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Titanic but with cats

Bee Movie (2007) dir. Simon J. Smith & Steve Hickner X-Men: First Class (2011) dir. Matthew Vaughn

🧜‍♀️ By @littlemanyu_

hiii this is random but !! ive been watching the olympics gymnastics and im kind of Obsessed and wanna get into watching gymnastics not just once every 4 years ?? wondering if u have any advice on where to start !! coz i know Nothing lol :))

Hi, you're welcome!

There is plenty of gymnastics to watch all year round. The Olympics is the highlight though every 4 years!

Btw I also got into watching artistic gymnastics by seeing the Olympics (20 years ago 🤯, when watching was depending heavily on terrestrial broadcast).

I am not really sure if I am the best to explain artistic gymnastics and tbh I am not following gymnastics as closely as 10 years ago but I still try to give some advices. I hope it helps. Pls ask if anything is unlcear.

I think in short the best advice is to just watch as much gymnastics as you can 😁 With time you will see and understand more about the sport.

A short and incomplete introduction into artistic gymnastics:

Let's start with some basics:

There are different kind of gymnastics, but I assume anon talks about artistic gymnastics as this was the most prominent discipline that gets most attention.

The governing body of gymnastics is the FIG. You can find a YouTube channel, an Instagram account and a Twitter account.

There are two shortcuts for artistic gymnastics. Men Artistic Gymnastics = MAG and Women's Artistic Gymnastics = WAG.

Male gymnasts perform on 6 apparatus (Vault, Floor, High Bar, Parallel Bars, Pommel Horse and Still Rings), female gymnasts on 4 apparatus (Balance Beam, Uneven Bars, Vault and Floor). The All Around (AA) competition is the most prestigious as you have to be good on all apparatus.

I would not bother with understanding everything about the points for the start, but for the basics there is a Difficulty Score (D-Score) and an Execution Score (E-Score) for each routine. The execution score will be deducted starting by 10,0. The difficulty score is open end. How the deductions on the E-score work is far too complex to explain in a simple post but you can watch out for landing errors, going out of bounds on a landing on Floor and Vault, pointed feet and bend knees, just to name some common errors. A fall is easy to spot and is always 1,0 off. The D-Score works different. Each element has a value starting by A and going up to H. A has 0,1 difficulty and H has 0,8. The 8 most difficult elements count towards the D-Score. There are some different requirements on each apparatus what you have to fullfill, but it would lead to far here to explain.

Competitions:

Artistic gymnastics has a World Championship every year except in the Olympic year, so that's the event to watch out most besides the Olympics. It always happens some time in October each year. Next World Championship 2025 will be in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Before the World Championship there are multiple other competitions to watch. There are championships on continental level (European Championships for example), World Cups and national competitions. And more but these are the competitions I would put my focus on. The Nationals of the USA are probably the most hyped and easily accesible via YouTube. European Championships have various broadcasts on TV but also have their own streaming site here Most events have some form of livestreaming or videos accesible afterwards.

Watch just as much as you can from competitions. You can always rely on Youtube videos. Also old videos are fun to watch.

Gymnasts and countries I recommend to keep an eye on:

I will focus on those who compete at the Olympics this time, but tbf getting into gymnastics at the Olympics may be the worst time as a lot of gymnast you'll see at the Olympics retire afterwards. So next year you might not see many returning ones...

There are plenty of amazing gymnasts but the post is already far too long, so I'll point out a few of the best and a few of my faves. (There sadly is a picture limit per post on Tumblr)

WAG (Women's Artistic Gymnastics)

I guess this name is familiar but always worth mentioning: Simone Biles 🇺🇸(superstar of the sport, called "Greatest of All Time" GOAT and frontrunner for the last decade - most decorated gymnast of all time. Olympic AA champion 2016 and 2024, World AA Champion 2013,2014,2015,2018,2019,2023)

Rebeca Andrade 🇧🇷 (World AA Champion 2022, Olympic Silver Medalist 2021 and 2024, Olympic VT Champion)

Qiu Qiyuan 🇨🇳 (2023 Uneven Bars World Champion - great Beam and Bars worker - just won Olympic UB Silver 2024 few hours ago)

