Svetlana began her rotation on floor, she performed one of those classic Sveta floor performances - heavy on expression and light on tumbling. The music really suited her artistic abilities and she took advantage of that. She was rewarded with a 9.812 for her effort and appeared to be well underway towards an All Around title or medal at least.
Then everything changed, she moved on to the vault and it all changed from there. The commentator makes a remark that she has fallen on her two warm-up vaults and is on edge. That's when the classic yell/shout is heard. I had never known who she was yelling at but it was her personal coach, Boris Pilkin. His hearing probably wasn't the best and maybe she wasn't yelling that much but she was upset. She wanted everything to be perfect so that she could put her vault to her feet.
As everyone knows she didn't but was able stick her second vault. I'll explain why I think she didn't lose the title on vault after the video. Her averaged score for vault was 9.343.
Svetlana then moved over to her best apparatus the uneven bars. She started off really well hitting her handstands and being her usual sell until she fell on her Tkatchev release and with that lost the All Around title. Sveta scored 9.012, counting a miss on one's highest scoring event is a fatal blow that can not be fixed no matter how great one is in the other pieces.
Then she was off to perform on her final apparatus the balance beam - knowing that she would not be the champion. They mentioned that she had a fall in the warm up and looked like she wouldn't be holding up. That's when she delivered a confident performance with almost no noticeable bobbles or wobbles for a 9.762 routine. A very good score considering that she didn't even qualify for beam final - the only apparatus she didn't qualify to.
Her final score, after all four apparatus scores were added together, was 37.929. That score landed her all the way down in 10th place. If we count her fall on vault but go with the scenario that she had not fallen on her Tkatchev release then things would change dramatically. Sveta scored 9.012 in the All Around but had scored 9.850 during qualifications which would mean a good routine would have gotten her a good 8 tenths higher. Adding 8 tenths to her final score of 37.929 would gives us 38.729.
If that score is compared to Simona Amanar's, the All Around champion, score of 38.642 then Svetlana would come out on top. Svetlana would have been the champion counting a fall! She would not have been the winner on that night though as Andrea Raducan won that night with a score of 38.893 but was later stripped of her title after testing positive for some banned substance.
If that scenario would have taken place Svetlana would have won the Silver medal that night but then would have been given the Gold medal. I don't surmise Svetlana being happy either way as she found the whole process a travesty and a title stolen. She would later compete at the 2004 Olympics with the feeling that something was stolen from her and she was there to get what was rightfully hers.
No comments:
Post a Comment