Simone Biles gymnast

[75cent bleacher seat]

I find her to be absolutely amazing...moves are named after her. She performs a triple something in this video....In a class all by herself. Imagine going up against her in competition. Wondering if she could translate this into diving or ice skating
View: https://youtu.be/VEMNI28ZHk8

 

[Bozo Texino]

Is Ms. Briles the single most dominant athlete in the world right now?

Gymnastics is difficult to compare to most team sports, sure - but I still say yes.

 

[snowmanny]

I'm not sure why she would "translate" this into two less popular sports. (I mean popular in the sense that I'm guessing more people get gymnastics lessons than figure skating or competitive diving lessons). What she's doing seems plenty good enough as it is.

I'm not sure that there is much of an argument to be made against her being the greatest American athlete right now.

 

[The Needler]

Is Ms. Briles the single most dominant athlete in the world right now?

Gymnastics is difficult to compare to most team sports, sure - but I still say yes.

Katie Ledecky dominates in an enormous range of events (from 100m relays to the 1500m freestyle) in a sport that does not rely on subjective scoring. Last year in her best event, the 1500m, she was 21 seconds faster than the 2nd place finisher. The difference between 2nd and 7th was only 20 seconds.

 

[kartvelo]

I'm not sure why she would "translate" this into two less popular sports. (I mean popular in the sense that I'm guessing more people get gymnastics lessons than figure skating or competitive diving lessons). What she's doing seems plenty good enough as it is.

I'm not sure that there is much of an argument to be made against her being the greatest American athlete right now.

 

[snowmanny]

One is now the other is ever.

 

[McBride11]

Oddly, I was reading this article (or a similar, can't remember exact source) a few days ago about Biles is SO good they have downgraded some of her scoring. They downgraded the scores because they were scared other gymnasts would hurt themselves, possibly severely (landing on neck), because they would try and keep up but did not possess the physical ability to do so.

Ledecky and her are in a different world when compared to their counterparts. As a non gymnastics person it is probably harder to appreciate how much better Biles is, whereas Ledecky you can see her finish world championship / olympic finals without even second place on the screen. She touches the wall, paddles around for a few minutes, gets out, showers, has breakfast, and then the next person touches the wall.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2019/10/04/gymnastics-simon-biles-penalized-championships-being-too-good/3866255002/

 

[snowmanny]

There was that Soviet (Georgian) diver who died trying a high value dive in order to move up in the competition. One of the American coaches said something along the lines of he knew this particular move was beyond the skill level of that diver and wanted to call an ambulance when he heard the diver was attempting to do it. But it still seems stupid the downgrade moves for that reason.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1983/07/17/soviet-diver-is-dead-a-week-after-accident/7caa3625-df9d-47ea-862b-aa67c6c49804/
Ed: Greg Louganis won. He was the next diver after Chalibashvili was taken away and did the same dive.

 

[The Needler]

Oddly, I was reading this article (or a similar, can't remember exact source) a few days ago about Biles is SO good they have downgraded some of her scoring. They downgraded the scores because they were scared other gymnasts would hurt themselves, possibly severely (landing on neck), because they would try and keep up but did not possess the physical ability to do so.

Ledecky and her are in a different world when compared to their counterparts. As a non gymnastics person it is probably harder to appreciate how much better Biles is, whereas Ledecky you can see her finish world championship / olympic finals without even second place on the screen. She touches the wall, paddles around for a few minutes, gets out, showers, has breakfast, and then the next person touches the wall.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2019/10/04/gymnastics-simon-biles-penalized-championships-being-too-good/3866255002/

And this is part of why I think Ledecky is more dominant. Putting aside the fact that Biles competes in a "sport" where the athletes peak at about age 14, artificial age minimums need to be imposed, natural size limitations effectively eliminate competitors when they become much taller than 5 feet tall, etc...the subjective nature of the scoring makes it all too vague for me to say who's the most dominant. I mean, at last year's world championships, there were two gymnasts who received higher scores than Biles in 2 of the 4 skills. And Biles fell on her vault and balance beam routine, and went out of bounds on the floor, and still won the all-around because of the difficulty of her routines. It's all so seemingly arbitrary to an outsider.

In swimming, first to touch the wall wins.