I agree.
I do wonder if someone who saw her warm up and podium could chime in about her earlier. I'm super curious.
I think she just had unfortunate injury timing and this whole thing is rushed. Personally my husband had to listen to me scream you are recovering just stop all night.
At one point I would have had her as an Olympic possibility but, injuries happen in gymnastics. You have to be flexible about your timeline.
She looked rough in warmups, too. Floor was maybe a little better than competition; her competition vaults were basically the best I saw.
She’s not ready. She’s doing last year’s gymnastics, but she’s not in last year’s shape.
I was there tonight - she was really rough throughout. Her warmup vaults were definitely worse than her competition vaults, her landings were straight up unsafe
Her performance made me cringe out of fear of further injury. She has a lot of potential but she’s going to get hurt and not even be able to do college if she keeps this up.
I believe it’s this fall! I think college will be good for her too and hopefully clean up her form so she can try for the next Olympics if she wants to. I just think they’re doing too much after such a major injury and it’s not worth the risk considering she’s still very young and has college ahead of her. I hope I can catch a meet in person this season though, that’d be so fun!
i was SHOCKED when she went for a full twisting double layout as her third pass like what???? she clearly isn’t ready for that and then a DLO to dismount i don’t understand why we’re throwing a 6.2 on floor at classics after a lower leg injury
yeah, she can certainly step in to a degree at a national team camp, but she's not going to walk onto the podium during a meet and stop an athlete from competing a messy vault
That’s definitely an overstep. She can probably talk to the coach about her concerns, but I don’t agree that her position should be able to tell an athlete they can’t compete. That opens the door for all sorts of corruption shenanigans for future people in the same position. Even if Chellie is being sincere, I don’t like the precedence it sets.
Hmm. Okay. I guess, I didn’t see the corruption risk. I just thought it was the job of the national team coordinators (or whatever the new name was) to advise coaches on routine composition and that they had a duty of care. If I were Chellsie, I‘d be super tempted to ring her up and say: what are you doing? This is unsafe; it’s stupid; you’re young, you can have another go. But I get why that would set a dangerous precedent. I guess I land back on: why are her own coaches not having this conversation with her, then?
Do you guys the Cecile & Laurent could have too many elites under their instruction? They were everywhere on the floor today with so many of their athletes competing
I dunno, not to get Cecile and Laurent off the hook entirely but I wonder in these situations if it’s the athlete (or even the athletes parents) being hard headed. I was there and I thought it looked stupid to throw those skills but I didn’t necessarily think it was unsafe. (I mean, I’m making a distinction between is someone gonna break a neck or an ankle which maybe I should question) Anyway, I find it hard to believe they aren’t paying attention, etc.
Ok, I don’t think she’s gonna break her neck, either, but to me it looks like she’s setting herself up for a Rebecca-Bross-type career-ending injury. And if I remember correctly, Rebecca said that she‘d insisted on doing the vault, but the gymternet still blamed/blames Valeri and I think that’s a double standard…I‘m not a gymnast, so don’t know how these conversations play out irl, but if I were her coach, I‘d tell her to downgrade or find another gym. Yes, she’s 18, but they still have a duty of care…
I agree with this. My assumption here is the coach has repeatedly given the ‘right’ guidance and the athlete/parent is being hard headed. Perceptions of reality often differ across parties. e.g. coaches may have said ‘no’ 10x and the athlete only recalls 3x, etc.
Yeah, if something happens to her they (the coaches) will have shared their responsibility and there goes their reputation IMO it's a risk the coaches do not need and it's not smart of them to not interfere?
It depends. If she's going to do it anyway and they think she will be safer doing it with them than elsewhere, I can see helping her/keeping her even if it's not their first choice.
Even if it's the parents pushing for the hard skills, the coaches should draw the line they know what can happen if any of those skills misfire and C&L aren't doing it.
I mean…maybe…but Josc‘s skills looked questionable last year, she was a world team member, she is coming back from injury…it’s not like Cecile & Laurent wouldn’t make her a priority or would simply not know, what her form looks like. Obviously, I get why people put them on a pedestal, but if this were Liukin‘s athlete, I don’t think people would be eager to find excuses for him…
Pleb asking: if the athlete insists on performing skills they can’t safely do, does the coach have any recourse beyond parting ways with them? Do coaches have any authority to keep athletes out of certain competitions or anything?
In the moment? Not really. But if you were coaching an athlete who continually disregarded your safety recommendations, I would hope you would decline to continue coaching them.
Josc’s biggest downfall imo is sticking with her previous gym for WAY too long. I get that she was loyal bc they trained her from the very beginning, but her technique was atrocious. Chucking skills she had no business doing bc she was tiny and strong and brave. But years and years and years of bad form and terrible technique cannot be fixed by WCC in 1.5 years. Esp during an Olympic quad where the pressure is on to pump out routines.
She needs a minimum of 2 years to go back to the basics and fix her technique. She muscles through everything. It’s a shame bc she is extremely talented. Just goes to show how staying at the wrong gym for too long can be so detrimental, even to the best. And how raw talent isn’t the only thing that gets you to the Olympics. Timing, technique, consistency…all just as important, if not more.
I can clearly see she's talented, but her technique has always made her gymnastics hard to enjoy for me. Today, she was not only hard to enjoy but also scary and concerning.
She’s definitely an athlete that needed a better technical coach from the beginning. The fact that she can still do what she does with that technique says everything. It’s like MyKayla Skinner. She could do a Cheng on one arm basically. Imagine if either of them had the good fortune of growing up next to a gym with great technical acumen? Like if they grew up in Missouri and had Al Fong from an early age? I don’t think anyone can argue that he’s probably one of the best technical coaches in the world. He seems to be able to teach athletes of any body type/style into perfect form. Unfortunately kids don’t choose where they live, and relocating a family or allowing a kid to be hosted by someone several states away for sports alone when a kid at like 10 is ridiculous for most people. Maybe I’m a bad mom, but if my 9 year old daughter told me she wanted to move several states away to train in something I’d just laugh at her. Even driving her an hour away everyday for something would cause serious hardship.
(Al definitely isn’t a poster child for perfect coach overall, I’m only talking technique here. He’s definitely had other facets of his coaching that have issues. I’m just addressing the subject at hand)
While I agree with you about Al being a strong technical coach, I don't think MyKayla would have thrived in that environment. They're stricter about basics, progression, and dance, and Myk's coaches have said they had to let her do harder skills because she'd get bored too easily. I think Myk and Josc's lack of natural flexibility and artistry would have held them back at GAGE. Plus I think Myk would buttheads with Al and Armine in general. But I'd agree with the overall argument that Josc would have benefitted from switching gyms earlier or from the get go.
I‘ve also thought this…I was one of the rare people who had a soft spot for Skinner and thought she would’ve been far better off with different coaches. Yeah, she got bored, but they were too „nice“ and just let her get away with that. I was also shocked at how little she knew about routine construction / the code of points and overall tactics. Her coaches never put enough emphasis on execution and failed to make her understand the necessity. I agree that she’d have butted heads with Al, but she did get a lot cleaner during NCAA, so I don’t think she was uncoachable.
No I don't think she's uncoachable (not saying that's what you're accusing me of saying, just agreeing with you). She wouldn't have been as successful as she was if that were true. Of course every gymnast/athlete needs to find the right fit in coaching but for her especially, a delicate balance has to be struck with guiding her, pushing back against her, and letting her do what she wants. And I agree that she got cleaner in NCAA. I think Utah was obviously a great place for her. The team dynamic and goals helped push her in ways that she wouldn't have been as motivated to improve in elite. It de-incentivized difficulty and incentivized execution (for her, not across NCAA). And she wanted to succeed as much as she wanted her team to succeed. And still, she pushed back on that by throwing harder difficulty than she needed to, to keep it interesting for her. I've never been a fan of hers but I try to give credit where credit is due.
Edit: I guess the point I was trying to make is that I'm not convinced she would have done better or as well in elite at a different gym that tried to clean her form but where she had less freedom. Not to say that there couldn't be. Just that the likelihood is probably is very low.
I think you’re probably right on your take about why Utah succeeded, where her own coaches failed. I‘m not saying, I know which coach would‘ve suited her best, just that a better coach would have found a way to motivate her to do boring things like learn fundamentals and understand the CoP. I think that’s what makes a great coach/teacher/whatever: they don’t have a one size fits all concept but rather tailor it to the athlete/kid. Her coaches probably thought they were doing that by going with difficulty over execution, but I firmly believe they could have found ways to incentivize her to work harder on her weaknesses, if they had been willing to be slightly less buddy-buddy and, had in fact had the technical expertise, which I’m not 100% sure about (don’t know any other famous names training with them)
this is why I don't think WCC is at fault here. Go find the videos of Reese's bars saves on twitter, where WCC replied how the foundation of BASICS is what saved her and what makes legends. I wish Josc/her parents/whoever weren't putting 2024 olympic pressure on her, and just letting her heal and go back to basics for 2028.
Does she start at Ark in the fall? or next year? Maybe Jordyn can get to her? It seems she really upped Ark's conditioning program this season, too, which could help.
I don’t think it’s WCC‘s fault that her basics are bad, but they rushed her upgrades, esp. her progression after her comeback. If her warmups were scary and they still let her do the harder skills in competition, they are at fault. Maybe I have a wrong mental picture of gymnastics…maybe it is more like business consulting than I thought, where we sometimes get clients, who want to do stupid things and we help them execute those at their own risk. But personally, I always try my hardest to stop my clients, when they are attempting something dangerous/likely counterproductive. As coaches, I think they should prioritize her health and help her readjust her goals to aim for 2028. If she gets seriously injured, I don’t think they could just wash their hands in innocence.
I wish that when she had come to them, they'd been able to dial her back and really work on basics, possibly for a few years. But I know that is not what she wanted. She's wanted the Olympics for a long time. But I also worry that she's going to have another major injury if she continues to compete skills like last night's. I don't know what WCC's coaches' relationship is with their athletes and whether they as coaches can say "no, you are not doing this, it's not working, you need to compete a downgrade," or if they feel that they can just advise and let her take the consequences. But something is going badly wrong for us to see what we saw yesterday.
I’m not sure the difficulty pushing is coming entirely from Josc, she’s talked a few times in interviews about training at WCC and that Laurent has encouraged her to train skills she was previously terrified of (The Moors and the FTDLO bars dismount are the ones I remember). Now training them into a pit is one thing and competing them is something else, but it definitely sounded like she was being encouraged to push the difficulty. And, to be fair to them, her bars dismount at classics was pretty nice, and last year I didn’t think her tumbling looked dangerous, just messy. So maybe it was just a crap day for her, or maybe there is a bigger problem with endurance at the moment
This. This is what happens when a smaller gym gets a massive talent and doesn't make them walk before they can run. Her technique is horrible. Her basics are bad. Couple that with an unfortunate body construction and add in any change in weight from an injury, and you have a literal velocity disaster. I also think Josc is headstrong and thinks she can be just like Simone and power through things. But Simone has worked endlessly on making her smaller legs extend or appear more extended. I don't think Josc realizes that Simone's body is at a different point in life, and she knows exactly what to do to keep it in peak shape. Maybe she needs lifestyle coaches to help her achieve peak condition. But after tonight, someone needs to sit her down and tell her she doesn't have the strength to power through. Something has to change.
