TOKYO — Much as Simone Biles has been beating competitors for years with superior routine difficulty, the U.S. men’s gymnastics finished fifth for the third consecutive Olympics on Monday night in large part because they continue to trail the world’s best programs when it comes to hard skills.
Routine difficulty isn’t everything, of course. The four-man Russian Olympic Committee team that edged Japan by just under a tenth of a point, 262.5 to 262.397, for the gold medal gave up seven-tenths of a point in start value to the Japanese but made up for it in execution scores.
The United States team of Sam Mikulak, Shane Wiskus, Brody Malone and Yul Moldauer, meanwhile, lagged behind at 254.594, just under eight points behind the ROC squad and 7.3 points out of medal position behind the Chinese at 261.894.
Gymnastics scores have two elements: routine difficulty, which is open ended and based on the value of the hardest skills in the routine in the gymnastics scoring handbook, and execution, which starts with a maximum of 10.0 and goes down as judges note form errors and other flaws.
Biles, the five-time Olympic medalist who is favored to win the Olympic women’s all-around, generally beats opponents by multiple points because she can do harder skills. The U.S. men, however, continue to fall short in that regard.
Their routine difficulty deficits were 3.9 points to ROC, 4.6 to Japan and 4.9 points to China — not enough to account for the entire U.S. deficit, but a good indicator of how far the Americans must improve to compete for their first Olympic team medal since the 2008 bronze in Beijing.
Mikulak, the six-time national champion and three-time Olympian who is retiring after the Olympics, said his teammates are on the clock to train new skills and put them into place as quickly as possible.
“These guys already are talking about what routines they’re going to want to start doing next year,’ Mikulak said. “If there’s any message to all the other guys that are young and inspired by watching the Olympics, it’s to get out there and just get all your difficulty right now.
“It’s kind of what Russia, China and Japan did. They just upped their difficulty in 2017. Over three years, you’re going to get more and more confident with those difficult routines. Don’t think on it your final year, try to get there right out of the gate, and that is where we’re going to be able to solidify that hard difficulty.”
All four men who competed Monday are veterans of NCAA programs, including Wiskus, a product of Minnesota’s now-discontinued program. While colleges have been a backbone of the USA Gymnastics men’s program, Wiskus said collegiate thinking can be a drawback.
“Playing it safe is not worth it in the long run,” he said. “I’ve been guilty of this many times and taking skills out just for a clean hit routine. But you know, when it comes to advancing USA Gymnastics and getting us on the metal podium, it’s not going to help us.
“We really need to think about our priorities and focus our energy towards getting our difficulty up and making that the priority as opposed to hitting clean sets.”
USA Gymnastics also faces the hard road of keeping alive the dozen or so college programs that remain, including Oklahoma (Muldauer), Michigan (Mikulak) and Stanford (Malone), the reigning NCAA champion and a major producer to the men’s national team.
USA Gymnastics has teamed up with a consulting firm in an effort to determine ways to save remaining programs. Possible solutions include changes in the competitive format to increase entertainment values for casual viewers.
While the men’s team recoups for its post-Mikulak era, Monday night belonged to the ROC team, which is not competing under the Russian flag because of doping violations that have been rampant in Russian sports.
The competition came down to the sixth and final rotation with ROC on floor and China on high bar. Nikita Nagornyy, the third and final man to perform on floor, stepped up seconds after Japan’s high bar anchor, Daiki Hashimoto, scored 15.1 to put the home team in position.
With Artur Dalaloyan hampered by an Achilles’ injury that required surgery this year, having scored only 13.993 on floor, the ROC squad required a hit routine from Nagornyy.
Nagornny finished a strong performance, huddled with his teammates to await his score and then collapsed to the mat when his 14.366 score was just enough to put the Russian Olympic Committee team over the top.
As for the U.S. men, they made it through the first five rotations without significant stylistic errors to keep within hailing distance of a fourth-place finish. But judges socked Mikulak and Wiskus with significant execution errors to knock the American below Great Britain.
The U.S. men did finish second combined on high bar behind only Japan, but their next-to-last finish on floor among the eight teams more than wiped out that cushion.
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