Which Olympic Hopefuls Helped, Hurt Themselves on Night 1 of Gymnastics Trials?
On the first of two nights of Olympic Trials for the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team, there were several gymnasts who either helped or hurt their chances of going to Rio, including reigning Olympic all-around gold medalist Gabby Douglas.
As a reminder of what's at stake and how it's determined, five gymnasts will make the team that represents the United States in Rio. In each of the four events (balance beam, floor exercise, uneven bars and vault), three of the five gymnasts must compete, with each of their scores counting toward the total team score.
As a result, it's not a matter of choosing the five best all-around gymnasts, but rather a matter of choosing the five who will combine in such a way that the team has no weakness in any event. There's a selection committee led by national-team coordinator Martha Karolyi that will make those decisions Sunday night.
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Based on what transpired Friday night, though, these are the gymnasts who either hurt or helped themselves the most heading into the final night of evaluations.
Helped: Laurie Hernandez
After falling on the uneven bars during warm-ups on Friday night, NBC announcer Tim Daggett had some concerns about Hernandez's mentality, stating that the biggest thing this 16-year-old could prove on Friday night was the ability to handle adversity.
She responded as well as possible, finishing with a top-five score in each of the four events and placing second in the all-around—just one point behind Simone Biles.
Hernandez had the best balance-beam routine of the night: 15.5.
Between Night 1 of the U.S. Trials in San Jose and the two nights of the P&G Championships in St. Louis last month, it was the second-highest score on the balance beam that any gymnast posted. (Biles had a 15.7 in St. Louis.) In fact, if we combine the three nights, Hernandez is 0.1 points ahead of Biles—who was merely the gold medalist on balance beam at the 2014 and 2015 World Championships and the 2015 and 2016 P&G Championships.
In her first year on the senior circuit, Hernandez is knocking everything out of the park. She has yet to post a score below 14.8 on any of her 12 routines. Even Biles had a 14.75 on one of her uneven-bars routines in St. Louis.
Barring some kind of disaster on Sunday night, Hernandez should make the team and might even challenge Biles for gold in the Olympic all-around.
Hurt: Ashton Locklear
Because of a stress fracture in her back suffered in 2013, Locklear only competes in two of the four events: uneven bars and balance beam.
In the former, she's one of the best in the world. She won gold on uneven bars at the 2014 and 2016 P&G Championships, posting an average score of 15.65 between her two routines last month in St. Louis. And on Night 1 in San Jose, she was even better, tying for the highest score at 15.75 with this routine:
Unfortunately, Locklear tied Madison Kocian for the highest score, and they entered the Trials battling each other for one of the spots on the team. She merely kept the status quo in that event with her excellent performance.
The balance beam was a different story, though, as Locklear fell during one element en route to a 13.2—the second-worst score of the evening. Meanwhile, Kocian posted a score of 14.7 on the balance beam that ranked sixth best.
It's almost certain that the team would only use either one on the uneven bars, but it would have helped Locklear's case over Kocian if she had shown she could be used on the balance beam in case of emergency. As is, Locklear now will need to have a significantly better uneven-bars routine than Kocian on Sunday night in order to have reasonable hope of making the team.
Helped: MyKayla Skinner
Skinner has a long way to go to make the team, but after placing 10th in the all-around at the P&G Championships, finishing the first night of the U.S. Trials in fourth place was quite the improvement.
She had the second-best score on vault while placing fourth in balance beam and fifth in floor exercise. Her uneven-bars routine (12th) was nothing special, but she was never going to represent the U.S. team in the finals in that event. What she needed was a big showing in vault and floor exercise to have any shot, and she delivered in both.
Even if she finishes Sunday night with the fourth-best all-around score, though, she's going to need some help. Neither Biles nor Aly Raisman excels on the uneven bars, but the team needs three of its five gymnasts to complete each routine.
So here's the big question for the selection committee: Does Skinner provide enough "value above replacement" on vault and floor exercise to justify using Biles as one of the three uneven-bars routines, or would the team be better off with a different gymnast who can help with its weakest event?
Wowing the judges with her vault and floor exercise on Sunday will make answering that question even more difficult.
Little Bit of Both: Gabby Douglas
The Flying Squirrel had two strong routines on Friday night: one decent routine and one disaster.
Her forte has always been the uneven bars, and she was strong again in San Jose, posting a score of 15.1—not nearly as strong as the 15.75 scores from uneven-bars specialists Kocian and Locklear, but good enough for third best on the evening and better than her 14.8 average score in St. Louis last month. She also scored a 15.1 on vault, tied for fifth best.
Her floor exercise was far from her best ever, but she posted the sixth-best score of the night in the event and entered her balance-beam routine with a chance to finish the night in third place.
However, she was wobbly on several of her landings before falling off the beam on what Nastia Liukin called the least difficult element of the entire routine. It was a brutal finish to what had been a promising night.
Here's the good news, though: Douglas likely wasn't in the running for one of the three balance-beam routines in the first place. Biles and Raisman entered the P&G Championships as near locks for two of those three spots, and Hernandez has just about locked up the final spot after posting scores of 15.3, 15.3 and 15.5.
As long as Douglas has another strong performance on the uneven bars on Sunday night, she'll likely make the team. Just don't expect her to defend her gold in the all-around from the 2012 Olympics, because uneven bars might be the only event in which she's used.
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