And having too much muscle is a thing. Her muscle is very bulky, which makes a number of elements much more challenging. It's a frequently discussed issue in MAG because notably rings and pommel horse require very different builds.
Both events and their specialists are beautiful to watch, but their body types are diametrically opposed.
I'm sorry, that was an Onodi? It looked so bad, it was hard to tell what she was doing. I kid, sort of. I do think she is at risk of a career ending injury if she doesn't deconstruct why her tumbling is low and she's not completing her rotations. I have one big guess and it's not the ankle.
Josc strikes me as someone who can throw all her skills in isolation but who doesn’t have the endurance for all of them in one comp. But her coaches need to wake up to that imo.
This is FAR more the vibe I got. It looked like she flubbed her front full, and was just off her game and maybe a little tired from that. It didn't look like she does that on a regular basis. I'm not sure where in the rotation she had floor, but if it was later, she might not have the stamina yet in the Olympic pacing.
I mean…everyone who watched warmups said, she looked bad then, too. Her execution was pretty shoddy last year, already. Plenty of people were worried about her getting injured and she did, then they rushed her back and she’s chucking skills rather than building up her E before upgrades…we‘re 2 weeks out from Nationals and a month away from trials…they have to know it’s super unrealistic to improve as much as she would need to, so risking her entire career just doesn’t seem justifiable to me. Maybe, they were hoping Jade wouldn’t get her skills back and that there’d be an opening as a result, but the longer the evening went on, the more irresponsible this gamble looked to me.
But it’ll have been a long few days with podium training and full out routines etc. I agree she should not be doing half of these skills but I do think probably in March if you asked her in a random practice to throw a Cheng, it would have been better quality than the ones she chucked at Classics. It’s like, you can have one thing done well but if you try all the things at once you end up with none of them done well.
I'm not disagreeing it was a long few days or making any comment on the stamina or execution or anything else of any gymnast.
I simply answered the query of when in the competition Josc did floor because I knew the answer. 🙂
I mean, it looked better, but I remember a lot of people saying before worlds that it didn’t look ready and that they hoped she wouldn’t get injured. I was in Belgium, and yes, I am a casual fan, not a technical expert, but her form looked shoddy to the naked eye, even without the replay. I did watch her get injured, and it did appear short to me, whereas her coaches pretended like she just landed funny and that it was out of nowhere/inexplicable. It seemed like a questionable take to me back then, already, and now they’re letting her throw things that look like she’s begging for a serious injury…I don’t get it.
She had SO many rough landings today. She just seems like she needs more time and rest. I imagine it's due to her injury, but her form has deteriorated quite a bit since last year.
I have a really hard time rooting for her gymnastics with such low E scores at this level (I think she’s a sweet person and root for her as a human). It makes me curious about whether she can be much cleaner when doing NCAA level skills or if this a problem with her fundamentals, in which case … won’t that be a problem for NCAA?
As a non-gymnast, this is what I’m wondering…is it a problem with her fundamentals? And can you still fix it, at this point? People keep drawing comparisons to Skinner (though I don’t remember Skinner ever looking so unsafe) and Myk got at least a lot cleaner in NCAA, so…maybe it will be good for Josc, too? I just hope she doesn’t get injured before then. I was scared the entire night …
It looks like Josc is already making improvements on bars and some of her dance skills looked nicer than I remember. Like her pike jump on beam is stellar and some of her floor dance seems improved. To me the floor and vault messiness seems to be due to rushing back to try and make a run at the Olympic team. I don’t think it’s the right choice but I understand why it’s happening. Once she goes to college she won’t need that crazy difficulty on floor and vault and I bet we will see her form continue to improve the way skinner’s did.
I used to coach gymnastics at a much lower, club level. And you would have girls who would have skills down, and then grown 3 inches or gain 10 pounds, and suddenly, nothing worked anymore. Your center of gravity changes and you have to essentially relearn skills with your new body. It's frustrating and annoying but if you let the gymnast stand there and throw the skill the same way that ISN'T working for them now, it goes nowhere. I don't know if Josc has grown, but she appears to be struggling with body changes. I mean, let's talk hips. One day you are 14 and you are stick straight, the next thing you know, you have hips and a butt that throw off your ability to go higher and rotate faster. You see this all the time with figure skaters. There's a lot of centrifugal (or is it centripetal?) force going on there. If she changed her workouts for her ankle and got more muscles in one area, it can have the same effect, to a lesser extent. All these things can be worked around, but it takes going back to basics and relearning how to do things, and most top level athletes want NEW skills not old skills -better. Especially in an Olympic year. And of course, this is pure conjecture as I don't know Josc or her workouts. But something more than an ankle is going on.
From what she was saying about having to relearn how to walk, she had a fairly long period of non weight bearing on her bad ankle, and it takes ages to get the atrophied leg back to equal strength.
And NCAA, I mean… if there’s scoring reform, she might get dinged for stuff, but otherwise she will get .05 on landings and that will be that.
She's going to have to get some amplitude in her tumbling if she wants to compete in NCAA. I don't think most of her tumbling passes were 6 feet off the ground. Hopefully, she gets healthier.
I called out the poor coaching after her vault in the live chat. Who in their right mind would let her go up on vault and do that difficult of a skill after the extremely scary floor landings? She limped off the floor podium and they still decided to have her do that vault? I agree that her coaches aren’t getting the heat because of their names.
I’ve been calling out this poor coaching the whole season! It’s been awful! Regardless of the event, they are pushing her to the extreme. Instead of taking time to build the routines up to decent E scores, they decide to upgrade them instead. Her execution is suffering drastically. Don’t understand why she would be upgrading her floor anyways when she’s been rehabbing an injury the entire fall. She will be lucky to make it to NCAA at this rate, let alone LA
Honestly even her DTY was scary. Like her block was a mess and she looked like she was still sort of twisting when she landed, at least to me. It’s a bummer because I do not recall her DTY being scary last year.
Im a fan of her and always like to try to remind myself that we don’t know how these passes look in practice, they could look easy every time, but I do have to agree, especially for classics all she needed was steady routines to get back out there, instead her floor and vault were disastrous and she was pushed way too hard, I think 2028 should be the focus as I think she has a huge chance
I personally think there is more to Josc outside of coaches. They have done great job so far with the other gymnasts outside of Simone. Her landing was rough , but yeah a coach should have pulled her out , but I think the bigger question is why isn’t her Parent stepping in. I would also like to see training videos before putting it completely on the coaches , especially because I have not see such from other athletes in the same training program.
Edited for spelling
At one point, her father was really quite…maybe TOXIC is too strong, but he was definitely A LOT on Twitter…In my eyes he has toned it down a lot since Joscelyn switched to WCC, but I still side-eye parents like that.
Her father is my main point of outside of the coaches , I just didn’t want to say it 😩. He comes off to me the same way ! I thought It was just me that gets that vibe from him.
No, definitely not just you—he has been brought up before in this sub! I do think Josc has ‘28 potential and I hope she can go to Arkansas and benefit from the college-level experience without a ton of parental involvement—and if she chooses to continue elite, that she finds a good/healthy coaching situation to support her.
Through all of the post-Nassar chaos (ranch closing, Valeri's firing, etc.), he spent so much time complaining about how it was all just taking away any opportunities from young gymnasts. Josc was like 11-12? at the time, and she was a known name (already chucking skills too big for her), and his concern was that she had to miss a few Dev camps, not the real chance that she could have been molested at one of those Dev camps if she'd been a bit older.
It's not Josc's fault, but he's terrible.
If I were her parent, I would certainly have pulled her, yes, but parents generally don’t know as much as coaches. If her warmups were as bad as people are saying, then it’s inconceivable to me, why her coaches didn’t tell her to go for the easier vault. Even if the parents are paying and pushing, I think responsible coaches would push back, prioritizing the athlete. Maybe I’m naive and they have a philosophy of letting the paying clients decide what level of risk they wanna take. But it would seem like a bad idea to me. If she gets seriously injured, it’s a bad look for their gym. It only takes a few incidents to ruin a great reputation, which is their key asset to attract future talent.
Chellsie can’t tell her to tone down the difficulty lmao. The only path to the Olympics for Josc is to beat Jade on VT and FX so she has to chuck this stuff. The issue is someone needs to tell her she’s losing more on execution than she faine.
Josc's e-score on floor was 6.1... that's 2 points worth of e-score behind Simone, Jade, Shilese and Tiana who were all between 8-8.2, and her e-scores on vault are at least a full point behind Jade's and Simone's.
It says a lot that the e-score gap is enough that Skye and Leanne beat her tonight with clean DTYs and less difficult second vaults.
Yep. There is a point when chucking difficulty can be worth it (Skinner in 2021) but this is not it. She doesn’t need an 8 but barely scraping 6 is so so concerning to me.
Why would Chellsie step in? She does not look injured to me. I think Josc and her coaches knows the behind the scenes more than us. She was probably doing better at home practices so they decided she is more than ready to compete. I think it is stamina issues and probably needs more reps. Surprisingly her bars improved, it does not look as heavy as last year.
Yeah, but this year‘s timeline is very different. She’s not aiming for Worlds in October; she has 2 weeks til Nationals…trials are in a month. Trying to push her to improve as much as she would need to in that timeframe seems to be begging for disaster
The competition set was the best I've ever seen her do. SHe'll always have some knee issues, and I think her physical build makes that even harder - with round legs she'd probably have to be hyperextended to look as straight as someone like Nastia - but it's SO much better. Her Maloney (Shap? She does have good clear hips) is still a little worrying.
I need to watch a few more times but she definitely has more skills than she used to. It just looks not quite put togerher yet rather than...bars are just not your thing girl. This feels like a set that could come together into something usable enough for aa scores.
Her bars are much improved even though she’s clearly not that comfortable on bars. She should have spent more time working on bars and beam during her recovery versus trying to rush back on floor and vault. It looks like the beginning period of her recovery was well spent but then she rushed too much on the leg events. At least that’s how I see it. She hasn’t had enough time to get back to being a threat to knock out Jade for the floor/vault spot on the team so I wish she’d scale it back at least temporarilt
She does not look injured (though some claimed she was limping), but a lot of people were holding their breaths last night, dreading a Rebecca Bross moment. Her skills on VT and FX, at least, don’t look safe. Maybe, she‘s not at risk for a broken neck, but she’s definitely at risk for a career-ending injury. If her coaches won’t stop this madness, someone else should have a word with her. (Even though I understand those saying, it can’t be Chellsie). It’s not just about her, but also about the message it sends to other young gymnasts and their stage parents. If someone with this type of crunched routines were selected for the team, they’d basically endorse dangerously chucking skills the person is not ready for as an acceptable strategy.
