#TBT - Cheng Fei vs Anna Pavlova (2008 Olympic Beam Final)

Cheng Fei + Anna Pavlova.

Both of these gymnasts never really lived up to their potential at the Olympics.  During the floor finals, both Anna Pavlova and Cheng Fei.  This was extremely devastating for Cheng Fei because she was the top qualifier and would have secured herself a gold medal if she had performed without the fall.  Once again the top qualifier, Cheng Fei, fell on her 2^nd vault, a Cheng, which is ironically her own original vault.  Regardless, she still managed to snag the bronze over USA’s Alicia Sacramone due to her higher difficulty (I will do a blog post about this debate as as well). Again during vault finals, an even harsher tragedy struck Pavlova.  Due to technical errors with the vault score table, the judges could not score her 2^nd vault and she ended up getting a 0 on the vault. To say the least, Beam was both of the gymnast’s last chance to get a gold individual medal.  Unfortunately, chances of that were slim with gymnasts like Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin (World Champion on the beam), and China’s own Li ShanShan who boasted the highest difficulty out of the 8 eight finalists.

Both Cheng Fei and Pavlova competed at the 2004 games in Athens and in the 2008 games in Beijing.  Many people think that the judges over scored Cheng Fei, who had multiple visible errors in her routine.  Both gymnasts actually had the same Difficulty (6.8) but Cheng Fei beat Anna by only .050

Cheng Fei:

Judges score: 15.950

D score: 6.8

E score: 9.150

[.9 in deductions]

.1 heel dropped on full turn

.1 low landing on full twisting back tuck

.1 step on full twisting back tuck

.1 wobble on full twisting back tuck

.1 low landing on back pike

.1 wobble on back pike

.1 step on back pike

.1 bent legs on back handspring

.1 step on dismount

My score: 15.9

D score: 6.8

E score: 9.1

Anna Pavlova:  Anna had a higher potential start value than Cheng Fei.  However, due to errors on her handstands, her difficulty value was lowered and was the exact same as Cheng Fei’s.  People seem oblivious to Pavlova’s errors in her routine.  She had a huge mistake on one of her handstand elements.  Not only did she not achieve 1 perfect split in the handstand position but she did not hold the handstand position for 2 seconds which is an additional deduction in the CoP.  Furthermore, she will have received .1 less in Difficulty due to not holding the handstand position.

Judge’s score: 15.9

D score: 6.8

E score: 9.1

[1.0 in deductions]

.1 lack of split in handstand

.1 lack of precision on handstand (the gymnast failed to show control throughout the element)

.1 slight piked position (hip angle) in layout

.1 heel dropped on full turn

.1 lack of split in handstand

.1 balance check on sheep jump

.1 crossed legs on triple twist

.3 step on dismount (triple twist)

My score: 15.8

D score: 6.8

E score: 9.0

Verdict:  Looking at both of their routines, it seemed like Cheng fei had more wobbles and balance checks. Pavlova on the other hand had more subtle, yet equally as costly, problems with her handstand elements which not only lowered her difficulty but hurt her execution score.  Furthermore, Anna had a big step on her triple twist dismount. 

Cheng Fei deservedly took the bronze.