Eimear Ryan: Should we really curb the natural advantages of the sporting outliers?
Is disapproval of Simone Biles' audacious routine further evidence of the infantilising of women's sport? asks Eimear Ryan. Picture: AP Photo/AJ Mast
You may have seen the video on social media during the week — all seven jaw-dropping seconds of it. Simone Biles, the 24-year-old American widely regarded as one of the greatest ever gymnasts, sprints into frame, does a roundoff and a back handspring onto the vault, then launches herself into a double-back pike somersault. Such is her velocity she doesn’t quite stick the landing, jumping back a little after her feet hit the ground. "Wow," says one commentator. "Unbelievable," says the other.
At the US Classic last Saturday, Biles performed a vault that has never been seen before in competitive women’s gymnastics: a Yurchenko double pike. Named after Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko, who pioneered the roundoff/back handspring entry style, the vault’s exit is normally less ambitious: a front tuck somersault with a half twist, perhaps. Called "a stunning feat of power, physics and fearlessness" in , the Yurchenko double pike has been occasionally witnessed in men’s gymnastics, but never women’s; not until Biles.
When you watch the video, it’s easy to see why it’s considered risky — even for world-class gymnasts who perform what the rest of us would consider to be death-defying feats every day. You need to get serious air to complete a double somersault after vaulting — even more so for a pike, in which the legs are at a right angle to the torso in a jack-knife position. If you don’t get high enough — or start turning quickly enough — you may not land the right way up.
Even Biles herself was flabbergasted, tweeting later that day: "I’m sorry but I can’t believe I competed [sic] a double pike on vault".
Despite the vault’s level of difficulty, the judges seemed relatively unmoved, awarding it a 6.6, or more or less what Biles’s other, less difficult vaults have achieved. The reason for this is twofold: by giving the vault a relatively low score, other gymnasts are discouraged from attempting it; and Biles doesn’t necessarily run away with the competition by virtue of being able to do something no other gymnast can do. But really, shouldn’t she?
"Example #8357 of people infantilising women’s sports," tweeted Charlotte Clymer (@cmclymer), a political activist. "We don’t do this … to dominant male athletes. When it’s Michael Phelps or Roger Federer, the commentary is in awe of them. But when a woman dominates like Simone Biles? It’s somehow bad for women’s sports."
Other commentators suggested that if Biles were white, she would be lauded for her groundbreaking routines, likening the concern about Biles’s supremacy to previous handwringing about Serena Williams’s dominance ‘ruining’ women’s tennis.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing — changing the rules to curb the influence of black athletes — is not without precedent. The slam dunk may have been invented in the 1940s by Bob Kurland, a white basketball player who stood at seven feet tall, but it was quickly adopted and popularised by many prominent African-American players, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. From 1967 to 1976, slam-dunking was even banned in college basketball, in a move widely perceived to be a response to an all-black Texas team beating an all-white Kentucky team in the 1966 national championship.
The treatment of Caster Semenya also looms large in this conversation. The South African middle-distance runner has naturally elevated testosterone levels, and for the last number of years has been fighting an IAAF ruling that would require her to take medication to negate any hormonal advantage. But so many elite athletes have unusual genetic advantages, from Michael Phelps’ exceptional wingspan to Usain Bolt’s long stride, which results in him taking five fewer steps than his competitors over the course of a 100m sprint. How can you penalise an athlete for possessing naturally-occurring traits that benefit them?
Sportswriter Julie DiCaro (@JulieDiCaro) chimed in on the debate about Biles being too strong for the rest of the field: "People said the exact same thing about Olga Korbut back-flipping off the high bar … Some day, someone will surpass Biles. That’s the sport.’ And she’s right. Where would sport be without innovators, disruptors and outliers – those athletes who, not content to simply achieve excellence, seek to reinvent excellence altogether, and give us a glimpse into the future of the sport? Surely those athletes should be rewarded rather than penalised for their daring.
Even hurling has had its share of innovations — some of which have been swiftly knocked on the head. The Nash penalty, involving an elaborate jab-lift that lopped a third off the distance of the shot, debuted in 2013 to both acclaim and controversy. Defences did all they could to counteract it: Clare packed the goalmouth with 13 men in the All-Ireland final replay when Nash came upfield to take a 20-metre free, and Waterford’s Stephen O’Keeffe memorably rushed Nash in the following year’s Munster Championship, earning an impressive bruise in the process.
The GAA acted quickly to outlaw the flinging of the sliotar over the 20-metre line, ending the Nash penalty forever. Meanwhile, the comparatively benign Brick flick — another of hurling’s more recent innovations — is now a staple of hurling and camogie warmups at every level.
It’s interesting to note that many sporting methods that we now consider standard were once thought of as ridiculous. Probably the most famous example is that of Dick Fosbury, an American high jumper who won gold at the 1968 Olympics at the age of 21 by pioneering a new approach: jumping backwards and arching his back. Prior to Fosbury, high jumpers rolled, straddled, or scissor-kicked over the bar. An engineering student, Fosbury knew that his method allowed his centre of gravity to remain beneath the bar even as he arched his body over it, and relied on coordination rather than the raw power of the straddle method.
A victim of his own success, Fosbury didn’t qualify for the subsequent Olympics, although 28 of the 40 competitors in the high jump at the 1972 Games used his flop method. Now, it’s universal. That’s the funny thing about being a sporting disruptor — either the sport does all it can to curb your influence, or you live to see your outrageous innovation become respectable.
