U.S. Olympic gymnastics team likely impacted by age rule decision

By Nick ZaccardiApr 13, 2020, 12:01 PM EDT

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The news broke while Konnor McClain watched “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.”

When the movie started, the U.S.’ top 15-year-old gymnast was on a four-year Olympic plan, preparing for when she would be old enough for the Games in 2024.

By the end — or the point she stopped to check social media — McClain came to believe she became age-eligible for the Tokyo Games in 2021. She would have one year to prepare to compete against the nation’s best (and world’s best) gymnasts for, potentially, a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. Three years earlier than expected.

“Just to make it to the Olympic Trials would be such an accomplishment, especially for her being young,” her mom, Lorinda, said by phone on Thursday. “Making it to the trials would be great and keeping that 2024 path on track. This all made it a little hard because we were on a slow pace. We were working for 2024, so this kind of threw a wrench in our spokes. I think that’s her goal right now, see if she can hit the trials.”

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has had a rule since 2000 that female artistic gymnasts must turn 16 or older in that year to compete in the Games (and now for world championships in all the non-Olympic years). When the Tokyo Olympics were postponed until 2021, the FIG faced a decision: Keep the Olympic field under 2020 terms, or let those turning 16 in 2021 into the fold.

“I’m glad I’m not making the rules because I don’t know the right decision,” NBC Olympics analyst Nastia Liukin said before the decision was announced. “I don’t know if there is a right decision.”

The FIG made an announcement Thursday afternoon. While the release didn’t explicitly say it, the gymnastics community interpreted it to mean that the younger gymnasts are eligible for the Tokyo Games.

“I just got on Twitter for some reason, and I saw,” McClain said by phone Thursday. “I was like, oh my gosh, is this true? I told my parents, and I told my sister, get on Twitter right now.”

“I was very surprised,” McClain’s mom said. “I thought they were going to leave it for her to be ineligible and keep the rules as they were.”

If recent history holds, the move should impact the makeup of the U.S. Olympic team. A USA Gymnastics spokesperson said Friday that the organization is reviewing the FIG announcement and can follow up this week regarding how it affects Olympic team selection.

At least one woman who turned 16 or younger in the Olympic year made the last 10 U.S. Olympic teams. That includes Kyla Ross, the 2011 U.S. junior all-around silver medalist who made the 2012 Olympic team. And Laurie Hernandez, the 2015 U.S. junior all-around champion who made the 2016 Olympic team.

The 2019 U.S. junior all-around champion, Kayla DiCello, turned 16 on Jan. 25 and would have been eligible for an Olympics in 2020.

McClain, who turns 16 on Feb. 1, 2021, was runner-up to DiCello at junior nationals, and is among a few rising juniors now on the radar (including Skye Blakely, who was fourth at junior nationals).

The deeper field should make it more difficult for older gymnasts to make the most competitive Olympic gymnastics team in the world.

“I have NOTHING against the 2005 generation but I don’t agree with this decision,” was tweeted from the account of Cecile Landi, who with husband Laurent coaches Simone Biles. “It will be the 2020 Olympics so the rules should remain the same as THIS YEAR.”

McClain was born in Nevada. She began walking the balance beam and doing backbend kickovers before age 2, mimicking her 4-year-old sister.

The family moved to West Virginia when McClain was 3. She was featured on Steve Harvey‘s “Little Big Shots” at age 11 in 2016, proclaiming she was set on the 2024 Olympic all-around title. She then performed a balance beam routine in front of a studio audience.

McClain won the beam title at the last two junior nationals, but vault is her favorite event. She has been attending U.S. national team camps with other junior and senior stars for the last two years. At first, she was intimidated by the sight of Biles, but calmed after Biles initiated conversations with her.

Come next year, McClain may be competing against Biles domestically and, possibly, with her on the same team in Tokyo.

“Konnor has a lot of upgrades and skills she trains at the gym, but her and her coach have put them on the back burner because we thought we still had four years,” her mom said.

McClain’s coach and McClain’s mom, friends since childhood, briefly texted about the new situation while still in shock.

The gist?

“Wow, it’s going to be a rough year,” Lorinda McClain said. “She’s got a lot of work to do.”

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Swiss extend best streak in curling history; Norway continues epic winter sports season

By OlympicTalkMar 27, 2023, 9:37 AM EDT

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Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni extended the most dominant run in world curling championships history, skipping a women’s team to a fourth consecutive title and pushing an unbeaten streak to 36 consecutive games.

Tirinzoni, along with Alina Pätz (who throws the last stones), Carole Howald and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann, beat Norway 6-3 in Sunday’s final in Sandviken, Sweden.

They went 14-0 for the tournament after a Swiss team also skipped by Tirinzoni also went 14-0 to win the 2022 World title. Tirinzoni’s last defeat in world championship play came during round-robin in 2021 at the hands of Swede Anna Hasselborg, the 2018 Olympic champion.

In all, Tirinzoni’s Swiss are 42-1 over the last three world championships and 45-1 in world championship play dating to the start of the 2019 playoffs. Tirinzoni also skipped the Swiss at the last two Olympics, finishing seventh and then fourth.

Tirinzoni, a 43-year-old who has worked as a project management officer for Migros Bank, is the lone female skip to win three or more consecutive world titles.

The lone man to do it is reigning Olympic champion Niklas Edin of Sweden, who goes for a fifth in a row next week in Ottawa. Edin’s teams lost at least once in round-robin play in each of their four title runs.