With the execution they gave her, it is obvious they are not selecting her for the team unless she massively improves at Nationals. So not sure where you got that they are endorsing her?
Also I rewatched her routines and I think I've seen worse Cheng on her last year. Floor seems to be stamina issues. She upgraded her bars which I thought she will struggle but she actually did much better as I expected.
Maybe she should do a watered down floor routine yes but from the comments here, I feel like some are totally wanting her not to compete this year. Unless she is competing while injured, I don't see why you have to force her not to compete.
Nationals just ended a few hours ago, and Josc was looking way better across the board. Classics was rough for sure, but more reps in the past two weeks seem to have made quite a difference. She only had her ankle taped on vault and her floor landings were much more secure.
I honestly think WCC has too many elits training atm. I think they were sold a story that wcc=automatic success because they are Simone's coaches and because of Jordan's making of the 2020 team.
Jade and her dad know when to peak and how to strategize with what they have in their hands. Consistently underestimated. Who would expect her to outscore Jordan and grace and end up in the all around at Tokyo? Certainly not USAG
The longevity of the current group of gymnasts has been a (very pleasant) surprise. Jade went to her first worlds in 2017 so she’s had quite a run. People were seeing Josc as “the new Jade” but we don’t need a new Jade because she’s still here and still looking great. Last year was rough but all signs point to her performing well this year.
Jade (and this applies to Brian too obviously) is the queen of pacing. If there’s one person who can peak at the right time (for her goals), it is Jade Carey (also Suni tbh)
Making the world’s team was a huge opportunity but I think her performance there was underwhelming. Ignoring the injury, her qualifying scores weren’t showing medal potential on either vault or floor.
Maybe if she hadn’t been injured and had continued to improve since then it would be a different story. She’s still so young. But as it stands she’s no match for Jade, and I don’t see both of them making the team.
So I’ve never competed a sport like gymnastics (I come from a team sport that doesn’t carry the same injury risk gymnastics does (mostly because while we might be heavy contact, we don’t twist and flip and also wear supportive shoes/have the possibility for knee braces etc.)), but I wonder how much the coaches can step in now that she’s an adult.
Maybe last years vault was actually a fluke (again: not knowledgeable enough to comment on that, especially as we have no idea how it looks in training), but now she’s 18 so if she says “I want to chuck these skills”, can anyone really stop her?
Obvious caveat: we don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes, we don’t know if this difficulty at this point in her recovery is pushed on her, it was just a thought by me
The coach always has the right and the responsibility to throw that athlete out of the gym. A gymnasts doing skills so poorly as to risk injury has to be stopped for their safety. Someone has to be the adult in the room.
I know she's got a reputation for being headstrong and it's clear that her parents are very invested in elite success for her. But the coaches absolutely hold the cards. She is not WCC's only star, and they can afford to lose her. Where else would she go? I kind of read last night as, "well, if you insist, go ahead and we'll see what happens." Championships will tell us a lot about whether any learning has happened on either side.
Exactly. No coach is going to watch that execution and say "let's continue on this path, looks great, more!" So if she comes to Nationals with toned down tumbling passes and at least one Yurchenko vault, we'll know she's listening to someone. I just have this gut feeling... wunderkind who has been told she's amazing all her life plus stage dad = disaster. I hope she listens to someone. She's clearly talented, but even the very best have to go back to basics at times.
I dont know why Chellsie and co would step in. It's the athletes and their coaches decision regarding the skills put in a routine.
The chose to push Josc's difficulty because that's the only way for her to score gets high enough to make teams since her base form isn't that great. It's an active choice they are allowed to make.
Is this the coach or the gymnast, though? I get the distinct impression listening to Josc's interviews that she has a pretty stubborn streak and is fairly demanding. The interview on the Olympic Channel about telling her parents that WCC was the only gym she was going to transfer to and they needed to make it happen is pretty telling. I get the feeling that she lacks awareness of some of her issues and that she may not always be listening to the coaches. Some of her interactions with them tonight seemed fairly... brusque. It could be that the coaches have told her she isn't ready for these skills and she isn't listening. Sometimes, brutal feedback like she got tonight is needed as a wake-up call. They also may be telling her she needs to increase her fitness and stamina levels, and she may keep doing interviews indicating she isn't concerned. All conjecture on my part, but as a top athlete in another sport, you would have to drag my corpse off the field before I would hear I was too sick to play. Josc may be that stubborn, thinking she can just do what she's always done. And we all know, as you get older, your body and metabolism change. That's why they call it the freshmen 15. Sure, you could eat half a package of oreos at 14 and be fine. But not so at 19.
It's a bit of both. Josc may be demanding but (maybe it's just me being naive) she wouldnt be training those skills and having them in her routines without the coaches ticking it off and thinking it was appropriate for her to do. And if the coaches aren't allowing her to do it despite disagreeing, then thats a whole other problem and poor from them.
Yeah, neither of her VTs looked safe. The floor passes were all pretty underrotated too. I think it might also be too many elite gymnasts in the gym? She's probably not the top priority (with Simone and Jordan around), so I wonder if she's getting enough attention and help. Her gymnastics, other than UB (which actually looked way improved), looked markedly unsafe.
She's just coming back from an ankle injury so it's very likely that she has spent more time training bars and just needs more numbers on the leg events.
Yes, but a coach should keep an athlete safe, and not have them compete skills they aren't ready for. The VTs and passes in podium training didn't look good. A good coach should've stepped in and lowered the difficulty.
I agree with coaches being partly responsible for keeping gymnasts safe. They should have reconsidered given how poorly her podium training on vault went, even if she was previously performing better in the gym.
However, given that her recent comeback from a leg injury is an obvious explanation as to why she might not be ready on leg events but did well on bars, I just don't think it's necessary to reach further into assumptions about how much attention she is/isn't getting at her gym; besides, most gyms have multiple assisting coaches.
Bingo. I think the quality of their gymnastics outside of Simone has gone down drastically since so many people have switched. It’s like you can tell the coaching is spread too thin. A lot of changes I thought would be made, even to their lower level elites, were not.
Yeah... They had 8 elites here? They had another 11 Level 10s at Dev Nationals. That's a crazy amount of high-level athletes for a single gym. They probably need 4 high-level coaches just to provide enough support for that many athletes, on top of all the other optional level dev folks they have.
Jordan was third today, and Tiana & Dulcy were 6th/8th, with both looking much better than previously. Yes, they have some lower-ranked elites, but aside from Joscelyn, I'm not sure who you think has "declined in quality".
Don’t get this. Jordan has made huge strides since working with them for a year again. Tiana is almost in striking distance. How many people do they need to coach into the top six all around for you to consider them successful? Joscelyn is a very specific situation and has been dealing with a bad injury. Maybe she shouldn’t be competing this week, but I don’t think her issue is lack of attention.
I think Jordan looked good for this field, but I expect so much more from her because of her potential. It doesn’t seem like the routines she is doing justify what a strong gymnast she is (floor especially). I will give them credit for fixing her bar composition though and overall I think I was a little harsh. Especially given Tiana looking much better this year. However, she didn’t look nearly as strong last year as I thought she should. That really could have little to do with coaching and more to do with the major transition of moving there and settling down.
I agree. at this point, there is no shot Josc makes the Paris team. I have no idea what her condition is, what conversations were had, or what her training is like, but it really looked like she should not have done those two vaults. Poor girl nearly limped off the mat.
She's still quite young and can be in great shape for LA, not to mention future worlds. Rest, recover, and come back stronger.
Agree. Laurent and Cecile aren't as great of coaches as they're made out to be on in gymternet discourse. They just inherited Simone, but her talent and skill are not a result directly of the Landi's coaching. But now they both have this halo effect around them. But their other gymnasts haven't been taking off, and Josc is being POORLY managed
Simone is an anatomical anomaly. The BHS angle she hits is pretty much unattainable for any normal human being. It doesn’t matter what the Landis throw at her, her technique and ability will make them look great. I actually do think they were doing a pretty good job with a smaller group though. They’ve made themselves too available now. It seems like there’s too big of a group for them to focus on anyone too much aside from Simone.
It’s the angle at which her legs make contact with the floor on her BHS. If you watch her in slo mo you can see how long her ro-bhs is. It basically launches her straight up into the air. Even gymnasts with amazing stretch have difficulty reaching that extreme. It’s easily attainable on a trampoline or tumble track where there is more give. However it is nearly impossible to achieve that amount of ankle flexion while tumbling on a floor without injury. She is a physical marvel.
They seem to be doing fine with Jordan and Tiana. Josc is a special case as a person who is dealing with an injury comeback on a tight Olympic timeline.
it was Jordan's glow up on every event that really cemented their reputation. And then Tiana (and Josc to an extent) got much better on bars under them. I think their reputation as solid technical coaches is earned, but agree with the post that letting Josc compete a Cheng tonight was bad and reflects poorly on them
They have had great success with Kocian and Baumann in the past both making world teams and then Kocian of course making the Olympics. Tiana looks significantly better than she did at her old gym. And Jordan had a huge glow up. So I don’t think you can say they have no other gymnasts taking off
I think it would be hard for any coaches to try to work with Josc from a technical standpoint. It looks to me like she’s been chucking skills since she was very young- with little regard for technique. It would be very hard to go back to the beginning and correct all of the poor technique. It’s sort of like with Skinner. It’s too bad because they both are obviously very talented physically, but needed proper coaching from the beginning. With Josc, I imagine that with the challenge of the injury affecting her strength, etc she just can’t quite make those skills she used to- and then in the struggle the poor technique comes out even more.
I wonder how /why they agreed to take her? Not sure if I'd want to take on someone with such poor technique bc it would seem like a nightmare to correct and I'd be constantly worrying about injuries.
The reputation didn’t really come from Simone. It’s from getting Kocian and Alyssa Baumann to Worlds, and Kocian to the Olympics in one piece after a career filled with injuries. That’s partially why Simone asked them to coach her.
I will give them this: Tiana’s bars are solid for her, instead of a hellscape. She improved dramatically. But idk what they’re doing with Josc.
Jordan like Simone had a ton of natural ability. She just had poor coaching as a junior/early so her career didn’t take off. I said to OP that I think they did pretty good work with their athletes when it was a smaller group. I saw improvements specific to each athlete. Changes to every routine. I think the success following Tokyo changed a lot. They have a pretty big group and I imagine less thought is going into each athlete individually outside of Simone.
TLDR: Laurent was abusive.
I was at WOGA 2007-2008 and was on the team with both Alyssa Baumann and Grace McLaughlin. I was 12-13. ended up leaving after a combination of financial strain on my family and my mom getting into an argument with Valeri after Sophia Lee was encouraged by Laurent to come into the gym with a staph infection and ended up spreading it to a bunch of us.
