Ban them! The case for getting rid of roll out skills on floor

Gymnastics fans inside the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium got a firsthand look at what happens when a gymnast does something like that early this morning, when Japan's Yusuke Tanaka misjudged a full-twisting front 1 3/4. Tanaka had underrotated the second flip, and as a result came down on his head, much the same way the gymnast in the above video did.

 

It was horrifying to watch. Tanaka was slow to get up off the floor, and when he did he stood in the corner wobbly and disoriented for several seconds, trying hard to regain his balance. He lifted his leg, then put it down again. He ran to do the side tumbling pass that continued his routine, but could only manage a weak front tuck half before falling to the ground again.

 

By this time several in the press gallery were yelling for Tanaka to stop his routine, and the audience was greatly disquieted. Tanaka finally realized he could not continue and came slowly off the mat. He was helped down the podium steps by Japan's coaches. Medical staff came running.  

 

The gymnasts themselves -- at least the ones I've talked to here in Tokyo -- do not have a problem with roll out skills, also known as Thomas-type skills, on floor. "As scary as they look, Thomas skills are really very safe," said Jonathan Horton, who does two in his floor routine. "I've been doing them since I was like 12 years old, and as long as you have proper air awareness and learn it right [it's OK]. People get hurt on other things way more than they get hurt on roll out skills on floor."

 

That may be true, but an Achilles tendon can be repaired. So can an ACL, an MCL, a bicep, a rotator cuff, wrists, ankles, shoulders, toes, etc. But everything above the neck is special. The floor mat is not a swimming pool. 

 

Roll out skills have already been banned for the women, thanks to the paralysis of 1978 World champion Elena Mukhina, who died of complications from bring paralyzed five years ago at age 46. Mukhina trained a Thomas skill for the 1980 Olympics. Until the day she landed it on her chin.

 

Later Mukhina let it be known she thought the skill was dangerous but was pushed to keep training it. "My injury could have been expected," she said in the 1991 A&E documentary More than a Game. "It was an accident that could have been anticipated. It was inevitable. I had said more than once that I would break my neck doing that element. I had hurt myself badly several times but he [coach Mikhail Klimenko] just replied people like me don't break their necks."

 

That notion is as ridiculous as the idea that men are somehow less susceptible to serious injury from roll out skills than women. For what it's worth, Tanaka is not the type to break his neck either, but he almost did.

 

Yusuke Tanaka is a member of one of Japan's most celebrated gymnastics families; his older sister Rie became the darling of the Japanese media after winning the Longines Prize for Elegance at last year's World Championships and his older brother Kazuhito, the stalwart of the Japanese men's team, did his own floor routine right before Yusuke stepped up to compete.

 

Yusuke himself is at the beginning of a very promising career. This is his first Worlds, and until floor he had been doing extremely well. He delighted the home crowd when he stuck his double pike dismount on parallel bars. He went on to nail his double twisting double layout dismount on high bar and is on track to make both event finals.

 

It is a relief that he will recover from the concussion sustained on floor, and hopefully continue gymnastics -- without that roll out skill in his floor routine. 

 

The subdivison after the Japanese included Luxembourg's only gymnast at this World Championships, a tall young man named Sascha Palgen, who got great height on all his tumbling passes. Palgen, it turns out, broke his neck several years ago training a roll out skill on floor. Miraculously, he has continued to do elite gymnastics. There are no roll out skills in his routine.