Some others worth mentioning (sadly not pictured):

Kaylia Nemour 🇩🇿 (2024 UB Olympic champion - first African gymnast to win a medal at the Olympics)

Sunisa Lee 🇺🇸 (2021 AA Olympic Champion, 2024 AA & UB Bronze Medalist)

Flavia Saraiva 🇧🇷 (the most fun floor routines and gorgeous beam)

Elsabeth Black 🇨🇦 (fan favorite, 2017 Worlds AA Silver Medalist, 2022 Worlds Beam silver medalist)

Team USA is without a doubt the strongest nation in WAG. Not only did they win most of the team competitions the last decade, but also with quite a margin. Team Italy and Team Brazil have fought their way up to the top with Italy having a balanced team of gymnasts who can score evenly on all events and Team Brazil having superstar Rebeca Andrade who contributes massively with huge scores. Team China imo has the prettiest gymnastics of everyone but their weakest event Vault prevented them from winning team medals since 2014. Their strongest events are Beam and Uneven Bars.

(From left to right: Team Italy, USA and Brazil)

MAG (Men's Artistic Gymnastics)

Zhang Boheng 🇨🇳(World AA Champion 2021, Olympic AA Silver Medalist 2024 - tbh the best AA gymnast atm but battling with injuries and lost the AA final by a few tenth despite having a fall)

Daiki Hashimoto 🇯🇵 (Olympic AA and HB Champion 2021, World AA Champion 2022 & 2023)

Shinnosuke Oka 🇯🇵 (Olympic AA Champion 2024, World Junior AA Champion 2019 - the surprise AA Olympic Champion. Just 20 years old with a bright future)

(Shinnosuke Oka (left) and Daiki Hashimoto (right))

Zou Jinyuan 🇨🇳 (Olympic PB champion 2021, World Champion - the cleanest execution on parallel bars and overall you'll ever see)

Some more MAG gymnasts worth mentioning:

Carlos Yulo 🇵🇭 (first Philippine gymnast to win a world title and Olympic title - great AAer and Floor and Vault specialist - 2019 FX World Champion, 2024 Vault and Floor Olympic Champion)

Ilia Kovtun 🇺🇦 (2021 Worlds AA Bronze medalist & 2023 Worlds AA Silver Medalist)

Team China and Team Japan are those to watch out for the titles. They have the best teams and are far off all other countries atm (with Russia's team banned who won in Tokyo 2021) Team China is very strong on Still Rings and Parallel Bars. Team Japan is very strong on Parallel Bars

(Podium from left to right: China, Japan and USA)

Team USA unlike in the women competition are not frontrunners, but have received the Bronze medal at this games with hitting 18/18 routines. Other teams to watch out are Team Great Britain and Team Ukraine. Team Ukraine are the current European Champions are strong on Parallel Bars and Vault. Their weakness is High Bar which costed them the team medal in Paris. Team Great Britain has strong gymnasts on most events, most prominently Vault, Pommel Horse and Floor.

(Team Ukraine at the European Championship 2024 - from left to right: Nazar Chepurny, Stelmakh, Oleg Verniaev, Igor Radivilov and Ilia Kovtun)

About artistic gymnastics fandom:

If you wanna talk about gymnastics you can join the fandom, called gymternet. (The experience to see your faves suffering together may sting a little less 😅)

Tbh I am maybe not the right person to ask about fandom side of gymnastics (I am mostly active in figure skating fandom). There are a couple of "fandom" sites I use to follow gymnastics news: The Gymternet (link here) and The Balance Beam Situation (link here) (this one is a bit more on the "drama" side with the reporting)

For more fandom stuff you should better ask someone else for advice.

______

And while I am at it I also recommend watching rhythmic gymnastics, it's different but very beautiful. And the competition at this Olympics is about to happen from 8th to 10th August 2024! (Tbh by now I follow RG much closer than AG)

tsukishima from haikyuu is really funny because haikyuu is a sports anime, and with every other character they're like fuck yea. i'm in a sports anime. but tsukki has to be dragged kicking and screaming into accepting that his life is a sports anime. get powered of friendshipped and teamworked, idiot.