Evolution of Gymnastics

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When someone usually thinks of evolution, they think of science, but over the years, gymnastics has evolved in many different ways. The evolution of gymnastics includes the changes in new skills, gymnast ability, and the scoring system has drastically changed.

One of the most important and drastic change in the history of gymnastics was the score system. For years, it had always been a ten point system meaning that a ten was a perfect score. “It was revised in 2006 to eliminate the Perfect 10 in favor of open-ended scoring. While the death of the 10 has allowed for more objective evaluations of routines, the removal of the scoring ceiling has meant that every moment a gymnast spends on the mat is treated as a scoring opportunity. ” (Women's Gymnastics) In my opinion, I think it was a good decision to eliminate the perfect ten. This was because so many gymnasts ended up receiving ten’s that it became less and less uncommon. Usually when a gymnast scores a ten, it’s something big, but they were being given too much so I think it was a good idea to make it a more complex scoring system. There is difficulty, execution, and requirement all included in today’s scoring system. “In the 1990s, the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) felt that too many ten's were being awarded and decided to overhaul the entire system. They gave routines start values based on level of difficulty and the succession of tricks in the routine. Any error would deduct from that start value.” (Every gymnast has a start value which is based on the difficulty of skills they’re doing, and other points that are added are the technique, and if a gymnast sticks a routine. While the perfect ten is no longer used in the Olympics, it it still used sometimes at lower levels of gymnastics. “Nadia was the first gymnast to ever score a perfect 10 at the Olympics. Nadia performed moves that were daring and seemed effortless.” (Triple Twist) The first gymnast to make history was Nadia Comaneci. She scored not only one, but four perfect tens and she was the first to do it. Looking at the United States prospective, Mary Lou Retton made gymnastics history. “Mary Lou Retton forever changed gymnastics in the USA when she became the first american gymnast to win the all around gold medal at the 1984 Olympics.” (isport Gymnastics) I think it is so cool how far men’s and women’s gymnastics has come. There are gymnasts performing unimaginable skills today compared to what they used to do long ago.