Every four years, top athletes in their sport from each country in the world come together for roughly 16-17 days to participate in the Olympics-- one of the most prestigious sporting events globally. The standard of the competition is not for the faint of heart as it is where the elite of the elite win. For instance, during the most recent Tokyo 2020 Olympics, 23 world records were broken across multiple fields. Some examples include Tatjana Schoenmaker, a South African swimmer breaking the previous record set for Women’s 200m breaststroke, and Karsten Warholm of Norway who broke his previous record for the Men's 400m hurdles.
Regardless of world records set within the high standard, endurance-based sports, a significant amount of attention has been directed to the more artistic sports, such as gymnastics and figure skating--for the Winter Olympics. This is most likely due to the stunts pulled off within these sports; from doing multiple aerial flips, to spinning at high speeds while on ice, these stunts never fail to pique the interest of global audiences. We know well that such feats are extremely difficult to pull off, so what is it that makes them so astonishing even in the eyes of professionals within the sport? This article will discuss the technicalities and the science behind certain Olympic stunts will be uncovered, and hopefully, we all will gain a deeper appreciation for the athletes who have worked hard to achieve the level of performance in the Olympics.
The stunts covered within this article come from gymnastics and figure skating: the Yurchenko Double Pike and the quadruple jumps respectively. Before that though, one must understand how such sports are judged and scored to fully grasp the magnitude of difficulty posed by each move. In gymnastics, three components make up the overall scoring for an athlete’s performance: the ‘D score’, ‘E score’, and neutral deductions. The D score represents the difficulty of a move, the E score represents the execution of the said move, while neutral deductions essentially subtract the score based on mistakes done, whether it be going out of bounds or exceeding the allotted time. Figure skating on the other hand has a slightly more complex scoring system. It is divided into the technical score which gauges the difficulty of maneuvers pulled off during the duration of the skate, and the program component which takes into account the overall quality of the skate, performance, interpretation of music, and other artistic factors involved in the sport.
To truly understand the sheer magnitude of difficulty presented by the aforementioned stunts, we need to take a deeper look into the difficulty rating and the elements within each move. The Yurchenko Double Pike has the highest difficulty rating among all other vault movements in women’s gymnastics--with it rated at a 6.6. This movement was created by Natalia Yurchenko, a Soviet gymnast, where she did a roundoff to the springboard, followed by a back hand-spring onto the fault. Though what makes it the Yurchenko Double Pike is the addition of two backflips with your legs straight. The skill was made known as Simone Biles became the first woman to have executed it in a competitive setting. Next, we have the quad jump from figure skating. Unlike the Yurchenko Double Pike which refers to a single move, the quad jump is generally an umbrella term for the many types of jumps within them (such as the lutz, salchow, etc.). Though, generally speaking, a quad jump requires a skater to complete four full revolutions in the air and land on one foot. The most difficult of these jumps, the quadruple axel requires four and a half revolutions--and has never once been attempted successfully. Although it has many variations, the quad jumps have some of the highest difficulty ratings in the sport, with scores as high as 13.6 that can be possibly awarded.
Going back to discussing the Yurchenko Double Pike, as we’ve understood the general difficulty of such a maneuver, we can now carefully dissect the elements that truly make it one of the most impressive gymnastic feats. According to biomechanical experts, not many will be able to land the move as a gymnast’s muscle and body type may affect the ability to perform it. In Simone Biles’ performance of the Yurchenko Double Pike, during the run-up before the vault, she reached speeds up to 18 miles per hour. Such high speeds are needed to gain momentum for the airborne maneuvers and initial jump during the vault, and without enough momentum, the gymnast could easily fail. After the run-up, the horizontal momentum gained needs to be converted to rotational momentum and energy. What makes the maneuver more complex is the fact that in the pike, the gymnast needs to frame their body into an ‘L’ shape, which makes it even harder to rotate/spin aerially. The concept applied here is the moment of inertia, where the mass of a rotating object is spread out along its length; in the movement, as the gymnast is in an L shape position where the body is extended, more power is needed to accomplish the double pike. Below is an illustration of the steps needed to carry out the Yurchenko Double Pike:
Now, moving on to quad jumps in figure skating, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, quad jumps (and all its other variations) are movements with one of the highest scores in terms of difficulty in the sport. Within a quad jump, skaters will need to jump over 24 inches in the air while rotating more than six revolutions per second and land on one foot while balancing the body on a blade at speeds reaching up to 15 miles per hour. By inference alone, this is extremely difficult to pull off, even by the most experienced skaters. To successfully execute a quad jump, a skater must trade-off needs for both height and rotation, if they drive upwards too much, they won’t have the energy to rotate quickly, and vice versa. Moreover, during the aerial spins of a quad jump, skaters would need to spin their bodies very quickly to the point they may feel like their arms are being actively pulled away from their bodies. To maintain the rotations in the air, they pull their arms tightly into their body to counteract the centrifugal force. The tricky part here is that if they are short of a rotation or off-balance with the slightest tilt, they will fall, and usually, the impact of the fall after such movement is exponential to that of a skater’s body weight, with risks of bone fractures to shoulder dislocation (King, 2018). With that being said, three key concepts make up the framework of a quad jump: vertical velocity (speed of the upward jump), angular momentum (the momentum needed to rotate quickly), and friction (the force needed to dissipate their energy, slowing their movements on ice), all these combined make up the main scientific technicalities of a quad jump. The following is a framed illustration of a figure skater attempting a quad jump:
Overall, such stunts that professional athletes carry out during the Olympics are truly magnificent; the athlete’s movements itself is already quite the sight to behold, which is why it is hoped that after understanding deeper the mechanics, techniques, and science involved behind such stunts, we could gain a much deeper appreciation for the athletes that proudly compete, representing their respective countries.
Bibliography:
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