Terrible Tuesday - The Horrific Plague in Elite Gymnastics

Initially, I didn't want to have a reoccurring negative feature, but come on, I had a find a reason to use this Marta picture over and over again.

Anyway, I wanted to address a terrible disease that is affecting some of the world's best gymnasts. It makes their difficult tumbling irrelevant in my eyes and automatically portrays them in a negative light. It's a disease that just a little bit of childhood prevention could change, yet, the disease continues to attack gymnasts young and old.

That disease is the "I Can't Land Turns Syndrome". 

Coming from a dance background, I just don't get it! I haven't been in a studio for several years now, and I can still turn a decent double pirouette. In the code, your pirouettes don't even have to be in passé (with the non-working foot at the knee). Chelsea Davis's turns are lower, and she executes them beautifully! Why is it then, that these fantastic gymnasts can throw Amanars, Double Arabians and other skills that defy what the human body should do, but continue to fall out of their turns?

Some culprits include:

Elsa Garcia (at :33)

Amelia Hundley (at 1:08) 

Sam Peszek (at 1:23)

And there are many others as well! 

What makes me sad is that ALL of these gymnasts are insanely talented! They're all just so good and they're losing tenths on something that, in my opinion, is 100 times easier than their tumbling passes.

I'm not saying every gymnast needs to be a prima ballerina, but it seems that if you can train a gymnast to do a gymnast to do 2 flips and 2 twists at the end of a tumbling pass, or to leap, lose sight of the beam and still land perfectly, you should be able to teach your gymnast how to execute a double turn well and land it cleanly.