Who else is bugged sometimes at how most of the general population is ill-informed about gymnastics and what it means to be "good"?
The other day a dad I know with no connection to gymnastics brought up Livvy Dunne (fascinating how many people know about her!) He made a comment along the lines of "the crazy thing is, she's not even THAT good!" I responded that the narrative is simply not true. She's competing on one of the top NCAA teams, and is absolutely legit as a gymnast. He responded "well she's not going to the olympics or anything." Argh! Why is it that in gymnastics, people define being "that good" as being one of the TOP FIVE GYMNASTS EVERY FOUR YEARS? Does any other sport have this high of a bar?
What if other sports only allowed five people to be considered "good"? It would be like if a baseball player made it onto a major league team, but was not MVP at the World Series, so was deemed "not actually that good."
I do love when the general public talks about gymnastics, but wish we could change the narrative a bit and increase people's "gymnastics IQ." Up next is all sorts of random people talking about how they hope Simone Biles doesn't "let down the team again" when they have absolutely no idea how the mental game of gymnastics works.
Okay, rant over!
The other day a dad I know with no connection to gymnastics brought up Livvy Dunne (fascinating how many people know about her!) He made a comment along the lines of "the crazy thing is, she's not even THAT good!" I responded that the narrative is simply not true. She's competing on one of the top NCAA teams, and is absolutely legit as a gymnast. He responded "well she's not going to the olympics or anything." Argh! Why is it that in gymnastics, people define being "that good" as being one of the TOP FIVE GYMNASTS EVERY FOUR YEARS? Does any other sport have this high of a bar?
What if other sports only allowed five people to be considered "good"? It would be like if a baseball player made it onto a major league team, but was not MVP at the World Series, so was deemed "not actually that good."
I do love when the general public talks about gymnastics, but wish we could change the narrative a bit and increase people's "gymnastics IQ." Up next is all sorts of random people talking about how they hope Simone Biles doesn't "let down the team again" when they have absolutely no idea how the mental game of gymnastics works.
Okay, rant over!