Is There A Gymnast In The House?

[Cindy C.]

Hi,

When I'm not watching figure skating, I follow gymnastics.  The 
world championships are under way, and the women's team event was, 
well, kinda weird.

By way of background, it used to be that each country had a six-
person team.  Each gymnast on each team competed in each event, and 
the team discarded the low score (thereby counting only the top five 
scores).  Having someone fall was bad, but if everyone else did 
well, it didn't matter.

This has changed.  Now, each team gets six gymnasts, but only three 
gymnasts compete on each event.  All three scores count.  

Well, the American team was up on uneven parallel bars, ready for 
its three members to perform.  The third girl gets up, and suddenly 
realizes she has failed to pin her competitor number on her back!  
They announce her name, and the rules say she gets 30 seconds to go 
before they take a deduction.  If she competes without her number, 
she gets a deduction.  If she continues to stand around, they will 
award her a zero.

So there is this mad scramble to find her number ("I think I left it 
in my bag!" she called out).  They couldn't find it, but they found 
a scrap of paper, wrote "419" on it, and they found some stray 
safety pins and attached it to her uniform.  This took longer than 
30 seconds, BTW.  And she was so rattled that she fell of the bars 
anyway.

So here's my question:  how the heck does this happen?  Doesn't the 
team coach check for that sort of thing?

Anyway, what do the gymnastics experts in the house think of the 
rule change allowing only three gymnasts to perform but keeping all 
three scores?  It sure gave us some unusual results.  The U.S. won 
for the first time, the Australians won their first medal, and the 
Russians finished way back.  

Cindy -- who has watched her kids dive into the water during a swim 
meet without their goggles, and has never been successful in getting 
their attention before it is too late