It is not only what the gymnast performs, but also how

Quiz question for all non-gymnastics nerds. In five seconds, name the winner of the mens all-round individual title in Rio. First, like a gymnasts shaky landing, there will be a mental fumble. If you watched the highlights you may vaguely remember - guy in red-and-white? Japanese, right? Name starts with a vowel. If you came up with Uchimura, thats eight on ten; Kohei Uchimura gets you full marks and proves you sat up and watched television at a very weird hour of the night in India.The womens all-around individual winner? Simone Biles, and thats not even a question.In Olympic gymnastics, the men must always play second fiddle to the flexible flying nymphs. For a week every four years, the wider sporting world watches in open-mouthed astonishment as women play tricks with our eyes. They race along, backflip, somersault and jump on and off a beam the width of a picture postcard. And then, in a series of contortions, swing between the uneven bars, separated by anything between 5 and 6 feet - a gap far wider than the gymnasts height.Its not that the male gymnasts are not watchable; they are, with their combination of speed, power, strength. Its just that the women disguise theirs behind slighter frames and pixie faces, performing their routines as if boneless, as if cast in a magical spell of more memory, less muscle. The truth is nothing of the sort.Women gymnasts compete over four apparatus, the men six, with two in common - the vault and the fundamental starting point of all gymnastics, floor exercises. The women dont get to do the roman rings or the parallel bar because male upper body strength is far greater than that of women. The men dont bother with the uneven bars because it is considered far too simple for their musculature but its not clear why they wont try the beam.This fundamental gender divergence in strength and power means that, even in their shared apparatus, the points value of routines vary. It is why the front handspring double somersault, aka the Produnova vault, offers a greater points value in womens gymnastics (7) than its closest counterpart, the Roche (points value 5.6), does in the mens competition.The floor exercises, however, which every gymnast starts out on, offer a completely different take on la difference. For the men, the International Federation of Gymnastics (FIG) rule book describes the floor exercise in 42 words, talking about acrobatic and gymnastic elements like strength and balance, flexibility and choreographic combinations all forming a harmonious rhythmic exercise to be carried out over the entire floor area. All without any music.To describe the womens floor exercise, the rule book requires 500 words (plus 160 words for the rules about the CD requirements) among them artistry and musicality. It also states that the gymnast is to be awarded points for, among other things, expressiveness. What is judged is the gymnasts ability to play a role or a character throughout the performance. In addition to the technical execution, artistic harmony and feminine grace must also be considered. It is not only what the gymnast performs, but also how she performs her routine.So on the floor in Rio, not only did Biles launch into her high-speed, gravity-busting tumbling passes and her signature move, now called the Biles - the double layout with half-twist - she also was required to indulge in mandatory coquetteishness. It looks a bit silly today because womens gymnastics has changed considerably since its first showing at the Olympics in 1952. The Nellie Kim-Comaneci era sylphs have now turned into pocket rockets, and, when abiding by the rules, have turned their music from Strauss to the Sex & the City theme.Slate columnist Rebecca Schuman described it best; the womens floor exercises she said, were becoming, more like the?mens version, with its umpteen tumbling runs and awkward poses between them... the music seems to be less and less connected to the gymnasts movements, while simultaneously pandering more and more to the crowd.Indias Dipa Karmakar is not a fan of the pirouettes and hip-twitching either and says, Its not that I dont like it [floor exercise] but Im not very good at dancing on the floor. When I dont do it properly I kind of feel bad and cry that its not turning out like it should.Borrowing from elements of balletic dance may have made sense in the early days of womens gymnastics. In the new millennium however, the dance moves are often left looking so 20th century. But, many WAG (womens artistic gymnastics) fans would argue, why fix something that works and that the audience loves?It is mens gymnastics that looks for traction and eyeballs. Yes, we do remember the great male gymnasts - Dityatin , Nemov, Scherbo, Li Ning - and chant names like Tsukahara when describing gym elements; but at an Olympic Games its the ladies who will always lunch on the attention. In Rio, Biles made the headlines, and rightly so, but Uchimura became only the second male gymnast in Olympic history to win all-round titles back to back. He is also a six-time all-round world champion. Oh, the injustice.For women athletes in almost every other sport, such disproportionate spotlight - in reverse - is a given. In order to grab their audience, women participants in more than one sport are told they must glamour up their sport for television. Wear skirts/ bikinis/ make-up or not wear quite so much clothing. Do something, anything to get TV numbers.Since we know the womens rules will never change, maybe mens gymnastics could be advised to try something as radical along the same lines - how about some music on the floor, guys? Give your explosive but fairly regulated floor exercises a touch of individual pizzazz? So that, to borrow from the WAG rule book, the gymnast can transform the floor exercise from a well-structured composition into an artistic performance.Maybe that way we could instantly remember the gymnast who won the individual all-round Olympic gold by introducing a bit of Travoltas Bus Stop in his floor routine? In order to get their genuinely admirable skills a little bit extra attention, surely male gymnasts wouldnt mind adding a bit of posterior-wiggling into their sport, now would they? 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CULLOWHEE, N.C. -- Devin Peterson had 19 points, five rebounds and four assists, and Western Carolina used a 59-33 rebounding advantage to help beat Hiwassee College 87-47 on Sunday.Haboubacar Mutombo scored 10 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, Marc Gosselin scored 14 points and Deriece Parks added 13 points, all in the first half, for the Catamounts (1-1).Mutombo capped Western Carolinas game-opening 15-2 run with a 3-pointer and the Catamounts never trailed, extending a 44-22 halftime lead withh a 12-0 run to open the second half.dddddddddddd.The Catamounts made 8 of 28 from long distance (29 percent), led by Parks, who made 3 of 6 3-pointers.Toure Fudge led the Tigers (2-2), a member of the National Christian College Athletic Association, with 12 points off the bench. Hiwassee, which was held to 28 percent from the floor, counted it as an exhibition game. ' ' '