The New Code

Last night I watched the Beijing Olympics Team Final again and although the new code that was used last year is not perfect I actually noticed the differences from 20089 especially the beam and floor routines. I forgot how packed they were for the Olympics with so much difficulty and no dance at all! So although I don't like parts of the code we are using now I've decided perhaps it is better than I originally thought on Beam especially. I prefer the beam routines from 2009 over 2008 with the just the 8 skills and a minimum of 3 dance elements as there is time in theory for some dance and artistry work! So we won't end up with routines like the one below:

I actually like Stela but the poor gorl didn't have time to breathe in that routine, let alone for artistry.
Floor is another piece that I think has benefited from the 8 skills only rule as last year in the Olympic Team Final you couldn't get a high score without a minimum of 4 tumbling passes and in most cases a 5th side pass! Kramarenko's floor below for example was beautiful with what I think are difficult tumbling passes could only score 15.025 for 5th place! I actually preferred her routine to watch over Izbasa and Johnson. Another similar routine is Anna Pavlova's floor routine in the All Around Final where she performed a near perfect routine for just a 15.050 which was not high for last year and I don't care about her difficulty that routine was underscored. I feel like Anna was always underscored her whole career the judges just seem to appreciate her artistry.

So at least again with 4 tumbling passes being the maximum now and artistry being given some value I hope that the judges start to take more points off for lack of artistry in some way and we can maybe start to see more artisitc routines again. However the rule of landing on two feet out of tumbles and no dance step out has to go, we do not want our women's floor routines to look like the mens, so please FIG take that rule away. I mean I love Beth Tweddle because I'm from the UK but her floor routine is awful and her dance although has got better, is embarassing for me to watch!