Simone Biles is out of Control: Or a Proposal for a New Gymnastics Scoring System

Simone Biles is credited with doing so much for the progression of women's gymnastics. She has competed many skills that many gymnasts would never even attempt in practice. But she also really doesn't stick these skills that much. Simone Biles plays it smart (at least in one way). She has realized she can do skills that have a high enough difficulty that it doesn't matter if she sticks it; it doesn't matter if she falls. In fact, as commentators are so fond of pointing out, she often has enough cushion that she could fall several times in a routine and still come out on top. And that does speak to Simone's impressive skills as a gymnast. But it also exposes a big problem.

The truth is, Simone is rarely truly in control of her tricks. She does everything with so much power, she often stumbles, steps, or in extreme cases flies right of the floor backwards. And this is dangerous. What is even more dangerous is that I think Simone might have finally started to realize it, which is possibly what is giving her "the twisties" in the first place. 

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the decision to award a lower than expected difficultly to certain skills that Simone can do that no other woman can, ostensibly because gymnastics officials are trying to keep the scores closer together. And perhaps it is just a conspiracy against Biles to keep things a little more interesting. 

But another possible reason for assigning a lower difficulty is that is reduces the incentive to do the skill. These skills are indeed insane and, more to the point, dangerous. But they are thrilling to watch; Biles has accomplished something by doing them and they are not so dangerous that it really makes sense to ban them outright. But just assigning a lower score does seem to punish excellence, which leads me to my proposal.

Instead of holding back on the difficulty, scale the deductions with the increase in difficultly (and danger). For example, instead of a fall being a .5 deduction, make it a certain amount for every point of difficultly. Or perhaps assign it to each skill individually depending on how likely you would break your neck if you mess up. This will encourage gymnasts to make sure they truly can control the skills they are competing by reducing the incentive to compete tricks you can't always land. Simone Biles and anyone else will be able to get her higher degree of difficultly; they just have to weigh the higher risks of not making it.