Something's Gotta Change..

If you haven't seen this video yet, prepare to wince. This is not a new topic, Yamilet Pena of the Dominican Republic has been frightening everyone for a couple of years now, but Fadwa Mahmoud of Egypt brings it to a new level. After all, both vaults are massively flawed, but Yamilet at least opens up to land, endangering her knees and ankles rather than Fadwa who endangers her spine, head and neck and is lucky nothing has happened to her yet. Are the FIG Women's Technical Committee asleep at the wheel? They lowered the value of this vault by a massive...wait for it...0.1 this year, which of course has done nothing to lower the incentive non-top 4 developing countries have to make a name for their programme.

I'd advocate removing it from the code altogether, just like how the equally dangerous roll-out skills were stamped out, though as we all know they remained in the code for nearly two decades after Elena Mukhina was paralysed while training one, and only removed when a Korean gymnast almost emulated her fate in the 90's. I'm sure there are gymnasts, especially in the US, who could potentially actually land one upright. We don't really know how proficient or otherwise McKayla Maroney is with front handspring vaults but certainly the block she gets off her amanar would be sufficient. It's a big glaring flashing neon sign that nobody IS doing one there, where they have the coaches, gyms, equipment, and technical knowledge neccessary. If you can't get Maroney's amanar block on this vault, it's not going to work. Yamilet has the power, but she flies forward in distance rather than height and therefore can't land it, nor does she rotate fast enough. Yes, yes, she landed one in a really deep squat at Zibo last year. Big deal, she's splatted pretty much all the rest, though the technique has altered just slightly so she can be sure to get her feet under her for a score. Fadwa on the other hand DOES rotate it enough, in fact she overrotates it. The problem is she plops off the horse and has nowhere near enough height to actually land it. You can tell by her run she's not going to be successful. Notice in the replay that there is a Yurchenko safety collar on the mat, which is not used for handspring vaults. Her coaches are really putting her safety first!

I understand that it's not likely to be her decision to continue training this thing, and her coach too would be under pressure. That's why the FIG needs to act. They were quick enough to slam Liu Xuan's one-armed giant and gienger to a C rating, making them redundant in her routine and anybody else's. Those skills were so dangerous, and they couldn't have anyone else attempting them! So why is this the third year we are seeing vaults so chucked a gymnast is lucky to be able to get up afterwards? This isn't a case of a chucked amanar or DTY etc. which as we all know can and do result in injury. But those vaults tend to be upright even when they do cause injury, and a result of a poor coaching decision. These Produnova vaults are far more than that- in this case, they could be much much more serious than taking a gymnast out of competition for a year.

There are more options other than taking it out of the code. If they lowball it like the above mentioned bars skills, say to a 5.0 or something, it would definitely work but it would make a mockery of the code and difficulty ratings. Another option would be up up the fall deduction to 2.0 or greater (bearing in mind this would still be averaged out in a vault final), or one which I saw on tumblr which suggested handing out an automatic zero if your head, neck, upper back or bottom touch the mat. This last one is great but it opens a can of worms for vaults which do land on the feet but bounce back and down. Really though, if it was taken out of the code- who'd miss it? Sure it would be nice if someone could land the thing, but it's just not worth it. I certainly would not miss death defying stunts like the above. How could the FIG possibly defend keeping it as is?

What do you want to see done with this vault? More videos of the vault by 4/5 of those who attempted it after the break.