2012 podiums pre 'new life'

The 1992 Olympics was the first one to use 'new life', where your prelim scores did not affect your scores in any of the finals. Practically the first gymnast to benefit from it was Tatiana Gutsu, who fell from beam in qualifying and then won the all-around after being subbed in. New life rewards those who have off days in qualifying, but does nothing to reward consistency. spezi3 on intlgymnast forums calculated what all of the 2012 results would look like in the old days of carrying your prelim score over. I've thrown in the actual placing of the top 3 gymnasts beside Spezi3's calculations. It looks like this:

'Before 1989 all-around and individual event champions were determined by their scores in both the preliminary and final rounds. There were no New Life finals. Just for fun, and because I'm a bit of a numbers nerd, I wanted to see how the 2012 Olympians would have scored using the old system. I actually did 2 analyses:
1. Adding the preliminary and finals scores. Before 1989 the preliminary score counted for 50% of the total score.
2. Dividing the preliminary score in half and adding the finals score. Because pre-1989 meets used both compulsories and optionals in the preliminaries, the preliminary score was (C + O) divided by two.

Some of the results, especially in the event finals, were interesting and a bit unexpected. There were some differences depending on whether I used formula 1 or 2. Here are the results for the women's all-around competition(actual placement in parentheses). All scores have been rounded to the 3rd decimal place.

Preliminary + Finals Score  Actual placing
1. Komova (2): 123.605      1. Douglas
2. Douglas (1): 122.264      2. Komova
3. Raisman (4): 119.957      3. Mustafina (t-t-t tiebreak)
4. Mustafina (3): 119.532   4. Raisman
5. Deng (6): 116.397            5. Izbasa
6. Izbasa (5): 116.365          6. Deng
7. Ferrari (8): 115.931          7. Huang
8. Huang (7): 115.822          8. Ferrari
9. Iordache (9): 115.765      9. Iordache
10. Teramoto (11): 115.197 10.  Seitz
11. Seitz (10): 113.381
12. Tunney (13): 113.323
13. Van Gerner (12): 112.864
14. Lopez (18): 112.165
15. Pegg (17): 111.222
16. Gomez Porras (22): 111.031
17. Steingruber (14): 110.863
18. Ferlito (21): 110.598
19. Little (15): 110.263
20. Tanaka (16): 109.965
21. Pihan-Kulesza (19): 109.830
22. Brennan (20): 109.564
23. Malaussena (23): 104.565
24. Whelan (24); 97.698

50% of preliminary score + finals score/ Actual placing

1. Komova (2): 92.789          1. Douglas
2. Douglas (1): 92.248          2. Komova
3. Raisman (4): 90.587          3. Mustafina
4. Mustafina (3): 89.549       4. Raisman
5. Izbasa (5): 87.599              5. Izbasa
6. Deng (6): 87.398                6. Deng
7. Huang (7): 86.969              7. Huang
8. Ferrari (8): 86.965               8. Ferrari
9. Iordache (9): 86.865           9. Iordache
10. Teramoto (11): 86.265     10. Seitz
11. Seitz (10): 85.598
12. Tunney (13): 85.128
13. Van Gerner (12): 85.048
14. Lopez (18): 83.833
15. Steingruber (14): 83.506
16. Pegg (17): 83.394
17. Little (15): 83.014
18. Gomez Porras (22): 82.965
19. Ferlito (21): 82.848
20. Tanaka (16): 82.799
21. Pihan-Kulesza (19): 82.648
22. Brennan (20): 82.448
23. Malaussena (23): 77.366
24. Whelan (24): 69.849

VAULT:

Preliminary + Final           Actual placing
1. Maroney (2): 30.883      1. Izbasa
2. Izbasa (1): 30.507           2. Maroney
3. Paseka (3): 30.099          3. Paseka
4. Chusovitina (5): 29.591
5. Berger (4): 29.499
6. Pena Abreu (6): 29.215
7. Rogers (7): 28.966
8. Black (8): 14.366

50% Preliminary + Final    Actual placing
1. Maroney (2): 22.983       1. Izbasa
2. Izbasa (1): 22.849            2. Maroney
3. Paseka (3): 22.575           3. Paseka
4. Berger (4): 22.258
5. Chusovitina (5): 22.187
6. Pena Abreu (6): 21.866
7. Rogers (7): 21.698
8. Black (8): 7.183


BARS:

Preliminary + Final            Actual placing
1. Tweddle (3): 32.049        1. Mustafina
2. He (2): 31.899                  2. He Kexin
3. Mustafina (1): 31.833     3. Tweddle
4. Yao (4): 31.532
5. Komova (5): 31.499
6. Seitz (6): 30.432
7. Douglas (8): 30.233
8. Tsurimi (7): 29.999

50% Preliminary + Final      Actual placing
1. Tweddle (3): 23.983          1. Mustafina
1. Mustafina (1): 23.983       2. He Kexin
3. He (2): 23.916                    3. Tweddle
4. Yao (4): 23.649
5. Komova (5): 23.583
6. Seitz (6): 22.849
7. Douglas (8): 22.567
8. Tsurimi (7): 22.483



Fascinating. It shakes up every single podium. I for one prefer these to the real podiums we did get. I think it's fairer. Not sure what the problem would be in reinstating this..it's not exactly extra work or extra time like bringing compulsories back (I'd like that too). Why was it scrapped in the first place? Giving someone who falls in prelims a fresh chance is not a good enough reason I think. But there are arguments for both sides. The calculations above are argument enough for me.

In other news, Catalina has said she is retiring. She has said that before, but I doubt she'll renege on that. What a wonderful career she's had. There are also rumours that she is engaged to Puerto Rican gymnast, Tommy Ramos, who trained at Izvaroni! (Izvaroni is where the Romanian senior elite team train. Deva, the old centre, is where the junior team now train) Congratulations to them if true! Maybe some super gymnast babies down the line..?