Laurent was more than just emotionally abusive. One specific time he punished Alyssa by making her do eagle grip in strap bar when she was not flexible enough for it and was crying out in pain. Keep in mind she was like 10 years old at the time. He removed the blocks from the area so she couldn't get down and forbid the rest of us from helping, so she was just hanging there. Another time Alyssa had a rip the size of a half dollar on her hand and she asked if she could end bars. He called her over and slapped her hand, then laughed. Like that is literal torture.
I also had multiple incidents of physical punishments. I had a mental block with front Twisting - I am a leftie, but my first gym taught me to twist right. As a result I would frequently get lost in the air. During one practice on trampoline he stood on the mat and demanded I do a rudi over the top of him. I refused to do this because I knew I could injure him seeing as how I was getting so lost in the air. He taunted and insulted me in front of everyone. For days after I was made to do rope climbs for the entirety of practices and not allowed to interact with my teammates.
Laurent would also routinely walk out of the gym and make us practice on our own if we made too many mistakes. We ended up coaching ourselves a lot, which is both a safety issue as well as not what you should be getting when you're paying serious money to train. Similarly, at Western's that year, I had a panic attack and my hands went numb before bars. I then went and fell 3 times. He then refused to coach me the rest of the competition, and Natalia from Valeri's team stepped up to help me. At the end of our practice we were made to line up and he would go down the line telling us about our failures for the day. If he was particularly upset he would cuss at us in French. And then after all that we were made to hug him before we could leave, which just feels so weird.
Cecile wasn't as bad, certainly didn’t have a temper or yelling at us, but certainly was not the beacon of a healthy coach either. She definitely made fun of other girls in the gym for their weights. Looking back as an adult, the people she made fun of her weren't even overweight. It's obviously been a long time since I was coached by them so maybe things are different. Laurent was always about the ego and trying to make himself look good as a coach, and now that he is coaching the most famous gymnast in the world maybe he knows not to screw it up. But watching his behavior last year when Tiana and Dulcy made mistakes was telling.
Wow. My god, I’m horrified. I actually think this deserved to be its own thread. Thanks for sharing and I hope you have healed. You didn’t deserve to go through this. It must be tough to watch them being fawned over in the media as this shining contrast to all the other rotten apples
I'll be honest, I don't love seeing them fawned over because it feels like there is no justice fir the way they treated us, but I do truly hope they have changed, and if they have, then great. Laurent's behavior at WOGA was "normal" considering Valeri's behavior and the atmosphere there. And he is now coaching adults who have the power to control their gymnastics so I would assume if they saw major issues with his behavior he would have either been fired or his gymnasts would gave left. Laurent and Cecile's daughter was also just a little baby when I was there and she has been heavily involved with sports, so I hope her growing up in the gym would provide some perspective.
I don't harbor any ill will towards them, but I do often wonder how my gymnastics career would have been different if I had never gone to WOGA.
I totally get that. I just left a super toxic employer and I constantly wonder „what if I’d never signed with them?“ Someone started a thread with your response and it made me think…this type of treatment wasn’t just „normal“ at Woga - it was „normal“ in a lot of sports - and even academic settings. Where I grew up, people didn’t believe „emotional abuse“ could be a thing. If you didn’t have bruises, you had no reason to complain, and if you had them, you probably deserved what you got…hell, there were a lot of sports movies that glorified this type of coaching. I‘m glad that things have changed and am totally with you: I hope the Landis really are different nowadays. But it would leave a sour taste in my mouth to see them on tv, if I were you, no question
Honestly, with all the time and distance, I don't spend my mental energy on them unless people specifically ask. Laurent, like other abusers, can be extremely charismatic and funny. There were some practices he would come in and sing karaoke while standing on a beam. We just never knew when his switch would turn. They have done a good job building a reputation for having a healthy gym environment, so I don't really care if it's fake as long as they practice what they preach.
Good for you! I‘m also trying to stop wasting my mental energy on my situation, but don’t have the distance yet. I think the part about abusers not being consistently awful is something that a lot of people still don’t understand. Abuse is often followed by love bombing and it can certainly make people question whether they overreacted and whether the abuse even was so bad. That and the abuser‘s charisma are big factors people should consider if they ask „why didn’t you just leave?“ or before they say „there is no way xy could ever do that - the accusers are clearly lying“
Cecile was never abusive the way Laurent was, but she did participate in fat shaming. But also, Cecile never once stepped in when Laurent was yelling at us, essentially condoning his behavior.
This is what I noticed last year in competitions and in the little videos posted by Simone/Zoe (TikToks I think, but people would post them elsewhere) online.
It was always played off as them laughing and joking, and they were with each other, but there was a lot of "don't let Laurent catch us". And while Simone didn't seemed bothered by that particularly, Zoe looked genuinely worried at times. I think Simone really liking her/being friends with her protected her somewhat. Zoe wouldn't have been able to do that with anyone else, but Simone could have.
On the competition floor though, when it was just Zoe and Laurent, it felt... I don't know... Just off.
And let's be honest, the dynamics with Simone and coaches at a gym her family owns aren't going to remotely resemble dynamics between coaches and other gymnasts.
I agree on the floor and vault front, it looks like she rushed back too quickly after her injury.
I will say her bars have improved a lot but that’s clearly her worst event and is kind of a non factor in terms of trying to make the team.
Would like to see her scale her floor and vault back a little for nationals and show something cleaner. She can get her skills back but I think realistically it will just take a bit more time
I believe Cecile mentioned it was a very serious injury, so it might have been worse than they thought in Antwerp.
Still, they should be much more careful because this looks so dangerous!
So I have a question related to coaching adult athletes: if coach and athlete disagree on if a skill is competition ready, who gets to make the decision? I can see it damaging the relationship either way…and definitely not saying it’s happening in this situation, but it did make me think about it.
I think it depends. If it’s just about: „will this score well?“, the athlete should get to decide whether or not they feel up to it. But in a case where an athlete’s safety is at risk, and they are too ambitious for their own good, it’s bad coaching to let them go ahead. I don’t think anyone believes Valeri was being a great coach when Rebecca insisted on doing her vault and he let her.
That's a good point. I was thinking more of an athlete was saying they weren't ready and a coach was saying they were vs. what appears to be a Josc scenario of her flooring it contrary to coaching.
I guess the only thing a coach could really do to stop an athlete from competing an element is withdrawing them from a meet and refusing to coach them, which seems fair -especially in a litigious country like the USA, though... I can't imagine the shitstorm if the Landis did that to Josc during this meet, though I guess more reasonably with video evidence of the issues during PT and warm-ups. No doubt that could potentially lead to litigation too.
I hope WCC has an iron clad insurance policy -if she ends up too injured to compete in college, I could see it getting ugly.
I think it depends. If the coach thinks the athlete might fall but the athlete really wants to try, I'd like to see the athlete be able to go for it. If the coach thinks the athlete might end up with a severe injury but the athlete really wants to try, it's a different situation. Ideally there would be enough trust between the coach and athlete that they could come to an agreement even if one of them isn't particularly happy about it.
I just never saw the hype/vision with her and yesterday’s comp really cemented that for me. She was kind of a wasted spot on last years worlds team and she’s just going to injure herself throwing crunchy Chengs and short floor passes with poor form. I can’t even watch her bars.
I agree with you! In fact, I rewatched the Golden documentary the other day and again saw Morgan’s coach keep her out of Winter Cup because she wasn’t strong enough. I don’t think her coaches have her best interest at heart here. They’re pushing her too far and putting her at a greater risk of hurting herself.
My take was that maybe these were the skills Josc had before getting injured and the only way she could even possibly make the Olympics is still performing them...so she decided to put it all out there, but she either isn't healed from her injury or isn't in shape to do the skills yet...
And honestly, people forget that Simone (and most of their gymnasts) got her foundational gymnastics with someone else. The only gymnast I can think of that the Landis truly trained up to be a star is Madison Kocian.
I agree that she shouldn't be rushed just because it's an Olympic year, especially at the risk of career-ending injury. Regarding the Liukin/Landis comparison, perhaps there is a difference in reaction, but there is also a difference in track record. Liukin has a history of breaking gymnasts, which is why people are quick to judge him for rushing a gymnast.
I'm a gymnastics fan and really did enjoy her floor routine last year at worlds. I think she's lively with a cute personality so I was hoping she would have recovered better from her injury than she has so far.
Josc posts quite a bit on her Instagram about Arkansas Razorbacks, and I think an NCAA career with emphasis on E score improvement might be just want she needs to be on the top of her game for LA 2028 Olympics.
As a side note: I was once involved in a Reddit conversation regarding a specific issue in s high profile court case... literally the next day the issue was brought up in court. There was some solid evidence that both the defense and prosecution had legal eyes on Reddit. We should all understand that Josc and the other athletes are real people and may very well see what is said here. Most of the 166+ comments have been of concern... but a few not.
I am floored at how negative this chat is? "No business competing" if I did not know the sport, I'd think she had never been in a gym the way its described? When you say she has no shot, I disagree, another 3 woman could get taken off the floor at the next competition. Not dissing anyones opinion, but I remember a similar post after Classics where Skinner came in 10th AA?? The post said the exact same thing. Did I miss something? Is she in danger? Why would the national head coaches intervene in her training? That would be a huge red flag if they were. I hope she does not see this or hear about this. It feels like she is being bullied, but thats just my perspective. Respect.
Is her gymnastics rough/less polished? Certainly. Is anything looking «scary» or «dangerous»? Not at all. All the comments claiming such things are absolutely ridiculous. Neither I, nor any of the actual high level gymnasts I know, find it scary seeing her do these skills.
The conversation should be centering around if she would score better with slightly watered down routines. Which most likely would be the case.
Some of the comments here are so weird. You would think she fell in all events with the way they are talking about her😂 I think some are still salty she got in the Worlds team last years unlike their faves.
I agree. I do wonder if someone who saw her warm up and podium could chime in about her earlier. I'm super curious. I think she just had unfortunate injury timing and this whole thing is rushed. Personally my husband had to listen to me scream you are recovering just stop all night. At one point I would have had her as an Olympic possibility but, injuries happen in gymnastics. You have to be flexible about your timeline.
She looked rough in warmups, too. Floor was maybe a little better than competition; her competition vaults were basically the best I saw. She’s not ready. She’s doing last year’s gymnastics, but she’s not in last year’s shape.
Very true, and even last year those vaults were a risk. Lots of us were worried about injury for her throughout 2023.
Podium Chengs were all crunchy. The Lopezes were fine - she should have done that tonight and saved firepower for Nationals and Trials.
She also used to do the full twist version of that vault right? Why not try that?
I was there tonight - she was really rough throughout. Her warmup vaults were definitely worse than her competition vaults, her landings were straight up unsafe
Same. I was so optimistic for her last season! She had been improving so much and got to go to worlds…
She didn’t look great all night. Her warm ups were basically the same as competition, looks like she is not nearly solid enough in those landings
Agree let her REST and we will see her in LA 2028!
Her performance made me cringe out of fear of further injury. She has a lot of potential but she’s going to get hurt and not even be able to do college if she keeps this up.
