So my wife was watching the Biles thing when I finally got home last night.
Let me preface by saying I don't know fuckall about gymnastics but something wasn't right. Especially if she was missing whole twists or whatever. At that point she was probably right, the team probably had a better shot with the other girl competing. Total speculation but it's probably akin to a super amped up version of a guy that gets in his own head at the freethrow line.
She certainly looked unable to perform.
The big thing about it was after she came back out and the producers knew it was a mental thing, they CONTINUALLY had a camera in her face. Like right in her face. It was bad. She was always trying to move away, wouldn't look at it, etc. I know she's the big star and the big story, but come on. Her nervously looking away from the camera isn't good television. Focus on the performances and get shots of her from further away. Get the damned camera out of her face. It got weird.
Here's to hoping she can leverage this into a positive outcome for mental health awareness, like she did with Nassar. [Reply]
Another thing: Tirico is the best. I know the production staff provides him a shitload of support and blah blah blah, but that dude is really fucking good.
When he was still with ESPN, Russillo had him on and absolutely gushed about how good he was. Went into a lot of the technical things he does better than anybody else, so I started paying attention.
Costas was good (politics aside) and deserves all the credit he gets, but Tirico is better. NBC is leaning on past stars as analysts, which I'm down for I care more about what Phelps and Lukin have to say rather than some off the shelf analyst, but they're not professionals. They just don't have it planned out before they start talking. But Tirico saves them, smooth as butter, and gets them pointed in the right way. Grand scheme it doesn't make a ton of difference, but the guy is good. Credit where credit is due. [Reply]
The big thing about it was after she came back out and the producers knew it was a mental thing, they CONTINUALLY had a camera in her face. Like right in her face. It was bad. She was always trying to move away, wouldn't look at it, etc. I know she's the big star and the big story, but come on. Her nervously looking away from the camera isn't good television. Focus on the performances and get shots of her from further away. Get the damned camera out of her face. It got weird.
Here’s the thing about gymnastics at that level. It’s hard to compare it to football, baseball, basketball, etc….
You make one mistake at that level and your done. No medals. In a team sport you can make multiple mistakes a game and still win. Miss throws, interceptions, miss baskets, miss goals, give up a home run, base running mistakes. You name it.
The pressure to do a one time great performance with no mistakes must be enormous. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Dayze:
I was a competitive gymnast from 4th grade until a sophomore in HS.
the one thing I'll say / my $.02 is confidence is everything; particularly as you climb through the levels to Elite Level gymnastics. I made it to Class 2; after that was Class 1, then Elite. At level 2, compulsory routines and their elements began to get more difficult, and at CL 2 level optional routines were part of the meet. everyone did a compulsory, then optional routine that met the routine elements ; typically for the optional routine, you had to demonstrate a strength component, balance, and flexibility component.
as I went up in the classes and began incorporating full + twists (1.5 or greater) ; or doubles, my coach would emphasize what he called "air sense". have an air sense of where you're at in the air. and 'don't get lost". I can tell you, it's scary as **** getting lost. Not too bad when you're learning a move into the foam pit, but you can definitely psyche yourself out when you think about the consequences of being 'lost' on a complex tumbling, vault, or dismount move w/out a spotter or foam pit. The psyche-out begins.
Maybe she had been feeling a little 'off' for a while; and that compounded itself to the point where she wasn't confident in executing tremendously complex moves / psyched herself out to an extent - even though she's probably done the elements hundreds, if not thousands of times.
that's what this feels like to me, and not so much on the 'pressure' side of things. I say this because I read where her vault was reduced to a very simple (by their standards) difficulty and she still botched the landing. When gymnasts say stuff like 'they can't see', I'm assuming that's the same as being 'lost' as my old coach would say.
but's it's all just speculation / WAG on my part.
In the Olympic team final, Simone Biles planned to perform a 2˝-twisting vault, but her mind stalled after just 1˝ twists: “I had no idea where I was in the air. I could have hurt myself.”
If she was gonna cost her team a medal, you can't really blame her for dropping out. I don't think it's necessarily some radical decision for us to collectively orgasm over, but it was the right thing to do. If Mahomes was losing his bearings on the field, like it seems Biles was in the air, he'd have to sit. [Reply]
