Rule Changes

Browsing World of Gymnastike and Full Twist brought me to a complete-but-provisional copy of the women's *artistic* gymnastics CoP for the 2013-2016 period, fortunately I'm only a really long time late.  I'm still waiting for the men's provisional CoP copy but that can wait, since women's gymnastics is more important and infinitely more popular among teenaged girls and grown men:

Okay, so maybe that wasn't enough to support my point, so here is my most popular video on my YouTube account:

Most of this audience came from people who only came to the video to argue, of which the comments I have disabled, so meh

Okay, so I was exaggerating, if only a little, but that's not the point of this post, even though I have to at least show you one of a popular video of mine of the "sexy and hot Catalina 'Boner' Ponor";

because this post is about my reaction and attempted explanation to the 2013-2016 provisional copy of the women's CoP! (found here).

Note that I've heard about what's on the CoP for a while, like the devaluing of many vaults (because people won't shut up about the Amanar and how it's worth more in MAG blahblahblaheverythingblahrevolvesaroundblahblahvablahblahginablahblahlgymnastsblahblahmoredevaluedblah) and things like artistic and expression deductions on floor exercise and beam.

But I haven't actually looked inside the code to see everything neatly laid out and specific for me to observe...until now!

Since I actually went through skimmed through it in apparatus order, I looked at the vault first since it was well, first, instead of jumping to the performance deductions on beam and floor like what most people probably did.

Vaults with changed values have a gray highlight to the score:

  

To be honest, for many of these I saw coming from a while away.  As someone who is always excited by men's vaulting competitions and learning their way of having tariffs on infinitely more diverse vaults than the women (who else hates seeing yurchenko after yurchenko from the women?), it was easy to observe that the women's vaults were jacked up.

For instance, men's vaulting is more standardized, where each group, or "family" of vaults are equal to each other, probably because there's a good chance the men will do most if not all of the different groups or entries onto the table/springboard.  After that, 0.4 is added to DV for every half-twist, or each transition to a more difficult body position (i.e. tuck to pike, pike to layout).

For example, probably the most overused vault, the Tsukahara double twist (or more commonly performed as a Kasamatsu full twist), the Yurchenko double twist, and handspring rudi all do either 2 twists or 1.5 twists depending on entry and face back toward the table when landing, and as such, all three vaults are valued equally, at 6.2.

The same can be applied when stepping up the difficulty, so for instance a 2.5 twisting Tsuk (1.5 twisting Kaz for you people), a 2.5 twisting yurchenko, and a double twisting front layout are all worth 6.6.  At 6.6 double tuck-somersaulting vaults are introduced; both the handspring double front and the Tsuk/Yurchenko double back tuck.  At this point, piking any of these vaults brings the total to 7.0, as does adding half twists to any vault.

The lone exception to this rule are the round-off to springboard with half-turn onto the table, these vaults, like their women's counterparts, are worth 0.2 more than their straightforward handspring variations, but otherwise follow the same rule of 0.4 for half twists or body position shape changes.

These vaults however are in the same group (or "family") as the Yurchenko vaults (Group V) and thus, unlike what so many women do, cannot be performed alongside a Yurchenko in a vaulting final. 

Supposing there was a man version of McKayla Maroney (I could not possibly photoshop a picture of a man's head on McKayla's body without losing my dignity) doing her Amanar and Mustafina as his two vaults, he would only be allowed to perform one or the other alongside another vault in a different group, such as a handspring or a Tsukahara/Kasamatsu.  Also unlike the women, instead of the post-flights being different, different groups of vaults must be done, since they are very slightly grouped differently anyway.

An easier way to explain this is that a "dude-vaulter" can do a Yurchenko and a Tsukahara type vault in a vaulting final, our modern-time off-the-top-of-the-head-example being (Enrique) Thomas Gonzalez (Sepulveda);

 

but can't do the Yurchenko and then a Yuchenko half-on-table style vault as his two vaults as mentioned above.

But a "she-vaulter" can no longer do this as of 2006 (i.e. pre-2006 Zamo and Rosu wouldn't be allowed to do the same vaults they were so prominent on, or the Yurchenko-Tsukahara combo also done by Annia Hatch).  What also can't happen is the RO-half on vault combo and the handspring variation of it done as two "different" vaults (i.e. Moya and Raducan and their unveiling of the RO-half-on version of the Handspring layout front with half twist while performing the handspring version separately)

Meanwhile, a she-vaulter can do the same thing as above above (you will never watch a vaulting final where this doesn't happen), because the post-flights are different (one goes frontflipping and the other backflipping), while either "can't be done" example involves both vaults backflipping or both vaults frontflipping.

...

Moving on, in what used to be "additional half-turns-to-blind-landings" giving an extra 0.5 in DV instead of 0.4 as it always happened in MAG, these have been changed to 0.4.  This explains why vaults such as the McIntosh and its RO-half on counterpart the Mustafina were each devalued by a tenth, and the Amanar and un-performed 2.5 twisting Tsuk/1.5 twisting Kaz to a lesser extent.

The "handspring layout front with half twist" I was talking about earlier in itself is worth 5.4:

Its straightforward (literally) variant without any twisting is worth 5.0, the same as the FTY: http://youtu.be/xd8L6lHsF8Y?t=1m58s

Now, if we use the part where RO-half on vaults are worth 0.2 more, then we can figure out that that version of the vault is worth 5.6 (yes, it's that vault that's always used as a second vault for the she-vaulters).  If we add 0.4 in addition to that we get 6.0, or the Mustafina.  If we add 0.4 to the 5.4 then you ge-yeah you get it.  Really, it's simple math that wasn't done previously.  WHY DID THEY EVEN BOTHER HAVING IT SO COMPLICATED BEFORE?!

It's more complicated with the Yurchenko vaults.  In the case of the FTY to the 1.5TY, after 2008 the difference went from 0.5 to 0.3, and then 0.5 to the DTY from the 1.5TY (these terms you should know since they are thrown around so often!).  This only applies after the jump to the 1.5TY, if you haven't noticed.

After 2012, the difference to the DTY to the 2.5TY (or the Amanar as everyone calls it for she-vaulters) will be 0.5, instead of the 0.7 it was for 6+ years prior.  Their Tsuk/Kaz counterparts are in line with them, except that they are always worth 0.2 more, so when Yurchenko vaults get devalued, so do they.

Now, since nothing is directly related to the Produnova (Ro-shay to you he-vaulter people), my only explanation for the 0.1 devaluing in the skill is to discourage any she-vaulter who wishes to follow in the footsteps of the famous Yamilet Pena Abreu.  My speculation is that if some crazy she-vaulter (maybe Mai Murakami) ever got the Dragulescu (the Produnova thing with a half turn at the end) in the the CoP, that would be devalued correspondingly.

...

Since I hadn't heard or seen anything hugely different in the 2013-2016 rendition of bars (maybe it's like men's HB where connection bonus whoring gets nerfed), I haven't looked in great detail, I'll continue with the beam and floor ex with their changes...next time.