Games of the XXX Olympiad
London (GBR), July 27 – August 12, 2012
LAUSANNE (SUI), FIG Office, July 11, 2012: The Artistic Gymnastics competitions at the London 2012 Olympic Games will be held from July 28 to August 7 at North Greenwich Arena in South East London. It consists of 14 medal events, eight for men and six for women, with a total of 98 male and 98 female competitors taking part.
Competitors must have been born in 1996 or earlier and have reached the FIG’s minimum technical standards in order to be eligible to participate. Teams or athletes have qualified either at the 2011 World Championships in Tokyo (JPN) or at the London prepares International Gymnastics test event in London (GBR), whereby each NOC is limited to a maximum of five gymnasts of each gender, for a total of ten gymnasts per NOC*. Only the top twelve men’s and women’s teams participate at the Olympic Games.
Men and women compete separately in Artistic Gymnastics, with men working on six apparatus (Floor Exercise, Pommel Horse, Still Rings, Vault, Parallel Bars and Horizontal Bar), while women perform on four apparatus (Vault, Uneven Bars, Balance Beam and Floor Exercise).
The Olympic format has four competition phases: Qualifications (CI), Team Finals (CIV), Individual All-around Finals (CII), and Individual Apparatus Finals (CIII).
(*) Exception: NOCs with individual apparatus medal-winners who are not part of a team.
Qualifications (CI)
Gymnasts compete as part of a team, or as individuals, and the results are used to qualify gymnasts for the Team, Individual All-around and the Apparatus Finals. The competition format is 5-4-3 (a team consists of 5 gymnasts, 4 compete on each apparatus, 3 results count). No scores are carried over from the Qualifications to the Finals.
Team Finals (CIV) - two medal events
The eight top-ranked men’s and women’s teams from the Qualifications go forward to the Team Finals, which feature three of the five members of each team at each apparatus with all scores counting (5-3-3 format). The teams compete again on all apparatus, and are ranked on their total team score.
Individual All-around finals (CII) - two medal events
The top 24 men and women from the Qualifications (maximum of two per NOC), proceed to the Individual All-around Finals. The gymnasts perform again on all pieces of apparatus and those with the highest scores claim the medals in the Individual All-around.
The Olympic Individual All-around title is considered to be the premium achievement in Artistic Gymnastics.
Apparatus Finals (CIV) - ten medal events
The top eight men and women who place highest on each apparatus in the Qualifications (maximum of two per NOC) compete for the apparatus titles.
Competition schedule
Podium Training
Podium training will take place at North Greenwich Arena in the days leading up to the start of the competition. For men, podium training will take place on Wednesday, July 25, 11:00 – 22:20 and for women on Thursday July 26, 09:30 – 21:25.
The gates will not be open for the public to watch podium training sessions.
Judging and scoring
Artistic gymnastics is a judged sport with a panel of nine judges presiding over each apparatus.
The nine judges are broken down into two panels to calculate the final score (F).
F = D + E - penalities
The difficulty panel (two judges) calculates the D score, which is the score a gymnast receives based on the content of the routine.
The execution panel (five judges) is responsible for the E score, which is determined by the gymnast’s execution of the routine. The E score is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest E judges’ score and averaging the three remaining scores.
Two reference judges (ER) have been introduced to establish an automatic and time-saving correction system in case of problems with execution scores. The ER score is calculated by averaging the scores of the two reference judges. If the gap between the E score and the ER score exceeds the predefined permitted tolerances, the E score will be replaced by the average of the ER score and the E score. Otherwise, the E score remains unchanged. However, if the gap between the scores of the two reference judges exceeds the predefined tolerances, the ER score will not be taken into account, and the E score remains unchanged.
Tie breaking rules
Qualifications
Tie-break rules exist to determine which individual gymnasts or teams advance to the Finals when the last qualification place is tied. According to the new and simplified tie breaking rules implemented in Artistic Gymnastics for the London 2012 Olympic Games, larger final fields are possible if ties cannot be broken.
Finals
In the event of a tie in the Team Finals, the lowest apparatus score is dropped and the remaining scores added. If the tie remains, additional apparatus scores are dropped one at a time until a winner is determined. If no winner emerges, the gymnasts share an equal ranking.
The same applies to the Individual All-around Final, with the addition that if a tie stands after the apparatus scores have been dropped, the execution score total, followed by the difficulty score total, serve as determining factors. If still no winner emerges, the gymnasts share an equal ranking.
In the Apparatus Finals, the execution score serves as the first tie-break, followed by the difficulty score. If a tie stands, the gymnasts share an equal ranking.
A little bit of history
Artistic Gymnastics is one of the few sports to have been contested at every Olympic Games since the first modern Games in 1896 in Athens, with women having first competed in the discipline at the Amsterdam 1928 Olympic Games.
Artistic Gymnastics boasts two of the most successful athletes in Olympic history.
Larisa Latynina has the distinction of winning the most Olympic medals (18) of any athlete, including nine gold, between the Melbourne 1956 Games and the Tokyo 1964 Games when representing the Soviet Union.
Nicolai Andrianov, also representing the Soviet Union, won 15 medals (including seven gold) between the Munich 1972 and Moscow 1980 Games. Andrianov’s total was the second biggest medal tally until swimmer Michael Phelps (USA) won eight gold medals at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games to take his total haul to 16 medals.
At 1980 Olympics in Moscow (RUS), Aleksander Dityatin (URS) won a medal in all 8 competitions (6 apparatus, all around and team). He is the record holder of the most medals won by a gymnast at a single Olympics. This gymnasts is also first to perform a perfect score (10) awarded to a male gymnast at the Olympics.
Nadia Comaneci (ROU) and Nellie Kim (URS – KAZ) became the first female gymnasts in Olympic history to be awarded the perfect score of 10.0 at the Montreal 1976 Olympic Games.
A “perfect 10” is no longer the top score in Artistic Gymnastics. Open-ended scoring was introduced in 2005.
At the age of 14 Comaneci became the youngest All-around Olympic gold medallist in Montreal.
To be mentioned the 6 gold medals won in a single Olympic Games (Barcelona 1992) by Vitaly Scherbo (URS – BLR).
Artistic Gymnastics at Beijing 2008
China dominated the Artistic Gymnastics events at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, taking nine out of a possible 14 Gold and three Bronze medals. Meanwhile, the most successful individual gymnast of the Games was Nastia Liukin (USA), who finished as All-around women’s champion, and scooped a total of five medals, including Silver in the Uneven Bars and Balance Beam, and Bronze in the Floor Exercise. Moreover, Liukin helped the USA women secure the Silver in the Team Competition. She was subsequently elected as a member of the FIG Athletes’ Commission for the current Olympic Cycle.
