Road to Rio: Norah Flatley

Although Norah Flatley is a junior, it is worthwhile for gymnastic fans to monitor the American juniors, since a majority of the Rio Olympic team will probably emerge from those ranks. Norah’s birthday gives her the disadvantage of not becoming a senior until 2016, so that fact alone complicates her journey to Rio. However, if Norah continues to compete with the difficulty and skill that she showed at the Secret Classic and the P&G Championships, I can easily envision her making the Rio squad even if it is in a similar capacity to Kyla Ross: expected to compete in the team all-around but not necessarily the individual all-around. Even if Norah doesn’t get a chance (which I hope she does) to compete in the individual all-around in Rio, I could see her having the opportunity to medal on beam, and possibly working toward the 2020 Olympics, as Kyla is now, to have another shot at the all-around medal.

Norah is simply a beast on beam. Her difficulty is incredible for any level, and her routines typically seem very fluid. When she is on the beam, she never looks flustered. Even when she falters, she remains calm and finds a way to save the maneuver as much as possible. This poise on an apparatus that challenges a gymnast’s nerves to an insane degree coupled with her difficulty and her mostly fluid execution explains why she won the junior beam title with ease at the Secret Classic and finished second among the juniors in the beam competition at the P&G Championships.

Apart from being amazing on beam, Norah is developing very promisingly as an all-around gymnast. Her ranking in the all-around junior competition at the P&G Championships was sufficiently high enough for her to be named a member of the 2013-2014 Junior National Team, and her performance on each apparatus was solid. Her vault showed good height, energy, and form. Her bar routine was not breathtaking but there wasn’t room for a ton of form deductions and her difficulty score is there. Like Shawn and Gabby (Olympians who trained under Norah’s coach, Liang Chow), she could probably be slated to compete on bars in the team competition, because her performance would be reliable and reasonably high in terms of what Americans can produce on bars. On floor, her tumbling was exciting, although she will want to clean up some of her landings, and her choreography is interesting.

Throughout all these events, Norah maintained the same serenity that she displayed on beam, demonstrating the cool as a cucumber personality and competitive consistency that was part of the reason that Kyla Ross made the 2012 London Olympic team. Norah’s calm competency in competition will definitely be a point in her favor with Marta Karolyil, who controls so much of American gymnastics, and Marta seems to have already formed a favorable impression of young Norah. When asked at the P&G Championships which juniors fans might see in Rio, Marta mentioned “that little girl from Chow’s,” so it sounds like Marta has her eye on Norah and so should American gymnastic fans.

Road to Rio: Kyla Ross

If there is any member of the Fierce Five whose name is likely to slip people’s minds, it’s Kyla Ross. In London, she took a backseat to her more famous teammates. There was Jordyn Wieber whose crying face after she failed to qualify for the all-around was plastered all over the media. There was Gabby Douglas who soared to the gold in the individual all-around. There was Aly Raisman who remained stable on balance beam to earn a bronze medal and who electrified the country with a dazzling floor routine that garnered her a gold medal in the floor event finals. There was McKayla Maroney and her fall to silver in the vault finals. Then there was Kyla, who performed calmly and quietly for America on the uneven bars and beam during the team finals.

2013, however, has been a year for Kyla to emerge from her shell. At Worlds in Antwerp, she was the Queen of Silver: she earned silver medals in the individual all-around, uneven bars, and beam competition. Her consistency, elegant lines that appeal to international judging panels, and her steady upgrading of the difficulty of her routines have to favorably impress Marta Karolyi. Her silver medal in the all-around shows that she would be a valuable addition to any team, and her silver in uneven bars may do even more to bolster her case for making Rio in 2016.

Kyla’s reliable and smooth bar work was one of the reasons that she was chosen for London 2012, and her performance on bars there certainly did not let her team or Marta down. The fact that Kyla medaled in uneven bars at Worlds will only strengthen Marta’s perception of her as an adept bar worker, which is excellent for her since uneven bars is an apparatus that America as a whole is currently weak on. If Kyla’s bar work remains among the best in the world (and definitely in America) and her all-around skills continue to develop, I can see her joining McKayla as a veteran in Rio. Of course, there is always the lurking menace of injuries and upcoming juniors, but I think that Kyla will stay calm and graceful in the face of such threats. At the very least, she will be in the discussion for Rio.

 

 

Road to Rio: McKayla Maroney

McKayla Maroney’s visage could be the epitome of the two sides of the Olympics: soaring triumph and crashing defeat. After the American women’s gymnastics team clinched the gold medal by a comfortable margin over the Russians, her sky high Amanar complete with perfectly pointed toes and locked legs deluged the Internet. Viewers were cued to appropriate awe by the gaping mouths of the judges in the background. Everyone who knew what a flip was now had astonishing proof that she was the best female vaulter in the world. All she had to do was show up to the vault apparatus finals and perform well enough to receive the gold that practically had her name etched into it already.

Unfortunately for her, this storybook happy ending was not to be. She completed a beautiful Amanar that might not have been as impeccable as her vault during team finals but was still impressive and all but untouchable. For her second vault, she chose, as usual, to complete a Mustafina. Perhaps because her first vault was not as perfect as the one she had done in team finals, she tried to go for a stuck landing instead of taking the minor deduction of a small hop even though with a small hop the gold would still have been all but guaranteed to be hers. As a result of trying to stick her landing, she fell to the mat and ultimately to silver medal position.

Her scowl on the podium has inspired hundreds (or possibly thousands) of memes that normally make up for in hilarity what they lack in originality. Although she has been branded as a poor sport, it is only fair to note that she is on the record as stating that her podium pout was a product of disappointment and anger with her own performance rather than any evidence of dislike for either of the other medalists. She has also explained in interviews that, as she was sliding down to sit on the mat after her second vault in event finals, she was telling herself that she would now have to travel to Rio to get the gold vaulting medal that she had missed in London.

This raises the question of whether she will be able to achieve her dream of going to Rio to claim the Olympic Title that she couldn’t win in London. After all, the American gymnastics program is a deep one, and it is difficult enough for an American girl to make the Olympic team once, nonetheless twice. This is doubly true in the case of a specialist a la McKayla Maroney in London, and triply true of a specialist in an event that isn’t the uneven bars, America’s current weak apparatus.

My personal belief is that McKayla Maroney has an even shot of making the Olympic team in Rio. She is a veteran of America gymnastics: part of the gold medal winning World Championship team in Tokyo (where she also received a gold medal in the vault competition), part of the gold medal winning team in London (where she earned a silver medal in the vault competition), and a member of the World Championship team in Rio where she qualified for floor finals and successfully defended her World Championship gold from Tokyo. Her experience counts with Marta Karolyi, as does her fiercely competitive nature. In her favor is the fact that her vaulting remains spectacular and she is diversifying to become more of an all-around gymnast.

McKayla’s floor exercise displays her skills as a power gymnast, and she competed it very successfully at the Visas in America. She also managed to qualify with her routine to the floor finals at Worlds. That’s pretty impressive, and I anticipate that her floor work will continue to improve throughout this upcoming quad. I also have always found her form on beam and bars quite elegant. Once she upgrades the difficulty of her beam and bars, I think that she has the makings of a very solid all-around gymnast. Basically, I am convinced that McKayla is doing all that she can to maximize her chances on being on the Rio team: remaining dominant on vault and diversifying to become more of an all-arounder rather than a specialist gymnast. As such, I could see her being on the Rio team as a veteran and leader. Obviously, Rio is a long way off, so there could be the threats of injuries or upcoming juniors who will be eligible for the Olympics to contend with, but McKayla is a fighter, so the competition could be great for her.