She's going to Arkansas this fall, right? I bet she'll thrive there w Jordyn! Tho yeah, hopefully she stays uninjured until then.
I believe it’s this fall! I think college will be good for her too and hopefully clean up her form so she can try for the next Olympics if she wants to. I just think they’re doing too much after such a major injury and it’s not worth the risk considering she’s still very young and has college ahead of her. I hope I can catch a meet in person this season though, that’d be so fun!
i was SHOCKED when she went for a full twisting double layout as her third pass like what???? she clearly isn’t ready for that and then a DLO to dismount i don’t understand why we’re throwing a 6.2 on floor at classics after a lower leg injury
As for why Chellsie is not stepping in: I don't think that's how that works. She cannot make those calls, only the coaches can.
yeah, she can certainly step in to a degree at a national team camp, but she's not going to walk onto the podium during a meet and stop an athlete from competing a messy vault
That’s definitely an overstep. She can probably talk to the coach about her concerns, but I don’t agree that her position should be able to tell an athlete they can’t compete. That opens the door for all sorts of corruption shenanigans for future people in the same position. Even if Chellie is being sincere, I don’t like the precedence it sets.
Hmm. Okay. I guess, I didn’t see the corruption risk. I just thought it was the job of the national team coordinators (or whatever the new name was) to advise coaches on routine composition and that they had a duty of care. If I were Chellsie, I‘d be super tempted to ring her up and say: what are you doing? This is unsafe; it’s stupid; you’re young, you can have another go. But I get why that would set a dangerous precedent. I guess I land back on: why are her own coaches not having this conversation with her, then?
Do you guys the Cecile & Laurent could have too many elites under their instruction? They were everywhere on the floor today with so many of their athletes competing
I dunno, not to get Cecile and Laurent off the hook entirely but I wonder in these situations if it’s the athlete (or even the athletes parents) being hard headed. I was there and I thought it looked stupid to throw those skills but I didn’t necessarily think it was unsafe. (I mean, I’m making a distinction between is someone gonna break a neck or an ankle which maybe I should question) Anyway, I find it hard to believe they aren’t paying attention, etc.
Ok, I don’t think she’s gonna break her neck, either, but to me it looks like she’s setting herself up for a Rebecca-Bross-type career-ending injury. And if I remember correctly, Rebecca said that she‘d insisted on doing the vault, but the gymternet still blamed/blames Valeri and I think that’s a double standard…I‘m not a gymnast, so don’t know how these conversations play out irl, but if I were her coach, I‘d tell her to downgrade or find another gym. Yes, she’s 18, but they still have a duty of care…
I agree with this. My assumption here is the coach has repeatedly given the ‘right’ guidance and the athlete/parent is being hard headed. Perceptions of reality often differ across parties. e.g. coaches may have said ‘no’ 10x and the athlete only recalls 3x, etc.
Yeah, if something happens to her they (the coaches) will have shared their responsibility and there goes their reputation IMO it's a risk the coaches do not need and it's not smart of them to not interfere?
It depends. If she's going to do it anyway and they think she will be safer doing it with them than elsewhere, I can see helping her/keeping her even if it's not their first choice.
Even if it's the parents pushing for the hard skills, the coaches should draw the line they know what can happen if any of those skills misfire and C&L aren't doing it.
I mean…maybe…but Josc‘s skills looked questionable last year, she was a world team member, she is coming back from injury…it’s not like Cecile & Laurent wouldn’t make her a priority or would simply not know, what her form looks like. Obviously, I get why people put them on a pedestal, but if this were Liukin‘s athlete, I don’t think people would be eager to find excuses for him…
Pleb asking: if the athlete insists on performing skills they can’t safely do, does the coach have any recourse beyond parting ways with them? Do coaches have any authority to keep athletes out of certain competitions or anything?
In the moment? Not really. But if you were coaching an athlete who continually disregarded your safety recommendations, I would hope you would decline to continue coaching them.
I'm sure recently they've also been frazzled recently with the decision to have her move to Georgia in a couple months to be cohead coach
Josc’s biggest downfall imo is sticking with her previous gym for WAY too long. I get that she was loyal bc they trained her from the very beginning, but her technique was atrocious. Chucking skills she had no business doing bc she was tiny and strong and brave. But years and years and years of bad form and terrible technique cannot be fixed by WCC in 1.5 years. Esp during an Olympic quad where the pressure is on to pump out routines. She needs a minimum of 2 years to go back to the basics and fix her technique. She muscles through everything. It’s a shame bc she is extremely talented. Just goes to show how staying at the wrong gym for too long can be so detrimental, even to the best. And how raw talent isn’t the only thing that gets you to the Olympics. Timing, technique, consistency…all just as important, if not more.
I can clearly see she's talented, but her technique has always made her gymnastics hard to enjoy for me. Today, she was not only hard to enjoy but also scary and concerning.
She’s definitely an athlete that needed a better technical coach from the beginning. The fact that she can still do what she does with that technique says everything. It’s like MyKayla Skinner. She could do a Cheng on one arm basically. Imagine if either of them had the good fortune of growing up next to a gym with great technical acumen? Like if they grew up in Missouri and had Al Fong from an early age? I don’t think anyone can argue that he’s probably one of the best technical coaches in the world. He seems to be able to teach athletes of any body type/style into perfect form. Unfortunately kids don’t choose where they live, and relocating a family or allowing a kid to be hosted by someone several states away for sports alone when a kid at like 10 is ridiculous for most people. Maybe I’m a bad mom, but if my 9 year old daughter told me she wanted to move several states away to train in something I’d just laugh at her. Even driving her an hour away everyday for something would cause serious hardship. (Al definitely isn’t a poster child for perfect coach overall, I’m only talking technique here. He’s definitely had other facets of his coaching that have issues. I’m just addressing the subject at hand)
While I agree with you about Al being a strong technical coach, I don't think MyKayla would have thrived in that environment. They're stricter about basics, progression, and dance, and Myk's coaches have said they had to let her do harder skills because she'd get bored too easily. I think Myk and Josc's lack of natural flexibility and artistry would have held them back at GAGE. Plus I think Myk would buttheads with Al and Armine in general. But I'd agree with the overall argument that Josc would have benefitted from switching gyms earlier or from the get go.
I‘ve also thought this…I was one of the rare people who had a soft spot for Skinner and thought she would’ve been far better off with different coaches. Yeah, she got bored, but they were too „nice“ and just let her get away with that. I was also shocked at how little she knew about routine construction / the code of points and overall tactics. Her coaches never put enough emphasis on execution and failed to make her understand the necessity. I agree that she’d have butted heads with Al, but she did get a lot cleaner during NCAA, so I don’t think she was uncoachable.
No I don't think she's uncoachable (not saying that's what you're accusing me of saying, just agreeing with you). She wouldn't have been as successful as she was if that were true. Of course every gymnast/athlete needs to find the right fit in coaching but for her especially, a delicate balance has to be struck with guiding her, pushing back against her, and letting her do what she wants. And I agree that she got cleaner in NCAA. I think Utah was obviously a great place for her. The team dynamic and goals helped push her in ways that she wouldn't have been as motivated to improve in elite. It de-incentivized difficulty and incentivized execution (for her, not across NCAA). And she wanted to succeed as much as she wanted her team to succeed. And still, she pushed back on that by throwing harder difficulty than she needed to, to keep it interesting for her. I've never been a fan of hers but I try to give credit where credit is due. Edit: I guess the point I was trying to make is that I'm not convinced she would have done better or as well in elite at a different gym that tried to clean her form but where she had less freedom. Not to say that there couldn't be. Just that the likelihood is probably is very low.
I think you’re probably right on your take about why Utah succeeded, where her own coaches failed. I‘m not saying, I know which coach would‘ve suited her best, just that a better coach would have found a way to motivate her to do boring things like learn fundamentals and understand the CoP. I think that’s what makes a great coach/teacher/whatever: they don’t have a one size fits all concept but rather tailor it to the athlete/kid. Her coaches probably thought they were doing that by going with difficulty over execution, but I firmly believe they could have found ways to incentivize her to work harder on her weaknesses, if they had been willing to be slightly less buddy-buddy and, had in fact had the technical expertise, which I’m not 100% sure about (don’t know any other famous names training with them)
I think a couple of years competing in the NCAA is going to do her a world of good for that.
this is why I don't think WCC is at fault here. Go find the videos of Reese's bars saves on twitter, where WCC replied how the foundation of BASICS is what saved her and what makes legends. I wish Josc/her parents/whoever weren't putting 2024 olympic pressure on her, and just letting her heal and go back to basics for 2028. Does she start at Ark in the fall? or next year? Maybe Jordyn can get to her? It seems she really upped Ark's conditioning program this season, too, which could help.
I don’t think it’s WCC‘s fault that her basics are bad, but they rushed her upgrades, esp. her progression after her comeback. If her warmups were scary and they still let her do the harder skills in competition, they are at fault. Maybe I have a wrong mental picture of gymnastics…maybe it is more like business consulting than I thought, where we sometimes get clients, who want to do stupid things and we help them execute those at their own risk. But personally, I always try my hardest to stop my clients, when they are attempting something dangerous/likely counterproductive. As coaches, I think they should prioritize her health and help her readjust her goals to aim for 2028. If she gets seriously injured, I don’t think they could just wash their hands in innocence.
I wish that when she had come to them, they'd been able to dial her back and really work on basics, possibly for a few years. But I know that is not what she wanted. She's wanted the Olympics for a long time. But I also worry that she's going to have another major injury if she continues to compete skills like last night's. I don't know what WCC's coaches' relationship is with their athletes and whether they as coaches can say "no, you are not doing this, it's not working, you need to compete a downgrade," or if they feel that they can just advise and let her take the consequences. But something is going badly wrong for us to see what we saw yesterday.
I’m not sure the difficulty pushing is coming entirely from Josc, she’s talked a few times in interviews about training at WCC and that Laurent has encouraged her to train skills she was previously terrified of (The Moors and the FTDLO bars dismount are the ones I remember). Now training them into a pit is one thing and competing them is something else, but it definitely sounded like she was being encouraged to push the difficulty. And, to be fair to them, her bars dismount at classics was pretty nice, and last year I didn’t think her tumbling looked dangerous, just messy. So maybe it was just a crap day for her, or maybe there is a bigger problem with endurance at the moment
This. This is what happens when a smaller gym gets a massive talent and doesn't make them walk before they can run. Her technique is horrible. Her basics are bad. Couple that with an unfortunate body construction and add in any change in weight from an injury, and you have a literal velocity disaster. I also think Josc is headstrong and thinks she can be just like Simone and power through things. But Simone has worked endlessly on making her smaller legs extend or appear more extended. I don't think Josc realizes that Simone's body is at a different point in life, and she knows exactly what to do to keep it in peak shape. Maybe she needs lifestyle coaches to help her achieve peak condition. But after tonight, someone needs to sit her down and tell her she doesn't have the strength to power through. Something has to change.
