The gymnastics world was in an uproar this weekend over Simon Biles and her performance of the “Double Pike Yurchenko,” an extremely difficult vault on the edge of what’s possible to do. Biles is the first woman to land it in competition.
On Twitter, everyone was debating whether Biles is superhuman or whether she was just absent on the day that they taught the laws of gravity and thus just doesn’t know that they apply to her. Well, almost everyone. There was That One Guy who had to point out, “She didn’t stick the landing.”
That One Guy was being obnoxious, but he was also right: Biles didn’t stick the landing. She over-rotated, stumbled backwards, and had to take a huge step in order to keep her balance. Her vault was amazing, incredible, and spectacular…but it wasn’t perfect. Back in the day, when gymnasts were all chasing the perfect 10.0, Biles doing this vault would have been a serious mistake; she should have done an easier vault that she could execute better.
Fortunately for Biles, this isn’t “back in the day.” Modern gymnastics gives two scores: one is the traditional “how close to perfect” score that approaches 10, while the second is a difficulty score for every successfully executed element. The two parts are added together for the final score. It’s a recognition that there can’t really be a “best” score; if I do a triple flip perfectly, that’s awesome, but what if someone does a quadruple flip perfectly? Or a triple flip with a half-twist? Why should we all get the same score?
At any rate, this new vault was given a preliminary difficulty of 6.6, meaning that even though Biles had the step on the landing, she still got a 16.1 total, a very high score. So her big gamble paid off…maybe. A score over 16 is a big deal, but Biles’s own eponymous vault is a 6.4 difficulty. If she had done that one, could she have stuck the landing, gotten a better execution score, and done even better at the total?
From what I’ve heard about Biles, I don’t know if she cares. My amateur psychologist reading of her says that even if she knew for certain that doing the easier vault would have gotten her a 16.2 or a 16.3, she’d have gone for the double pike. It seems that the appeal of pushing herself as far as she could and doing something no one else had done before would matter to her more than the extra tenths would. And that’s admirable in a way. But it occurs to me that it’s also admirable to pursue perfection. To do one thing over and over again until you can do every aspect of it so well that there is literally nothing anyone can complain about.
Thinking about it, I think I share the philosophy that I’m assuming Biles has. I don’t have the patience to work on the details over and over again. The challenge of doing something new would appeal to me more. But that doesn’t mean that I think it’s the right choice. In mathematics, a proof that isn’t perfect isn’t a proof. And in writing, I enjoy creating new novels, but I would love it if just one of the novels I write could actually be the novel in my head.
So difficulty or execution? Is it better to push one’s limits, or become the best possible within them? If you had to choose, which would you master?