Trampoline at the 2024 Olympics: A Coach’s Perspective by D.Ross

The Olympic Stage

After a long, gruelling, and sometimes heartbreaking, Olympic Qualification process most of the best athletes in the trampoline world were selected. 16 men and 16 women. Canada qualified Sophiane.

The athletes rose to the task of being well prepared for Paris. There is big difference between hoping you will qualify for the Olympics and knowing that you will compete. During the final months of preparation there is a real sense of purpose. The biggest risk is over-training.

French spectators are excited about watching sports. This is perhaps due to the French school system where sports is a much bigger part of the mix than in most countries. Hence they have more insight on the thoughts and struggles of athletes. The stands were packed!

At an Olympics there is often a changing of the guard. Due to fewer athletes in the field, media pressure, and the gruelling qualification, an advantage goes to new rising stars. They are hungry, recover faster, and have nothing to lose. This adds an extra dimension. The stage was set for an exciting event.

Who will reach the finals?

The first excitement was determining who will be in the final. Looking at past results there were about 12 of those qualified with the potential to make the top 8 in each event.

The women’s event was really exciting to include drama and surprises. The battle to final and the battle to medal were really tight.

During the Preliminary round 4 of the 16 failed their first routine. Of the 14 who tried a second routine only one failed. My guess is that Malak of Egypt had a triffis in her routine for the first time. At this Olympics the start order was in a released random order, not the usual reverse order of preliminary standing. (I prefer the old system)  Of the 10 women who did their first routine , and still elected to do a second routine, four intentionally did a harder routine. I am not sure if Xueying, the Tokyo champion, wanted to warm up her finals routine, or prove that she could score more than Viyaleta? On her second try Xueying performed the highest scoring routine of the competition with 15.0 difficulty and improved HD. This ranked her first in the Preliminaries to jump second in the finals, instead of last. That order was known! See below concerning the warm up situation. Bryony who impressed at Worlds in GB with 3 triples and a Miller, did the Miller on her second routine for a 15.2 and the highest DD in the Women’s event.  Time of flight averaged about 15.6 for the Women. Viyaleta dominated Preliminary height with 16.24. Luba had the only other Preliminary Optional over 16 seconds.

For Women the top 8 featured 4 first time Olympians, Yicheng, Sophiane, Anzhela and Viyaleta. Meanwhile on a different day Camilla, Luba, Noemi and Seljan might have made the final. That group also included 50% old guard and 50% newcomers. Luba who has sat on the cusp of making finals in each of her 4 Olympics still had near top height and form. Let us not forget the 4 established stars who made it to the final. Madeline, Hikaru, Xueying and Bryony.

 

In the Men’s event. Ivan, the defending Olympic champion, appeared to be in a class by himself.

Making the finals for men was a less interesting than it could have been. Ryusei of Japan was the only athlete attempting a routine with two rudy down triples. Unfortunately he became the lone male to fail both routines. (The men had 9 failed routines in Preliminaries compared to 5 for Women.) With Ryusei out, and Benny injured, I thought the other medal contenders where Zisai, Lanyu, Dylan and  Gabriel. This meant 3 finals spots up for grabs. I had no idea how much Zak and Pierre had improved recently! So actually it was really just the last spot into the finals that was up for grabs. The contenders were Angel with great consistency, Daniel with high difficulty, and Rayan. Aliaksei was also close to the mark and perhaps a victim of over-training? In the end Angel won the last spot with consistency.

For Men the final featured 5 first time Olympians! The top Chinese men of Yan and Wang have been so dominant at major competitions recently, they hardly seem like newcomers. However, at the last Olympics only 3 years ago in Tokyo it was Dong and Gao who competed for China. The other new comers were Zak, Pierre and Gabriel. All who have improved so much and are now deserving finalists. I thought Benny of Austria would be another young star this year, but he had major knee re-construction only 6 months prior. The veterans were Ivan, Dylan and Angel, all who were in the final in Tokyo.

Trampoline routine failure rate, is now high. Trampoline frame size has not changed since 1966. Meanwhile webbing had gone from 25mm to 4mm, resulting in a huge power increase. With end decks, spotter mats and much thicker mats on the floor, plus a score for jumping high, and it is no surprise that our most powerful athletes often fail. This makes our sport look bad. Giving athletes two tries, is not the solution. The distance from the edge of the bed, to the immovable steel frame has NOT CHANGED during the same 58 years. It should be increased for both safety and stability.

Finals

The top 8 proceed to a fresh start final.
The women’s final was really exciting. For a Canadian fan the ride Sophiane had was like a movie script. First making the final was a nail biter. With decent Prelim routines she made the final in the 8th spot with a score which she herself and other athletes could have surpassed. Then in the final she pulled out a brilliant routine. Harder (15.0) higher, and right in the middle (9.8). This was enough to pass BOTH of the Chinese athletes for a Bronze medal! Xueying the veteran and reigning Olympic champion perhaps felt extra pressure. She finished her routine but it was her easier one scoring 1.2 less than in preliminaries and 0.14 out of the medals. Then Yicheng, performing last, actually failed her routine! She must have known that her toughest rival Xueying, was beatable. We will never know what would have happened if they had competed in a different order, with different psychology? Could anyone have predicted this? The newcomers Viyaleta and Anzhela were quite formidable. Viyaleta jumped the highest, had great form and deservedly earned the Silver medal with a planned 14.4 DD routine. Anzhela had good form too but traveled at the start causing her to do her easier routine. That cost her a medal. The surprise performance was Bryony who jumped second last and did her 15.0 routine without the 3rd triple, or the Miller. The routine was high, clean and well centred to win! What an exciting and closely fought event. So many surprises! The women showed us the joy of winning and the agony of defeat.

