2012, but none that were performed more than one or two times last year. I didn't do vault because it's fairly straightforward. Yurchenko land. I classified the skills by what was attempted rather than what would actually be credited because this is about intended composition.

UNEVEN BARS

The toe-on full continues to reign as the D pirouetting skill of choice. Even though this code emphasizes release+release combinations, the toe-on full is still a valuable tool connected to a tkatchev or transition for .1 CV.

What's interesting is that the trend favoring toe-on skills over stalder skills seems to be increasing for the seniors, but the opposite is taking place for the juniors. There is a marked increase in the frequency of several of the stalder skills for the juniors. I'm not sure if there is a tangible reason for that, but it's happening. It should be noted that the large majority of those junior stalder fulls might be finishing their turns sometime by the end of the year. Maybe.

So, the Gienger died. That's weird, right? Very abrupt and very dead. The Jaeger just consumed it, apparently. Natural selection. We saw tons of toe-on Tkatchevs this year from the seniors. There are still fewer E releases being performed than I would expect given the new code, but it's early days, and this was not a particularly astounding bars group. They were just happy to get their jaegers in and get out of there.

2012 Skill Frequency – Uneven Bars

The homogenization of routines. It happens throughout gymnastics at all levels, but one of the most compelling criticisms of the current elite code is that it has accelerated and broadened this process, leading to routine after routine featuring the same few skills.

The changes to the current code should, in theory at least, be made with an eye toward keeping routines new and exciting and discouraging that which has become flat cliché. So, what has become the flattest and clichédediest? Let's take a look. 

The following chart shows the frequency with which each uneven bars skill appeared in American routines during the 2012 Visa Championships. It includes only skills of C difficulty or more (to dispense with the likes of Giant - 100%) with the exception of the toe shoot to high bar because I am specifically interested in the frequency of the low-to-high transitions that we have (all negative three of them).

Skills are listed according to the percent of routines in which they appeared in the competition and are sorted by the frequency of their appearances in senior routines. The junior routines and total frequency throughout all 44 routines (21 senior, 23 junior) are also included for the sake of comparison.

The chart includes all skills performed more than once in either the junior or senior division. The following skills appeared in one routine in either or both sessions:

Stalder circle forward
Toe-on circle forward 1/2
Giant 1.5
Clear hip full
Ono
Ono 1/2
Rybalko
Weiler kip
Markelov
Tkatchev 1/2
Toe-on Tkatchev
Clear hip Shaposhnikova
Piked stalder shoot to high bar