Norway extended its incredible winter sports season by earning its first world medal in women’s curling since 2005.

Norway has 53 medals, including 18 golds, in world championships in Winter Olympic program events this season, surpassing its records for medals and gold medals at a single edition of a Winter Olympics (39 and 16).

A Canadian team skipped by Kerri Einarson took bronze. Canada has gone four consecutive women’s worlds without making the final, a record drought for its men’s or women’s teams.

A U.S. team skipped by Olympian Tabitha Peterson finished seventh in round-robin, missing the playoffs by one spot.

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Ilia Malinin eyed new heights at figure skating worlds, but a jump to gold requires more

By Philip HershMar 25, 2023, 1:10 PM EDT

At 18 years old, Ilia Malinin already has reached immortality in figure skating for technical achievement, being the first to land a quadruple Axel jump in competition.

The self-styled “Quadg0d” already has shown the chutzpah (or hubris?) to go for the most technically difficult free skate program ever attempted at the world championships, including that quad Axel, the hardest jump anyone has tried.

It helped bring U.S. champion Malinin the world bronze medal Saturday in Saitama, Japan, where he made more history as the first to land the quad Axel at worlds.

But it already had him thinking that the way to reach the tops of both the worlds and Olympus might be to acknowledge his mortal limits.

Yes, if Malinin (288.44 points) had cleanly landed all six quads he did instead of going clean on just three of the six, it would have closed or even overcome the gap between him and repeat champion Shoma Uno of Japan (301.14) and surprise silver medalist Cha Jun-Hwan (296.03), the first South Korean man to win a world medal.

That’s a big if, as no one ever has done six clean quads in a free skate.

And the energy needed for those quads, physical and mental, hurts Malinin’s chances of closing another big gap with the world leaders: the difference in their “artistic” marks, known as component scores.

Malinin’s technical scores led the field in both the short program and free skate. But his component scores were lower than at last year’s worlds, when he finished ninth, and they ranked 10th in the short program and 11th in the free this time. Uno had an 18.44-point overall advantage over Malinin in PCS, Cha a 13.47 advantage.

FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Chock, Bates, and a long road to gold | Results

As usual in figure skating, some of the PCS difference owes to the idea of paying your dues. After all, at his first world championships, eventual Olympic champion Nathan Chen had PCS scores only slightly better than Malinin’s, and Chen’s numbers improved substantially by the next season.

But credit Malinin for quickly grasping the reality that his current skating has a lot of rough edges on the performance side.

“I’ve noticed that it’s really hard to go for a lot of risks,” he said in answer to a press conference question about what he had learned from this competition. “Sometimes going for the risks you get really good rewards, but I think that maybe sometimes it’s OK to lower the risks and go for a lot cleaner skate. I think it will be beneficial next season to lower the standards a bit.”

So could it be “been-there, done-that” with the quad Axel? (and the talk of quints and quad-quad combinations?)

Saturday’s was his fourth clean quad Axel in seven attempts this season, but it got substantially the lowest grade of execution (0.36) of the four with positive marks. It was his opening jump in the four-minute free, and, after a stopped-in-your tracks landing, his next two quads, flip and Lutz, were both badly flawed.

And there were still some three minutes to go.

Malinin did not directly answer about letting the quad Axel go now that he has definitively proved he can do it. What he did say could be seen as hinting at it.

“With the whole components factor … it’s probably because you know, after doing a lot of these jumps, (which) are difficult jumps, it’s really hard to try to perform for the audience,” he said.

“Even though some people might enjoy jumping, and it’s one of the things I enjoy, but I also like to perform to the audience. So I think next season, I would really want to focus on this performing side.”

Chen had told me essentially the same thing for a 2017 Ice Network story (reposted last year by NBCOlympics.com) about his several years of ballet training. He regretted not being able to show that training more because of the program-consuming athletic demands that come with being an elite figure skater.

“When I watch my skating when I was younger, I definitely see all this balletic movement and this artistry come through,” Chen said then. “When I watch my artistry now, it’s like, ‘Yes, it’s still there,’ but at the same time, I’m so focused on the jumps, it takes away from it.”

The artistry can still be developed and displayed, as Chen showed and as prolific and proficient quad jumpers like Uno and the now retired two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan have proved.

For another perspective on how hard it is to combine both, look at the difficulty it posed for the consummate performer, Jason Brown, who had the highest PCS scores while finishing a strong fifth (280.84).

Since Brown dropped his Sisyphean attempts to do a clean quad after 26 tries (20 in a free skate), the last at the 2022 U.S. Championships, he has received the two highest international free skate scores of his career, at the 2022 Olympics and this world meet.

It meant Brown’s coming to terms with his limitations and the fact that in the sport’s current iteration, his lack of quads gives him little chance of winning a global championship medal. What he did instead was give people the chance to see the beauty of his blade work, his striking movement, his expressiveness.

He has, at 28, become an audience favorite more than ever. And the judges Saturday gave Brown six maximum PCS scores (10.0.)

“I’m so happy about today’s performance,” Brown told media in the mixed zone. “I did my best to go out there and skate my skate. And that’s what I did.”

The quadg0d is realizing that he, too, must accept limitations if he wants to achieve his goals. Ilia Malinin can’t simply jump his way onto the highest steps of the most prized podiums.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.

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