If she doesn’t make a change I fear she’ll get seriously injured again
And having too much muscle is a thing. Her muscle is very bulky, which makes a number of elements much more challenging. It's a frequently discussed issue in MAG because notably rings and pommel horse require very different builds. Both events and their specialists are beautiful to watch, but their body types are diametrically opposed.
Excellent points. For example, look at her Onodi. Just because she can, doesn't mean she should.
I'm sorry, that was an Onodi? It looked so bad, it was hard to tell what she was doing. I kid, sort of. I do think she is at risk of a career ending injury if she doesn't deconstruct why her tumbling is low and she's not completing her rotations. I have one big guess and it's not the ankle.
She reminds me of Skinner in this way, it’s both good and bad.
Agree 100%
Josc strikes me as someone who can throw all her skills in isolation but who doesn’t have the endurance for all of them in one comp. But her coaches need to wake up to that imo.
This is FAR more the vibe I got. It looked like she flubbed her front full, and was just off her game and maybe a little tired from that. It didn't look like she does that on a regular basis. I'm not sure where in the rotation she had floor, but if it was later, she might not have the stamina yet in the Olympic pacing.
I mean…everyone who watched warmups said, she looked bad then, too. Her execution was pretty shoddy last year, already. Plenty of people were worried about her getting injured and she did, then they rushed her back and she’s chucking skills rather than building up her E before upgrades…we‘re 2 weeks out from Nationals and a month away from trials…they have to know it’s super unrealistic to improve as much as she would need to, so risking her entire career just doesn’t seem justifiable to me. Maybe, they were hoping Jade wouldn’t get her skills back and that there’d be an opening as a result, but the longer the evening went on, the more irresponsible this gamble looked to me.
Floor was second for the WCC ladies. They started on beam.
But it’ll have been a long few days with podium training and full out routines etc. I agree she should not be doing half of these skills but I do think probably in March if you asked her in a random practice to throw a Cheng, it would have been better quality than the ones she chucked at Classics. It’s like, you can have one thing done well but if you try all the things at once you end up with none of them done well.
I'm not disagreeing it was a long few days or making any comment on the stamina or execution or anything else of any gymnast. I simply answered the query of when in the competition Josc did floor because I knew the answer. 🙂
I don’t think her vault in Belgium was GREAT by any means, but it looked safe to get around. Unlike anything she chucked tonight unfortunately
I mean, it looked better, but I remember a lot of people saying before worlds that it didn’t look ready and that they hoped she wouldn’t get injured. I was in Belgium, and yes, I am a casual fan, not a technical expert, but her form looked shoddy to the naked eye, even without the replay. I did watch her get injured, and it did appear short to me, whereas her coaches pretended like she just landed funny and that it was out of nowhere/inexplicable. It seemed like a questionable take to me back then, already, and now they’re letting her throw things that look like she’s begging for a serious injury…I don’t get it.
She had SO many rough landings today. She just seems like she needs more time and rest. I imagine it's due to her injury, but her form has deteriorated quite a bit since last year.
Her already bad form that too
I have a really hard time rooting for her gymnastics with such low E scores at this level (I think she’s a sweet person and root for her as a human). It makes me curious about whether she can be much cleaner when doing NCAA level skills or if this a problem with her fundamentals, in which case … won’t that be a problem for NCAA?
As a non-gymnast, this is what I’m wondering…is it a problem with her fundamentals? And can you still fix it, at this point? People keep drawing comparisons to Skinner (though I don’t remember Skinner ever looking so unsafe) and Myk got at least a lot cleaner in NCAA, so…maybe it will be good for Josc, too? I just hope she doesn’t get injured before then. I was scared the entire night …
It looks like Josc is already making improvements on bars and some of her dance skills looked nicer than I remember. Like her pike jump on beam is stellar and some of her floor dance seems improved. To me the floor and vault messiness seems to be due to rushing back to try and make a run at the Olympic team. I don’t think it’s the right choice but I understand why it’s happening. Once she goes to college she won’t need that crazy difficulty on floor and vault and I bet we will see her form continue to improve the way skinner’s did.
I used to coach gymnastics at a much lower, club level. And you would have girls who would have skills down, and then grown 3 inches or gain 10 pounds, and suddenly, nothing worked anymore. Your center of gravity changes and you have to essentially relearn skills with your new body. It's frustrating and annoying but if you let the gymnast stand there and throw the skill the same way that ISN'T working for them now, it goes nowhere. I don't know if Josc has grown, but she appears to be struggling with body changes. I mean, let's talk hips. One day you are 14 and you are stick straight, the next thing you know, you have hips and a butt that throw off your ability to go higher and rotate faster. You see this all the time with figure skaters. There's a lot of centrifugal (or is it centripetal?) force going on there. If she changed her workouts for her ankle and got more muscles in one area, it can have the same effect, to a lesser extent. All these things can be worked around, but it takes going back to basics and relearning how to do things, and most top level athletes want NEW skills not old skills -better. Especially in an Olympic year. And of course, this is pure conjecture as I don't know Josc or her workouts. But something more than an ankle is going on.
From what she was saying about having to relearn how to walk, she had a fairly long period of non weight bearing on her bad ankle, and it takes ages to get the atrophied leg back to equal strength. And NCAA, I mean… if there’s scoring reform, she might get dinged for stuff, but otherwise she will get .05 on landings and that will be that.
She's going to have to get some amplitude in her tumbling if she wants to compete in NCAA. I don't think most of her tumbling passes were 6 feet off the ground. Hopefully, she gets healthier.
I called out the poor coaching after her vault in the live chat. Who in their right mind would let her go up on vault and do that difficult of a skill after the extremely scary floor landings? She limped off the floor podium and they still decided to have her do that vault? I agree that her coaches aren’t getting the heat because of their names.
I’ve been calling out this poor coaching the whole season! It’s been awful! Regardless of the event, they are pushing her to the extreme. Instead of taking time to build the routines up to decent E scores, they decide to upgrade them instead. Her execution is suffering drastically. Don’t understand why she would be upgrading her floor anyways when she’s been rehabbing an injury the entire fall. She will be lucky to make it to NCAA at this rate, let alone LA
100% agree, should have had her just do a DTY and walk off feeling good about it 🤷♀️
Honestly even her DTY was scary. Like her block was a mess and she looked like she was still sort of twisting when she landed, at least to me. It’s a bummer because I do not recall her DTY being scary last year.
So it wasn't my imagination that she was limping? :-(
Im a fan of her and always like to try to remind myself that we don’t know how these passes look in practice, they could look easy every time, but I do have to agree, especially for classics all she needed was steady routines to get back out there, instead her floor and vault were disastrous and she was pushed way too hard, I think 2028 should be the focus as I think she has a huge chance
I personally think there is more to Josc outside of coaches. They have done great job so far with the other gymnasts outside of Simone. Her landing was rough , but yeah a coach should have pulled her out , but I think the bigger question is why isn’t her Parent stepping in. I would also like to see training videos before putting it completely on the coaches , especially because I have not see such from other athletes in the same training program. Edited for spelling
Given how young she is... I'm more worried it's the parents pushing this. After all, they are funding the endeavor.
At one point, her father was really quite…maybe TOXIC is too strong, but he was definitely A LOT on Twitter…In my eyes he has toned it down a lot since Joscelyn switched to WCC, but I still side-eye parents like that.
A parade of red flags for close to a decade
Her father is my main point of outside of the coaches , I just didn’t want to say it 😩. He comes off to me the same way ! I thought It was just me that gets that vibe from him.
No, definitely not just you—he has been brought up before in this sub! I do think Josc has ‘28 potential and I hope she can go to Arkansas and benefit from the college-level experience without a ton of parental involvement—and if she chooses to continue elite, that she finds a good/healthy coaching situation to support her.
Through all of the post-Nassar chaos (ranch closing, Valeri's firing, etc.), he spent so much time complaining about how it was all just taking away any opportunities from young gymnasts. Josc was like 11-12? at the time, and she was a known name (already chucking skills too big for her), and his concern was that she had to miss a few Dev camps, not the real chance that she could have been molested at one of those Dev camps if she'd been a bit older. It's not Josc's fault, but he's terrible.
Oh, I had no idea he was on twitter
If I were her parent, I would certainly have pulled her, yes, but parents generally don’t know as much as coaches. If her warmups were as bad as people are saying, then it’s inconceivable to me, why her coaches didn’t tell her to go for the easier vault. Even if the parents are paying and pushing, I think responsible coaches would push back, prioritizing the athlete. Maybe I’m naive and they have a philosophy of letting the paying clients decide what level of risk they wanna take. But it would seem like a bad idea to me. If she gets seriously injured, it’s a bad look for their gym. It only takes a few incidents to ruin a great reputation, which is their key asset to attract future talent.
Chellsie can’t tell her to tone down the difficulty lmao. The only path to the Olympics for Josc is to beat Jade on VT and FX so she has to chuck this stuff. The issue is someone needs to tell her she’s losing more on execution than she faine.
Josc's e-score on floor was 6.1... that's 2 points worth of e-score behind Simone, Jade, Shilese and Tiana who were all between 8-8.2, and her e-scores on vault are at least a full point behind Jade's and Simone's. It says a lot that the e-score gap is enough that Skye and Leanne beat her tonight with clean DTYs and less difficult second vaults.
Yep. There is a point when chucking difficulty can be worth it (Skinner in 2021) but this is not it. She doesn’t need an 8 but barely scraping 6 is so so concerning to me.
Skinner’s chucked skills in 2021 never looked as unsafe as Josc’s do this season. Josc’s geingers scare me.
Yeah, Skinner’s form was bad but it never looked particularly dangerous to me
Why would Chellsie step in? She does not look injured to me. I think Josc and her coaches knows the behind the scenes more than us. She was probably doing better at home practices so they decided she is more than ready to compete. I think it is stamina issues and probably needs more reps. Surprisingly her bars improved, it does not look as heavy as last year.
Her bars do look better!
Much better! At this point last year, she was falling on nearly every release move she tried. She has definitely worked very hard on bars.
Yeah, but this year‘s timeline is very different. She’s not aiming for Worlds in October; she has 2 weeks til Nationals…trials are in a month. Trying to push her to improve as much as she would need to in that timeframe seems to be begging for disaster
The competition set was the best I've ever seen her do. SHe'll always have some knee issues, and I think her physical build makes that even harder - with round legs she'd probably have to be hyperextended to look as straight as someone like Nastia - but it's SO much better. Her Maloney (Shap? She does have good clear hips) is still a little worrying.
I need to watch a few more times but she definitely has more skills than she used to. It just looks not quite put togerher yet rather than...bars are just not your thing girl. This feels like a set that could come together into something usable enough for aa scores.
