Cepeda: U.S. women gymnasts advance by leaps and bounds

Today, as Meyers details, we are a decade into the new, open-ended scoring system that was instituted in 2006 and whose highest scores hover in the 16s.

The change in scoring — devised not only because 10s were becoming so common as to make the designation meaningless, but also to reward higher achievement in the discipline and techniques involved — had the effect of pushing aside the dance style that was typified by the Russians in the 1960s and ’70s and ushered in the era of women’s gymnastics as sport, rather than as art form.

Now, after years of upping the ante on moves that initially had their roots in ballet, gymnastics has evolved into an “extreme” sport featuring unimaginable tumbling combinations.

Check out any reporting on gymnasts Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Madison Kocian or Laurie Hernandez, who represent the U.S. in Rio, and you’ll see their styles described as explosive, powerful, daredevilish, acrobatic, spectacular, fearless, bouncy, hyperactive and possessing brute strength.

It turns out that — aside from sort of ruining it for those of us who appreciated gymnastics as a graceful form of storytelling — the change in the sport has upsides.

The rules governing the Olympic sport now put the minimum age at 16. This has had the net result of developing female athletes who are mature, strong and healthy-looking instead of the cute, tiny, bony waifs that used to pervade gymnastics squads. The musculature of the new generation of gymnasts is what drives performances that are focused on cramming in as many high-complexity skills into routines in which perfection is not the goal.

The new scoring system makes for routines that can be so highly difficult that an extra hop, a glaring error or even a fall doesn’t count significantly against the gymnast because the skill involved carries so many points.

Celebrate, don’t mourn

So what does it all mean for the casual Olympics viewer who enjoys watching gymnastics only once every four years?

For us older folks, it means forgetting the past — it may have been more traditionally beautiful in terms of choreography and artistry, but the apples-to-oranges comparison cannot make us think of it as “better.”

The new world of elite women’s gymnastics is one in which the U.S. team is more mature, more racially and ethnically diverse and more amazing than ever before. These young women deserve to be judged by the standards of their international contemporaries and not of our fuzzy memories of Comaneci or even Mary Lou Retton.

Meyers concludes: “The move toward greater complexity and difficulty is what imperiled and ultimately ended the 10. This forward march will continue until we reach the limits of what the human body can do, a line that keeps moving. After all, back in Comaneci’s and (perfect 10-winning gymnast Nellie) Kim’s day, everyone thought we were at the edge of human ability. And 40 years later, we’re still moving forward.”

On the whole, this is to be celebrated, rather than mourned.