Then there’s gymnastics: Even after the scores are posted and the competition is over, most athletes wait in limbo. It’s a subjective sport and a subjective decision. Gymnasts head to a private room and wait to hear if they’ve earned a spot on Team USA.
While competition will again be fierce this year, especially for the final spots, this room will be filled with tension Sunday night in Minneapolis, when an opaque process will determine which gymnasts will represent the United States at the Paris Games.
For two decades, the selection process has followed a similar pattern. The best all-around finalist – and the top two in some years – earns an Olympic berth. The rest of the team is chosen by a committee, according to broad and vague criteria.
Previous regimes — Martha Karolyi from the 2004 to 2016 Olympics and then Tom Forster for the Tokyo Games — had different approaches. With new leadership at the Paris Olympics in place, it’s unclear how that committee will choose the five gymnasts who will represent the country this summer.
One method favors the general ranking during selections. The other favors gymnasts who have complementary strengths that maximize the team’s score. The two approaches often do not lead to the selection of the same five gymnasts.
Karolyi has built teams that have placed more emphasis on team results than overall standings. Since three athletes compete on each apparatus in the team final, gymnasts don’t have to be strong in every area to be valuable. For example, Madison Kocian, who finished eighth all-around at the 2016 trials but excelled on bars, and McKayla Maroney, who was seventh all-around but the nation’s top gymnast on vault in 2012, earned Olympic berths. Both of those U.S. teams won gold, and Kocian and Maroney won individual silver medals in their signature events. Compared to the Tokyo Olympics, where teams were limited to four members, Karolyi’s teams had five, which leaves a bit more room for gymnasts who excel on a single apparatus.
Forster, who became high performance coordinator in 2018, was part of a three-person committee in 2021 that chose to name the top four all-around finishers to the Olympic team.
“As much as possible, it’s just my personal preference, I wanted a ranking in order of magnitude,” said Forster, referring to the overall ranking. “That seems fairest to me. »
A slightly different combination of gymnasts would have slightly increased the team’s scoring potential, but Forster said at the time: “We just didn’t think it was worth changing the integrity of the process by just a few tenths.”
Forster said in an interview this week that the difference between those hypothetical team scores would have had to be about one point to convince him to deviate from the overall standings.
No recent U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team has so accurately replicated the trials results.
Since 1996, Olympic teams have not been formed solely on the basis of overall rankings. This method generally means that all gymnasts have versatile skills and can probably compete on any apparatus if necessary. With four-member teams in Tokyo, all gymnasts competed on each apparatus in qualifying and only one athlete was excluded per event in the team final. This made the overall ranking more important than usual. With a five-member team, Forster said his approach might have been different.
Grace McCallum earned the final spot on the team with her fourth-place finish in practice. However, MyKayla Skinner could have given the team a little more dynamism with her excellent jump. Skinner received a spot to compete in Tokyo as an individual rather than with the team.
Explaining his selection, Forster pointed to the team’s wide margins of victory at the 2018 and 2019 world championships, saying: “We’re so fortunate that our athletes are so strong that I don’t think it’s going to be a matter of tenths of a point in Tokyo.”
But the Russian Olympic Committee took a more than one-point lead in qualifying after the U.S. team’s shaky performance. Forster said the team’s low execution scores were a surprise. In the chaotic team final, when Simone Biles’ vault went wrong and she was unable to compete on any other apparatus, the Russians won the gold medal by an even greater margin.
A team with the higher potential score might have more room to resist mistakes. But a team with additional options on every device might be seen as the safer choice, especially in the case of a last-minute injury. It is reasonable to consider such cases, especially when the difference in scores between several gymnasts is minimal.
In 2016, the team’s score would have been maximized by choosing Kocian and Ashton Locklear, another standout gymnast on bars. But two gymnasts competing on a single apparatus would have been risky. Karolyi chose Kocian, who scored higher than Locklear on bars during trials, and rounded out the team with Gabby Douglas, the 2012 Olympic all-around champion.
Douglas fell on the balance beam both nights of competition at the trials and placed seventh in the all-around. Despite the mistakes, Douglas’ scores gave her a slight edge over fourth-place Skinner in a simulated team final. Karolyi said at the time that she thought Douglas would improve during the pre-Games training camp. She was right: In the Olympic qualifying round, Douglas scored more than a point higher than she had at nationals or the trials.
This summer, the United States should win the team final by a wide margin, especially given Russia’s absence. Many combinations of five gymnasts would likely be strong enough to win gold. But because these decisions have life-changing implications, the strategy raises questions: Does a gymnast who finishes seventh but has assets that maximize the team’s score deserve One Olympic spot more or less than the fifth-placed athlete? The unclear selection procedures only underline the importance for the committee to explain the reasoning behind its choices.
Chellsie Memmel, technical manager of the high performance staff, said recently that the team final was “our first priority,” and she highlighted the format that requires only three gymnasts to appear on each apparatus. Memmel is not on the selection committee, but Alicia Sacramone Quinn, another high-performance staffer, is one of three committee members. (Quinn’s voice on the committee is meant to reflect both her and Memmel’s views.) Quinn earned a spot at the Olympics in 2008 when she performed excellently on vault, beam and floor exercise. , but failed to perform on bars. She would not have been an Olympian if the team had been selected based solely on overall ranking.
The recent world championships offer a glimpse into how the Paris team might be selected. The top five all-around finishers at the 2022 and 2023 selection camps were given spots on the team, but Quinn said that was a coincidence and did not indicate a preferred method.
“It’s always a puzzle, and that’s how we talk about it,” Quinn said. “It’s a combination of our best all-around athletes and our best event finishers. That’s how it’s been, but there are other things we’re taking into consideration during this time.”
Sunisa Lee, the all-around champion in Tokyo, was fantastic on the uneven bars and beam, but the U.S. team likely wouldn’t use her results on vault or floor in the team final. Lee, who finished fourth all-around at the national championships, has continued to improve this season. But if the focus is on all-around results, a gymnast could make a mistake on an event she may never compete on in Paris and it could hurt her Olympic chances.
When asked if he thought Lee needed to finish in the top 5 to earn a spot in the Olympics, Jess Graba, Lee’s coach, replied: “I don’t know. It’s hard to say. Realistically, I think our goal is to finish in the top 5 all around and top 3 on the uneven bars and beam. » Such a performance would likely mean Lee will make the team, regardless of how the gymnasts are chosen.
The competition could be tough for the final places. Selection procedures leave it up to committee members to choose their approach. And how they reach their decision will only be clear once the Parisian Olympians celebrate their victory in the arena after their names are announced.