During the first day of apparatus finals in the gymnastics competition, Alex Naddour won the bronze medal on the pommel horse. It was the first medal for the US men’s gymnasts at the 2016 Olympics. They’ll have a couple more opportunities on Tuesday to pick up additional medals in Rio but regardless of the final total, their performance has already been deemed a disappointment in some corners of the media.
Last week in USA Today, Nancy Armour described the US men as “mediocre” after their respectable fifth-place finish in the team competition, and suggested that they look to their female counterparts for ideas on to how to improve. Her suggestions included holding the men accountable “to the exacting standards” that national team coordinator Martha Karolyi demands of the women, and “regular, high-stake mock competitions so gymnasts can handle the pressure when it counts.”
This is not the first time Armour had scolded the men for not being up to the standard of the women. She did it last year before the 2015 world championships when she said it was a mistake for the men’s team to be chosen so early, and suggested that they take a page out of the women’s book and wait until the last possible minute.
The mistake that Armour and many others have made is assuming that men’s and women’s gymnastics are directly comparable, when they’re barely the same sport. The men compete in six events, the women in four. There is only direct overlap on two apparatuses – the vault and the floor exercise – though in the latter, the women have dance requirements in addition to the tumbling. The uneven bars is similar to the high bar though not exactly the same, and the women don’t perform on any apparatuses like the pommel horse or rings.
The extra events and the additional physical requirements mean that it’s much harder to draft a men’s team of just five to cover six events in a team final. The women get the same number of team members to cover four events. Bringing a gymnast like Madison Kocian, who the US women only used on the uneven bars, would be next to impossible for a men’s team to do while effectively covering all six events in a team final. (The British men, however, did do so with star Louis Smith, who can only contribute on pommel horse, so it can work.) The women’s selection committee has a much less complicated job than the men’s when it comes to putting together a team of five that can contribute high scores across all the events.
Armour also tried to brush off the fact that the US men and women compete in very different international fields, but that’s a big part of why the results between the two programs differ. At the moment, the competition on the women’s side is fairly weak. The Americans are phenomenal but they don’t have have a real rival the way that the Soviets had in the Romanian and East German teams during the Cold War era. These countries, especially Romania, challenged the gymnastics superpower on a regular basis and occasionally bested them. And even when Romania didn’t beat the Soviets, they were breathing down their necks, so close that the USSR knew they couldn’t make a mistake and claim the top spot.
This year, Romania couldn’t even qualify for the Olympics. Russia, the silver medalists, have struggled with injury. And though the Chinese won the team title in 2008, they have failed to return to the form that won them gold. In Rio, the US women won by eight points, which means they could have recorded multiple falls and still ended on top of the podium. That tells you a lot about how good they are ... but also about the relative weakness of their competition.
By contrast, men’s gymnastics is great if you’re the kind of sports fans who likes to watch tightly-fought encounters. At present, the men’s field has never been stronger. The final in Rio saw legitimate challengers to the supremacy of Japan and China. Japan emerged on top but China, the leader after team qualifications, were edged by Russia for the silver. It was the first team medal for the Russian men in 16 years. Right behind China were Great Britain, the 2015 world championship silver medalists. And in fifth were the US, who won the team bronze in 2014 at the world championships. To be in the mix with some of the strongest teams on the planet in one of the most competitive men’s team finals in history doesn’t exactly make you “mediocre” as Armour ungenerously put it.
But this isn’t about being generous or kind to the US men. It’s about assessing their performance accurately in the context of their sport, which is not the same as women’s gymnastics. Amanda Turner, writing a response to Armour in International Gymnast, pointed out the ludicrousness of this comparison. “Comparing these two teams’ results would be like saying, ‘The US women’s soccer team wins every Olympics and World Cup, so it’s time for the men to stop accepting mediocrity and winning the World Cup too! They must not train as hard as the women or they are clearly not as mentally tough when they allow goals.”
Anyone who regularly follows soccer would know that such a comparison is ridiculous. Yet this is exactly what people do when they make these sort of blanket statements about the competitive outcomes of the US men’s and women’s gymnastics teams. But since so few people understand gymnastics and even fewer understand men’s gymnastics, it’s easy to make the kind of claims that Armour and others have made without receiving any pushback.
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement but if we are serious about improving the outcomes of the men’s program, we have to talk about more than discipline and believing that Karolyi is magic. It’s not just about “bucking up” and “working harder”. We have to acknowledge that there are major differences between the men’s and women’s side of the sport. We must admit that women’s gymnastics enjoys certain material and structural advantages in the US. Women’s gymnastics is much more popular and as a result, there is much higher level of participation. This means a deeper talent pool out of which to find those unique specimens who become champions.
The men have seen key resources, such as Division I NCAA programs, disappear over the years. There are now just 16 men’s NCAA programs left and they have at most 6.2 partial scholarships as opposed to the up to 12 full scholarships available to women’s teams. In the past, the college system had been one of the main training grounds for world and Olympic team members. (See: the 1984 gold medal winning men’s team, primarily fielded from UCLA, which no longer has a men’s program.) How can we encourage participation among high level male gymnasts if there is little incentive to continue beyond an Olympic dream that can only come true for a lucky few?
If there is anyone the US men should be looking to for guidance, it’s their British counterparts. Team GB have gone from doing so poorly that they lost most of their funding to picking up multiple medals over the last quad, including two golds for Max Whitlock in Rio. Instead of focusing on training camps and centralization, which cost a lot, they poured their limited resources into local clubs to provide guidance to the coaches and gymnasts in their home gyms. This increases the number of clubs capable of training up elite gymnasts. As they’ve received more funding and success, they’ve invested more money into this approach. Perhaps the person the US men should be consulting is Eddie Van Hoof, not Karolyi.
But even if the American men improve their results, they will be unable to achieve the dominance of the US women unless Japan, China, Great Britain, Russia, Germany, and others stop producing medal contenders. I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen. Part of what has made the men’s gymnastics in Rio so much fun to watch is how many teams and gymnasts had a credible shot at the medal stand. The men’s team and all-around final was edge of the seat excitement. Nothing was a foregone conclusion.
Dominance is only fun for the team that’s on top but a truly open field where almost anyone can win, well, that’s fun for everyone.
