OK @star-anise was like explain pls? and i tried to but i need an actual keyboard so I can do it properly.
SO. this involves quite a lot of backstory. sorry.
Gymnastics routines get a D score (for difficulty) and an E score (for execution). The E score starts from a 10.0 and you get deductions for stuff like bent knees or wobbles or steps on landing. The D score is made up of the difficulty value of the hardest 8 skills you do in a routine, plus other stuff like connection bonus and composition requirements. Your total score is D + E which is why since 2006 gymnastics scores are like 13.7 instead of something out of 10.
So each skill gets assigned a difficulty value and a letter: an A skill is +0.1 to your D score, B=0.2, C=0.3, etc.
Simone motherfucking Biles is doing a double-twisting double back off the beam. Nobody else has done this before because it’s fucking CRAZY but she’s Simone so physics is like whatever I’ll be over here taking a nap. So she’ll get it named after her if she competes it successfully at World Championships which are starting in a couple days. In order to do THAT, she has to submit it to a committee of the FIG (Int’l Gymnastics Federation, but in French) that decides what letter/score the skill should get.
This is the committee’s response, which is that it’s an H skill, worth 0.8 difficulty.
Here’s the context. A double back dismount, no twisting involved, is a D skill (0.4). A double back dismount with ONE twist is a G skill (0.7). no twists -> 1 twist = 0.3 difference in difficulty value. This says the double back with two twists is an H = 0.8 skill. Worth only 0.1 more than a double back with 1 twist.
Which is weird, because if 0->1 twist gets you 0.3, 1->2 twists should get you about the same increase in difficulty. That would make Simone’s skill a J, worth 1.0 difficulty.
There aren’t any J skills on beam, and there might not be any on any event anywhere? but there’s no particular reason they couldn’t make this a J skill, because this is the committee that writes the rules. The rules are what they say they are.
They don’t want to do that for reasons that involve a lot of really convoluted politics and also racism.
Simone is right and she should say it.