How the USA gymnastics team is selected after the Olympic trials

Then there’s gymnastics: Even after the scores are posted and the competition is over, most athletes wait in limbo. It’s a subjective game and a subjective decision. Gymnasts go to a private room and wait to hear if they have earned a spot on the U.S. team.

With this year’s competition getting tighter again, especially for the final spots, that room will be filled with tension Sunday night in Minneapolis, when an opaque process will determine which gymnasts represent the United States at the Paris Games. do.

For two decades, the selection process has been following a similar pattern. The top all-around finisher – and in some years the top two – receive Olympic berths. The rest of the team members are selected by a committee according to broad and vague criteria.

Previous administrations – Martha Karolyi from 2004 to the 2016 Olympics and then Tom Forster for the Tokyo Games – had different approaches. With new leadership entering the Paris Olympics, it is unclear how the committee will select the five gymnasts to represent the country this summer.

One method gives priority to all-round condition in tests. The second favors gymnasts who have complementary strengths that maximize the team score. Both approaches do not often lead to the selection of the same five gymnasts.

Karolyi created rosters that valued team scores more than all-around standings. Since three athletes perform on each apparatus in the team finals, gymnasts do not need to be strong across the board to be valuable. For example, Madison Kocian, who finished eighth in the all-around at the 2016 trials but was excellent on bars, and McKayla Maroney, who was seventh in the all-around in 2012 but was the nation’s best gymnast on vault. Had secured Olympic quota. Both of those US teams won gold medals, and Kocian and Maroney earned individual silver medals in their specific events. Compared to the Tokyo Olympics, in which teams were limited to four members, those Cairo teams had five, allowing a little more room for gymnasts who excel on an 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 close as possible – it’s just my personal preference – I wanted the rank order,” Forster said, referring to the all-around standings. “This seems most appropriate.”

A slightly different combination of gymnasts would have increased the team’s scoring potential by a smaller margin, but Forster said at the time, “We didn’t feel it was fair to alter the integrity of the process by just a few tenths.”

Forster said in an interview this week that the difference between these hypothetical team scores would need to be around a full point to persuade him to deviate from the all-around standings.

No recent U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team had so closely mirrored the results of the trials.

Since 1996 no Olympic team had been selected based solely on all-around standings. This method usually means that all gymnasts have well-rounded skill sets and can potentially compete on any apparatus if necessary. With four-man teams in Tokyo, all gymnasts competed on each apparatus in the qualifying rounds and only one athlete per event sat out the team finals. This made all-round ability more important than usual. With a five-man team, Forster said his approach may be different.

Grace McCallum earned the last spot on the team due to her fourth-place finish at the trials. However, MyKayla Skinner may have given the team a bit of a boost with her strong vault. Skinner received a spot to compete in Tokyo as an individual rather than as a team.

Explaining the selection, Forster referenced the team’s wide margins of victory at the World Championships in 2018 and 2019, adding: “We are so fortunate that our athletes are so strong that I don’t think it’s going to diminish ” “By one-tenth of a point in Tokyo.”

But the Russian Olympic Committee remained ahead by more than a full point in the qualifying round after the U.S. team’s poor performance. Forster said the team’s low execution score was surprising. In a chaotic team final, when Simone Biles’s vault went awry and she did not compete on any other apparatus, the Russians won the gold medal by an even larger margin.

The team with the highest possible score may have a greater buffer to withstand errors. But a team with extra options on each equipment may be considered a safer option, especially when considering scenarios such as last-minute injuries. Such examples are worth considering, especially when the scoring difference between multiple gymnasts is minimal.

In 2016, the team’s score would have been maximized by selecting Kocian and Ashton Locklear, another standout gymnast, on bars. But having two gymnasts contribute on just one apparatus would have been risky. Karoly chose Kocian, who had scored higher than Locklear on bars at the trials, and teamed up with 2012 Olympic all-around champion Gabby Douglas.

Douglas fell on beam during both nights of competition at the trials and finished seventh in the all-around. Despite the mistakes, when simulating the team final, Douglas’ score gave him a slight lead over fourth-place Skinner. Karolyi said at the time he was confident that Douglas would improve during training camp before the games. She was right: In the qualifying round at the Olympics, Douglas scored one point higher than she scored at nationals or trials.

This summer, the United States will be expected to win the team finals by a wide margin, especially given the absence of Russia. Several five-gymnast combinations will likely be strong enough to win gold. But because these decisions have life-changing effects, the strategy raises questions: Should a gymnast finish seventh but have the strength that maximizes the team’s score? to be eligible Any Olympic quota more or less than the fifth-placed athlete? Unclear selection procedures only underline the importance of the committee explaining the reasoning behind their choices.

Chelsea Memel, technical chief of the high performance staff, recently said that the team finals are “our first priority”, and she noted the format that requires only three gymnasts to perform on each apparatus. Memmel is not on the selection committee, but another member of the high performance staff, Alicia Sacramone Quinn, is one of three committee members. (Quinn’s voice on the committee is meant to reflect both her and Memel’s viewpoints.) Quinn earned an Olympic berth in 2008 when she excelled on vault, beam and floor but could not perform on bars. Had the team been selected solely on the basis of all-around standings, it would not have been an Olympian.

The recent World Championships provide insight into how the Paris team may be selected. The top five all-around finishers at selection camps in 2022 and 2023 received spots on the team, but Quinn said that was a coincidence and not indicative of a preferred method.

“It’s always a puzzle, and we talk about it that way,” Quinn said. “It is a combination of our best all-rounders and our best event finalists. It just keeps going on like this, but during that time we pay attention to other things also.

Sunisa Lee, the all-around champion in Tokyo, had stellar performances on bars and beam, but the U.S. team probably won’t use her scores on vault or floor in the team finals. Lee, who finished fourth in the all-around at nationals, has continued to improve this season. But if the emphasis is on all-round results, a gymnast could make a mistake on one apparatus, she may never compete in Paris and it could hurt her Olympic chances.

Asked if he thought Lee needed to finish in the top five to make the Olympics, Lee’s coach Jess Graba said: “I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. Realistically, I think our goal is to be top five all-around and top three on bars and beam.” A performance like that would probably mean Lee is on the team, no matter how the gymnasts are selected.

There could be stiff competition for the final places. Selection processes leave room for committee members to choose their own approach. And how they reach their decision won’t be clear until the Paris Olympians are celebrating on the field after their names are announced.