Compared to Viyaleta, Bryony had 0.6 more difficulty, 0.4 better execution (rather similar actually.) and 0.4 higher score for staying in the centre. However with her 1.0 lower TOF she only won by the questionable execution difference. In my mind Bryony had the best routine. However it was practically a tie, as TOF is valued so much.

In the Men’s final Ivan handled the pressure and was the clear winner. He looked the best but also jumped so much higher that he looked superior. Before time of flight was scored the athletes with the most height usually looked impressive, were scored the best and did the hardest routines. Ivan already benefited from that. Then he got another 0.64 over the next highest finalist in TOF score as well! The Chinese men did not perform their best but were solid enough to take 2nd and 3rd. The men’s podium is exactly as could be predicted. Dylan may have been feeling some extra pressure, knowing the Chinese were in range. It was disappointing to see him fall right off. This is very rare for him. (Edge stability decreases the further you depress the bed.) Zak took 4th with a stunning finals routine, well centred and very high. His 18.5 DD was the highest at the event. He missed 3rd by 1.1, which is a lot. His execution was lower by 2.3. If he can accomplish tighter pike positions he will be a medal threat. Overall I though the execution judging at the event was very good. I was surprised the judges did not like Gabriel as much as I did? I think he opens fully and holds his line at the end of his skills really well without the wide arms action of the Chinese. Perhaps it will take time for the judges to realize how good he is? In the final he trailed Zak by 0.1 to come fifth.

In the end both Olympic champions were veterans, but 67% of the medals were won by newcomers. This might be a lesson to countries. If you have two athletes who are tied, select the younger one?

Other thoughts…

• The event is long relative to the variety offered. Athletes can do the exact same routine 3 times. The lack of any in your face competition confrontations, such as ties decided by additional passes makes our sport a yawn, compared to what it could be.
• The announcing on television could be improved.
• An interesting display of comparison scores for athletes was used on the venue score board, but not on television. This showed TOF and HD while waiting for the EX and DD scores to come up. Good anticipation. When the total arrived the rest of the break down was added graphically. Great idea.
• Most athletes picked 7 or 8 skills in their routines exactly the same as the other athletes of their gender. Not enough variety. Our rules encourage this. Why not require 2 or 3 different skills per routine so there is more variety, and an added element of strategy!
• The execution judging system is flawed. The main flaw is throwing out 2/3rds of the judge’s opinions. Consider when the 6 judges score 012222 for a skill, but get 222234 for another. With our rules, both skills get a 0.4 deduction. Meanwhile the first athlete had 9 deductions and the second athlete received 15. Our system is eliminating useful information, or shades of grey, by design!. Skill by skill judging is a mistake. For example, when an athlete does two consecutive skills which are both between a 0.2 and a 0.3 off. The first judge gives the first skill a 0.3 and corrects by giving the next one 0.2. The second judge does the reverse. They both have seen the same thing, had the same opinion, and have given the proper score for the routine. However with skill by skill judging, and the scores of the other 4 judges, unsystematic error is added. Throwing out most of the judges scores is far less accurate than counting them all. Throwing out different judges scores on a skill by skill bases guarantees unsystematic error.
• The execution judging system encourages untraceable cheating. I am not accusing any judge of bad intentions. However, consider that all routines will have some skills performed between two deductions, say between 0.2 and a 0.3 off. A judge could pick the lower deduction for the athletes they favour and vice versa, without notice. This could significantly affect the (2 of 6) counting scores for a skill. To have a similar effect, with scores based on total deductions, they would need to give a score which would evidently be out of line. Add to this, the specific judge’s scores are not displayed and sometimes never released!
• This Olympics had a schedule which was brutal for the athletes, again. The time between routines was 55 minutes for the first flight and 45 minutes for the second. This is too long. In between the athletes could jump on different trampolines, not on a podium, in a different room with different lighting and no spectators. No other event is run this way. In the normal (better) system a flight does one routine after the other. Why not have NO training gym? Two trampolines is enough for 16 athletes. If spectators want to arrive early to watch the warm up period, they usually can. Athletes do not want to get used to warm up trampolines!
• Ivan did his last 6 as a warm up turn on his “second preliminary try”. I am sure a rule will come along to disallow this in the future. However it was good strategy on his part, and a commendable rebuke of the deplorable schedule.

Looking forward

During the next Olympic cycle new rules are in place to encourage the top athletes to do harder skills.  Some will. However, they will still be able to perform the same routine for all three competitive rounds and they will pick the mostly the same skills as each other. In 4 years a new generation of athletes will try to rise to the pinnacle of the sport. Usually when a new set of rules comes into place people predict that a different group of athletes, who benefit from the new rules, will take over. Often however, winning athletes find a new formulae to dominate. The excitement continues!

Meanwhile the IOC does not guarantee any sport continued participation after LA. Trampoline should strive to become more entertaining!