As the New York Times clarifies :
The audience watching Biles went crazy however, the judges were another story. As opposed to celebrate Biles’ incredible accomplishment, they opted to undervalue the move. They gave her a provisional score of 6.6, which will be very similar to Biles’ scores because of her additional vaults, without the extra boost for the incredible difficulty of this move.
United States women’s national team founder Tom Forster reported that the very low score”doesn’t appear to be consistent with what they have done along with other vault worth” and Biles consented but understands there is no fighting the ruling.
“I feel like now we just need to get what we get since there’s no point in putting up a fight because they’re not going to benefit it,” she said, per the Times. “We just need to take it and be quiet.”
In 2019, there was a story going around that some of Biles’ motions were so difficult that they had been prohibited from competition. That wasn’t true–they were not prohibited, they were simply scored so low that it discouraged athletes out of attempting them.
A vault is scored on two components: execution and difficulty. The difficulty is supplied a letter rating of A-J, with J being the hardest. From the 2019 World Championships, Biles introduced two new motions which were awarded J ratings and a third element–a double-twisting double back–that was only awarded an H.
“An simpler version of that element with only one, instead of 2 spins, is rated a G. Biles new element was almost 30 years in the making, using nobody attempting to bring an excess twist because the full-twisting component was introduced in the 1980s before Biles at 2019.”
The Women’s Technical Committee defended their decision, citing”the risk, the safety of the gymnasts and the technical direction of the discipline.”
“There’s additional risk in landing of double saltos for beam dismounts (with/without twists), including a prospective landing the throat,” they wrote.
Biles herself summed it all up with her response at the time:
It is thought that this weekend’s decision by judges may be due to the very same sorts of concerns, both for”safety” of different gymnasts, in addition to the”technical management,” or even the chance of allowing Biles set too large of a pub. In the Times:
That’s totally ridiculous and it didn’t go unnoticed which Biles is at the middle of the controversy while some other athletic prodigies are permitted to excel unhindered.
Michael Phelps, the swimmer who has won more Olympic medals than any other human ever, has real genetic differences that give him an immense benefit in his sport.
It’s not his frame, but that helps: He is tall (6’4?) but his arms are long for his elevation, while his legs are a bit brief, and his feet and hands are enormous–basically built-in flippers. Moreover, he’s double-jointed, which gives him a broader range of movement compared to his rivals, and his body produces about half the amount of lactic acid than the average person, decreasing fatigue and providing him a faster recovery time.
His body is built differently than many others in his field and he is celebrated for this. When Black women have a physical benefit, they are punished.
Starting at just age 18, Semenya has been forced to undergo sex affirmation evaluations while being the subject of intense and very public scrutiny and mockery.
This is nothing uncommon for Black female athletes, that are far too frequently treated as if they’re under suspicion of cheating just by existing while Black. If they excel, these athletic institutions find ways to push down them. The adage that Black people need to work twice as hard and be twice as great as their counterparts to still only get half as much is on full display in the sports stadium.
Simone Biles knows that is what happened to her now. Talking about the points given to her newest components, she says,”They are both too low and they even know it. But they don’t want the area to be too much apart. And that’s just something which’s on them. That’s not on me.”
“They had an open source code of points and now they’re mad that people are too far ahead and excelling,” she states.
Simone Biles is literally the greatest gymnast ever . So let’s be.
