With the 2024 Olympics less than a month away, teams are beginning to announce who will travel to Paris at the end of July. Those selections will be made for the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team this weekend at the trials in Minneapolis, with the men’s team to be named Saturday and the women’s team Sunday.
Among those trying to make the team are seven-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles and reigning Olympic all-around champion Suni Lee.
For many years, understanding gymnastics was pretty simple: falls are bad and a 10 is the best score! Some of the old rules are still in effect, but scoring in the sport is more complicated than it was in decades past.
Stream every moment of the Paris 2024 Olympics on Peacock, starting with the Opening Ceremony on July 26 at 12 p.m. ET.
Here’s everything you need to know about modern gymnastics scoring so you can watch Biles and the rest of Team USA compete for Olympic glory with an expert eye.
The end of Perfect 10
Gymnastics scores have changed significantly since the days of Nadia Comăneci and her illustrious “Perfect 10”. The current scoring system may seem less intuitive than the previous one to audiences who don’t follow the sport between Olympic Games.
The Perfect 10 still exists in gymnastics, but it is no longer the only measure used to calculate a score. Today’s gymnasts are graded in two separate categories for each routine: difficulty and execution. The difficulty score is open, while execution is graded out of 10.00.
Difficulty and execution scores are combined to produce the final number. To maximize their scores, gymnasts perform the most difficult routines possible while minimizing execution deductions.
Since the open scoring system was implemented in 2006, no gymnast has received a Perfect 10 execution score. A small number of gymnasts, including Biles, have come close, coming within a tenth of a point in the category execution.
How scores are calculated
Each gymnast’s execution score starts at 10.00 points and is deducted for each visible error. Execution judges subtract points for falls, breaks in form, bad landings, lack of artistry and much more.
A separate jury determines the difficulty score, which starts from zero and adds up. In women’s gymnastics, each routine receives points for the eight most difficult elements, while in men’s gymnastics, 10 elements are counted. Gymnasts earn points for these skills based on their difficulty and can earn bonus points by linking multiple skills together.
For example, here’s Biles’ score breakdown on his eponymous Yurchenko double pike on the first day of the U.S. Championships in Fort Worth, Texas:
Difficulty rating (6,400) + execution rating (9,400) = 15,800
The very high difficulty combined with a very high execution score made it an excellent score and the highest of this year’s championships. This will also likely be the highest performing gymnastics activity we’ll see in testing.
This open system encourages skills that have high degrees of difficulty in the code of points, but if a gymnast cannot perform the skill cleanly, execution deductions could offset the benefits of a higher difficulty score.
Biles is so good because she performs the most difficult skills with very minimal deductions.
What is considered a good grade in gymnastics?
The easiest way to determine a good score for each event is to look at the execution component of the score, which is usually displayed next to the total score on the NBC broadcast.
Gymnasts who have less than one point to one and a half points in deductions for routines or execution scores between 8.5 and 10.0 are likely to be in good positions. Look at the corresponding difficulty score to see how good it is: the higher the better.
The four apparatuses have different scoring potentials, so a good score on beam may not be the same as a good score on vault. Here is an estimate of what the world’s best gymnasts will aim for on each apparatus during the trials and in Paris:
- Jump: 14+ is a good score; 14.5+ could be a contender for an Olympic medal.
- Uneven bars: 14+ is a good score; 14.8+ could be a contender for an Olympic medal.
- Beam: 13.5+ is a good score; 14.2+ could claim an Olympic medal.
- Floor exercise: 13.5+ is a good score; 14.0+ could be a contender for an Olympic medal.
The actual scores that will earn medals on each apparatus in Paris may differ, but these are the numbers the top contenders received over the past year.
How do team scores work in gymnastics?
In Olympic qualifying events, four gymnasts from each five-member team compete on each apparatus, with the three highest scores counting toward the team total.
The top eight teams from qualifying advance to the finals, where three athletes from each team compete on each apparatus and all scores count.
How Gymnasts Use Code of Points to Maximize Their Scores
At last year’s world championships, Biles had a score of 1.5–point ahead of her closest competitor, Rebeca Andrade, in terms of difficulty, giving her a higher scoring potential and a buffer equal to at least one fall. Biles was more than 2 points ahead of world all-around bronze medalist Shilese Jones, her closest American competitor.
Biles performs the most difficult gymnastics in the sport and consistently maintains some of the highest execution scores. She doesn’t have to choose between focusing on difficulty or execution, but other gymnasts are generally known for one or the other.
Lee is known for her excellent form and attention to detail. She has a high starting value on bars and beam, but she typically chooses to perform less difficult routines on floor and vault, focusing on maximizing the execution component of her score.
Conversely, Joscelyn Roberson, a member of the 2023 world championships team, is the quintessential example of a gymnastics daredevil. She performs risky routines with high starting values, but does not always have the highest execution scores, and her total scores sometimes suffer as a result.
The scoring system rewards both daredevils and technicians, but the world’s best make the most difficult skills look easy.
The U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials for the 2024 Paris Olympics air live on NBC and Peacock Thursday through Sunday.