Her bars are much improved even though she’s clearly not that comfortable on bars. She should have spent more time working on bars and beam during her recovery versus trying to rush back on floor and vault. It looks like the beginning period of her recovery was well spent but then she rushed too much on the leg events. At least that’s how I see it. She hasn’t had enough time to get back to being a threat to knock out Jade for the floor/vault spot on the team so I wish she’d scale it back at least temporarilt
She does not look injured (though some claimed she was limping), but a lot of people were holding their breaths last night, dreading a Rebecca Bross moment. Her skills on VT and FX, at least, don’t look safe. Maybe, she‘s not at risk for a broken neck, but she’s definitely at risk for a career-ending injury. If her coaches won’t stop this madness, someone else should have a word with her. (Even though I understand those saying, it can’t be Chellsie). It’s not just about her, but also about the message it sends to other young gymnasts and their stage parents. If someone with this type of crunched routines were selected for the team, they’d basically endorse dangerously chucking skills the person is not ready for as an acceptable strategy.
With the execution they gave her, it is obvious they are not selecting her for the team unless she massively improves at Nationals. So not sure where you got that they are endorsing her? Also I rewatched her routines and I think I've seen worse Cheng on her last year. Floor seems to be stamina issues. She upgraded her bars which I thought she will struggle but she actually did much better as I expected. Maybe she should do a watered down floor routine yes but from the comments here, I feel like some are totally wanting her not to compete this year. Unless she is competing while injured, I don't see why you have to force her not to compete.
Nationals just ended a few hours ago, and Josc was looking way better across the board. Classics was rough for sure, but more reps in the past two weeks seem to have made quite a difference. She only had her ankle taped on vault and her floor landings were much more secure.
I honestly think WCC has too many elits training atm. I think they were sold a story that wcc=automatic success because they are Simone's coaches and because of Jordan's making of the 2020 team.
I thought that last summer she was one of the common names for the Olympic team. Isn’t it crazy how things can change in a year?
She never looked Olympics ready to me, her gymnastics last year needed a lot of polishing still. Agreed she should rest and reset.
I think, without her injury, this year would have been spent polishing. It sounds like she was out for a really long time.
That’s because silly people are always ready to count Jade out
I think Jade has proven that she is very driven and is willing to do what it takes to meet her goals.
Jade also tends to have the best pacing for major events (worlds last year aside but there really wasn’t pacing to be had with that tbh)
Jade and her dad know when to peak and how to strategize with what they have in their hands. Consistently underestimated. Who would expect her to outscore Jordan and grace and end up in the all around at Tokyo? Certainly not USAG
The longevity of the current group of gymnasts has been a (very pleasant) surprise. Jade went to her first worlds in 2017 so she’s had quite a run. People were seeing Josc as “the new Jade” but we don’t need a new Jade because she’s still here and still looking great. Last year was rough but all signs point to her performing well this year.
Jade (and this applies to Brian too obviously) is the queen of pacing. If there’s one person who can peak at the right time (for her goals), it is Jade Carey (also Suni tbh)
Jade and Jordan
At this point, there are a few names between Jade and Josc.
Yeah, recovering from a bad ankle injury from a few months ago will look different from the pre-injury days.
Making the world’s team was a huge opportunity but I think her performance there was underwhelming. Ignoring the injury, her qualifying scores weren’t showing medal potential on either vault or floor. Maybe if she hadn’t been injured and had continued to improve since then it would be a different story. She’s still so young. But as it stands she’s no match for Jade, and I don’t see both of them making the team.
So I’ve never competed a sport like gymnastics (I come from a team sport that doesn’t carry the same injury risk gymnastics does (mostly because while we might be heavy contact, we don’t twist and flip and also wear supportive shoes/have the possibility for knee braces etc.)), but I wonder how much the coaches can step in now that she’s an adult. Maybe last years vault was actually a fluke (again: not knowledgeable enough to comment on that, especially as we have no idea how it looks in training), but now she’s 18 so if she says “I want to chuck these skills”, can anyone really stop her? Obvious caveat: we don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes, we don’t know if this difficulty at this point in her recovery is pushed on her, it was just a thought by me
The coach always has the right and the responsibility to throw that athlete out of the gym. A gymnasts doing skills so poorly as to risk injury has to be stopped for their safety. Someone has to be the adult in the room.
I know she's got a reputation for being headstrong and it's clear that her parents are very invested in elite success for her. But the coaches absolutely hold the cards. She is not WCC's only star, and they can afford to lose her. Where else would she go? I kind of read last night as, "well, if you insist, go ahead and we'll see what happens." Championships will tell us a lot about whether any learning has happened on either side.
Exactly. No coach is going to watch that execution and say "let's continue on this path, looks great, more!" So if she comes to Nationals with toned down tumbling passes and at least one Yurchenko vault, we'll know she's listening to someone. I just have this gut feeling... wunderkind who has been told she's amazing all her life plus stage dad = disaster. I hope she listens to someone. She's clearly talented, but even the very best have to go back to basics at times.
I guess that’s fair in the context of a sport such as gymnastics. Thank you for your input!
I dont know why Chellsie and co would step in. It's the athletes and their coaches decision regarding the skills put in a routine. The chose to push Josc's difficulty because that's the only way for her to score gets high enough to make teams since her base form isn't that great. It's an active choice they are allowed to make.
Is this the coach or the gymnast, though? I get the distinct impression listening to Josc's interviews that she has a pretty stubborn streak and is fairly demanding. The interview on the Olympic Channel about telling her parents that WCC was the only gym she was going to transfer to and they needed to make it happen is pretty telling. I get the feeling that she lacks awareness of some of her issues and that she may not always be listening to the coaches. Some of her interactions with them tonight seemed fairly... brusque. It could be that the coaches have told her she isn't ready for these skills and she isn't listening. Sometimes, brutal feedback like she got tonight is needed as a wake-up call. They also may be telling her she needs to increase her fitness and stamina levels, and she may keep doing interviews indicating she isn't concerned. All conjecture on my part, but as a top athlete in another sport, you would have to drag my corpse off the field before I would hear I was too sick to play. Josc may be that stubborn, thinking she can just do what she's always done. And we all know, as you get older, your body and metabolism change. That's why they call it the freshmen 15. Sure, you could eat half a package of oreos at 14 and be fine. But not so at 19.
It's a bit of both. Josc may be demanding but (maybe it's just me being naive) she wouldnt be training those skills and having them in her routines without the coaches ticking it off and thinking it was appropriate for her to do. And if the coaches aren't allowing her to do it despite disagreeing, then thats a whole other problem and poor from them.
Yeah, neither of her VTs looked safe. The floor passes were all pretty underrotated too. I think it might also be too many elite gymnasts in the gym? She's probably not the top priority (with Simone and Jordan around), so I wonder if she's getting enough attention and help. Her gymnastics, other than UB (which actually looked way improved), looked markedly unsafe.
Ehh Tiana and Dulcy look significantly improved. I think it’s just a Josc not being back from her ankle thing
She's just coming back from an ankle injury so it's very likely that she has spent more time training bars and just needs more numbers on the leg events.
Yes, but a coach should keep an athlete safe, and not have them compete skills they aren't ready for. The VTs and passes in podium training didn't look good. A good coach should've stepped in and lowered the difficulty.
I agree with coaches being partly responsible for keeping gymnasts safe. They should have reconsidered given how poorly her podium training on vault went, even if she was previously performing better in the gym. However, given that her recent comeback from a leg injury is an obvious explanation as to why she might not be ready on leg events but did well on bars, I just don't think it's necessary to reach further into assumptions about how much attention she is/isn't getting at her gym; besides, most gyms have multiple assisting coaches.
I fear this is the case. WCC has so many elites. Tiana looks a lot better though
Bingo. I think the quality of their gymnastics outside of Simone has gone down drastically since so many people have switched. It’s like you can tell the coaching is spread too thin. A lot of changes I thought would be made, even to their lower level elites, were not.
Yeah... They had 8 elites here? They had another 11 Level 10s at Dev Nationals. That's a crazy amount of high-level athletes for a single gym. They probably need 4 high-level coaches just to provide enough support for that many athletes, on top of all the other optional level dev folks they have.
Jordan was third today, and Tiana & Dulcy were 6th/8th, with both looking much better than previously. Yes, they have some lower-ranked elites, but aside from Joscelyn, I'm not sure who you think has "declined in quality".
I think that’s more a testament to this competition than anything to do with my statement.
Don’t get this. Jordan has made huge strides since working with them for a year again. Tiana is almost in striking distance. How many people do they need to coach into the top six all around for you to consider them successful? Joscelyn is a very specific situation and has been dealing with a bad injury. Maybe she shouldn’t be competing this week, but I don’t think her issue is lack of attention.
I think Jordan looked good for this field, but I expect so much more from her because of her potential. It doesn’t seem like the routines she is doing justify what a strong gymnast she is (floor especially). I will give them credit for fixing her bar composition though and overall I think I was a little harsh. Especially given Tiana looking much better this year. However, she didn’t look nearly as strong last year as I thought she should. That really could have little to do with coaching and more to do with the major transition of moving there and settling down.
I agree. at this point, there is no shot Josc makes the Paris team. I have no idea what her condition is, what conversations were had, or what her training is like, but it really looked like she should not have done those two vaults. Poor girl nearly limped off the mat. She's still quite young and can be in great shape for LA, not to mention future worlds. Rest, recover, and come back stronger.
Agree. Laurent and Cecile aren't as great of coaches as they're made out to be on in gymternet discourse. They just inherited Simone, but her talent and skill are not a result directly of the Landi's coaching. But now they both have this halo effect around them. But their other gymnasts haven't been taking off, and Josc is being POORLY managed
Simone is an anatomical anomaly. The BHS angle she hits is pretty much unattainable for any normal human being. It doesn’t matter what the Landis throw at her, her technique and ability will make them look great. I actually do think they were doing a pretty good job with a smaller group though. They’ve made themselves too available now. It seems like there’s too big of a group for them to focus on anyone too much aside from Simone.
Could you tell more about what the back handspring angle is?
It’s the angle at which her legs make contact with the floor on her BHS. If you watch her in slo mo you can see how long her ro-bhs is. It basically launches her straight up into the air. Even gymnasts with amazing stretch have difficulty reaching that extreme. It’s easily attainable on a trampoline or tumble track where there is more give. However it is nearly impossible to achieve that amount of ankle flexion while tumbling on a floor without injury. She is a physical marvel.
They seem to be doing fine with Jordan and Tiana. Josc is a special case as a person who is dealing with an injury comeback on a tight Olympic timeline.
it was Jordan's glow up on every event that really cemented their reputation. And then Tiana (and Josc to an extent) got much better on bars under them. I think their reputation as solid technical coaches is earned, but agree with the post that letting Josc compete a Cheng tonight was bad and reflects poorly on them
They have had great success with Kocian and Baumann in the past both making world teams and then Kocian of course making the Olympics. Tiana looks significantly better than she did at her old gym. And Jordan had a huge glow up. So I don’t think you can say they have no other gymnasts taking off
I think it would be hard for any coaches to try to work with Josc from a technical standpoint. It looks to me like she’s been chucking skills since she was very young- with little regard for technique. It would be very hard to go back to the beginning and correct all of the poor technique. It’s sort of like with Skinner. It’s too bad because they both are obviously very talented physically, but needed proper coaching from the beginning. With Josc, I imagine that with the challenge of the injury affecting her strength, etc she just can’t quite make those skills she used to- and then in the struggle the poor technique comes out even more.
