[SoftballMominVA]

Good points - also the loss of Sam Peziak had to be a factor. This was a rough year injury wise for both the mens and womens teams! The men lost the Hamm brothers - although I thought their replacements were incredibly good. You are right about the all around - I'm sorta pulling for Shawn, but will be happy for Nastia also

Since you seem to have some knowledge about gymnastics - do you know when the uneven bars were pulled apart so that the girls can't do some of the skills that used to be done with going from the low bar to the high, belly twirls and slams and backward flies to the high beam?

[petitfour]

I hadn’t noticed that the bars are further apart. Are they? :) (I really don’t know.) I’m a big college gymnastics’ fan, and there are young ladies who occasionally do some of those skills of old. I don’t know if the skills have lower difficulty levels and that’s why we don’t see them as often at the Elite level or not. At the NCAA level, gymnasts tend to go for showmanship more than difficulty.

[Scotswife]

“Since you seem to have some knowledge about gymnastics - do you know when the uneven bars were pulled apart so that the girls can’t do some of the skills that used to be done with going from the low bar to the high, belly twirls and slams and backward flies to the high beam?”

Between the ‘84 and ‘88 olympics and then incrementally further and further apart after that.

This was when I went to college and didn’t do much with bars because I was too tall to adapt to the new skills.