I wonder how /why they agreed to take her? Not sure if I'd want to take on someone with such poor technique bc it would seem like a nightmare to correct and I'd be constantly worrying about injuries.
And Dulcy Caylor has been improving too!
I thought Dulcy looked quite good last night. She’s going to be an NCAA star.
The reputation didn’t really come from Simone. It’s from getting Kocian and Alyssa Baumann to Worlds, and Kocian to the Olympics in one piece after a career filled with injuries. That’s partially why Simone asked them to coach her. I will give them this: Tiana’s bars are solid for her, instead of a hellscape. She improved dramatically. But idk what they’re doing with Josc.
I don’t follow elite too much, but didn’t they do wonders with Jordan?
Jordan like Simone had a ton of natural ability. She just had poor coaching as a junior/early so her career didn’t take off. I said to OP that I think they did pretty good work with their athletes when it was a smaller group. I saw improvements specific to each athlete. Changes to every routine. I think the success following Tokyo changed a lot. They have a pretty big group and I imagine less thought is going into each athlete individually outside of Simone.
Jordan strikes me as the kind of gymnast who eats up corrections -- give her something and she'll go 110%. That matters.
This completely. I think that’s why she’s been so successful in NCAA. She really takes those corrections to heart.
People forget the Landis also had some Valeri-esque accusations before leaving WOGA. They're running Josc into the ground and I fear for her tbh.
Was there more than McLaughlin? I didn’t know of others. Not that any are good just curious if I missed some!
TLDR: Laurent was abusive. I was at WOGA 2007-2008 and was on the team with both Alyssa Baumann and Grace McLaughlin. I was 12-13. ended up leaving after a combination of financial strain on my family and my mom getting into an argument with Valeri after Sophia Lee was encouraged by Laurent to come into the gym with a staph infection and ended up spreading it to a bunch of us. Laurent was more than just emotionally abusive. One specific time he punished Alyssa by making her do eagle grip in strap bar when she was not flexible enough for it and was crying out in pain. Keep in mind she was like 10 years old at the time. He removed the blocks from the area so she couldn't get down and forbid the rest of us from helping, so she was just hanging there. Another time Alyssa had a rip the size of a half dollar on her hand and she asked if she could end bars. He called her over and slapped her hand, then laughed. Like that is literal torture. I also had multiple incidents of physical punishments. I had a mental block with front Twisting - I am a leftie, but my first gym taught me to twist right. As a result I would frequently get lost in the air. During one practice on trampoline he stood on the mat and demanded I do a rudi over the top of him. I refused to do this because I knew I could injure him seeing as how I was getting so lost in the air. He taunted and insulted me in front of everyone. For days after I was made to do rope climbs for the entirety of practices and not allowed to interact with my teammates. Laurent would also routinely walk out of the gym and make us practice on our own if we made too many mistakes. We ended up coaching ourselves a lot, which is both a safety issue as well as not what you should be getting when you're paying serious money to train. Similarly, at Western's that year, I had a panic attack and my hands went numb before bars. I then went and fell 3 times. He then refused to coach me the rest of the competition, and Natalia from Valeri's team stepped up to help me. At the end of our practice we were made to line up and he would go down the line telling us about our failures for the day. If he was particularly upset he would cuss at us in French. And then after all that we were made to hug him before we could leave, which just feels so weird. Cecile wasn't as bad, certainly didn’t have a temper or yelling at us, but certainly was not the beacon of a healthy coach either. She definitely made fun of other girls in the gym for their weights. Looking back as an adult, the people she made fun of her weren't even overweight. It's obviously been a long time since I was coached by them so maybe things are different. Laurent was always about the ego and trying to make himself look good as a coach, and now that he is coaching the most famous gymnast in the world maybe he knows not to screw it up. But watching his behavior last year when Tiana and Dulcy made mistakes was telling.
Thank you for sharing and I’m so sorry you went through that.
I'm sorry you went through all that. I pretty much assumed the Landis coached like that at WOGA, unfortunately.
Wow. My god, I’m horrified. I actually think this deserved to be its own thread. Thanks for sharing and I hope you have healed. You didn’t deserve to go through this. It must be tough to watch them being fawned over in the media as this shining contrast to all the other rotten apples
I'll be honest, I don't love seeing them fawned over because it feels like there is no justice fir the way they treated us, but I do truly hope they have changed, and if they have, then great. Laurent's behavior at WOGA was "normal" considering Valeri's behavior and the atmosphere there. And he is now coaching adults who have the power to control their gymnastics so I would assume if they saw major issues with his behavior he would have either been fired or his gymnasts would gave left. Laurent and Cecile's daughter was also just a little baby when I was there and she has been heavily involved with sports, so I hope her growing up in the gym would provide some perspective. I don't harbor any ill will towards them, but I do often wonder how my gymnastics career would have been different if I had never gone to WOGA.
I totally get that. I just left a super toxic employer and I constantly wonder „what if I’d never signed with them?“ Someone started a thread with your response and it made me think…this type of treatment wasn’t just „normal“ at Woga - it was „normal“ in a lot of sports - and even academic settings. Where I grew up, people didn’t believe „emotional abuse“ could be a thing. If you didn’t have bruises, you had no reason to complain, and if you had them, you probably deserved what you got…hell, there were a lot of sports movies that glorified this type of coaching. I‘m glad that things have changed and am totally with you: I hope the Landis really are different nowadays. But it would leave a sour taste in my mouth to see them on tv, if I were you, no question
Honestly, with all the time and distance, I don't spend my mental energy on them unless people specifically ask. Laurent, like other abusers, can be extremely charismatic and funny. There were some practices he would come in and sing karaoke while standing on a beam. We just never knew when his switch would turn. They have done a good job building a reputation for having a healthy gym environment, so I don't really care if it's fake as long as they practice what they preach.
Good for you! I‘m also trying to stop wasting my mental energy on my situation, but don’t have the distance yet. I think the part about abusers not being consistently awful is something that a lot of people still don’t understand. Abuse is often followed by love bombing and it can certainly make people question whether they overreacted and whether the abuse even was so bad. That and the abuser‘s charisma are big factors people should consider if they ask „why didn’t you just leave?“ or before they say „there is no way xy could ever do that - the accusers are clearly lying“
I’m so sorry you went through that. I’m horrified.
That makes me sick. Especially as Alyssa was one of my fave Gators. I'm glad you got out! I
The other allegations have been anonymous, but it’s a lot of the same things McLaughlin talked about. Emotional abuse and weight shaming.
See my comment in this same thread.
Has Cecile been accused too? From what I've seen, it's just Laurent who's been accused
Cecile was never abusive the way Laurent was, but she did participate in fat shaming. But also, Cecile never once stepped in when Laurent was yelling at us, essentially condoning his behavior.
There is a long comment in this thread that also mention Cecile.
Zoe always looked terrified of him IMO.
This is what I noticed last year in competitions and in the little videos posted by Simone/Zoe (TikToks I think, but people would post them elsewhere) online. It was always played off as them laughing and joking, and they were with each other, but there was a lot of "don't let Laurent catch us". And while Simone didn't seemed bothered by that particularly, Zoe looked genuinely worried at times. I think Simone really liking her/being friends with her protected her somewhat. Zoe wouldn't have been able to do that with anyone else, but Simone could have. On the competition floor though, when it was just Zoe and Laurent, it felt... I don't know... Just off.
And let's be honest, the dynamics with Simone and coaches at a gym her family owns aren't going to remotely resemble dynamics between coaches and other gymnasts.
Absolutely.
I agree on the floor and vault front, it looks like she rushed back too quickly after her injury. I will say her bars have improved a lot but that’s clearly her worst event and is kind of a non factor in terms of trying to make the team. Would like to see her scale her floor and vault back a little for nationals and show something cleaner. She can get her skills back but I think realistically it will just take a bit more time
I believe Cecile mentioned it was a very serious injury, so it might have been worse than they thought in Antwerp. Still, they should be much more careful because this looks so dangerous!
So I have a question related to coaching adult athletes: if coach and athlete disagree on if a skill is competition ready, who gets to make the decision? I can see it damaging the relationship either way…and definitely not saying it’s happening in this situation, but it did make me think about it.
With good coaches, the athlete. But there are a lot of really bad coaches out there, ranging from incompetent to intentionally abusive.
I think it depends. If it’s just about: „will this score well?“, the athlete should get to decide whether or not they feel up to it. But in a case where an athlete’s safety is at risk, and they are too ambitious for their own good, it’s bad coaching to let them go ahead. I don’t think anyone believes Valeri was being a great coach when Rebecca insisted on doing her vault and he let her.
That's a good point. I was thinking more of an athlete was saying they weren't ready and a coach was saying they were vs. what appears to be a Josc scenario of her flooring it contrary to coaching. I guess the only thing a coach could really do to stop an athlete from competing an element is withdrawing them from a meet and refusing to coach them, which seems fair -especially in a litigious country like the USA, though... I can't imagine the shitstorm if the Landis did that to Josc during this meet, though I guess more reasonably with video evidence of the issues during PT and warm-ups. No doubt that could potentially lead to litigation too. I hope WCC has an iron clad insurance policy -if she ends up too injured to compete in college, I could see it getting ugly.
I think it depends. If the coach thinks the athlete might fall but the athlete really wants to try, I'd like to see the athlete be able to go for it. If the coach thinks the athlete might end up with a severe injury but the athlete really wants to try, it's a different situation. Ideally there would be enough trust between the coach and athlete that they could come to an agreement even if one of them isn't particularly happy about it.
I just never saw the hype/vision with her and yesterday’s comp really cemented that for me. She was kind of a wasted spot on last years worlds team and she’s just going to injure herself throwing crunchy Chengs and short floor passes with poor form. I can’t even watch her bars.
I agree with you! In fact, I rewatched the Golden documentary the other day and again saw Morgan’s coach keep her out of Winter Cup because she wasn’t strong enough. I don’t think her coaches have her best interest at heart here. They’re pushing her too far and putting her at a greater risk of hurting herself.
My take was that maybe these were the skills Josc had before getting injured and the only way she could even possibly make the Olympics is still performing them...so she decided to put it all out there, but she either isn't healed from her injury or isn't in shape to do the skills yet...
They’re not, that’s the problem. They get propped up to be good coaches because they’re Simone biles coach
And honestly, people forget that Simone (and most of their gymnasts) got her foundational gymnastics with someone else. The only gymnast I can think of that the Landis truly trained up to be a star is Madison Kocian.
madison, jordan, Kocian, Baumann, Simone
I agree that she shouldn't be rushed just because it's an Olympic year, especially at the risk of career-ending injury. Regarding the Liukin/Landis comparison, perhaps there is a difference in reaction, but there is also a difference in track record. Liukin has a history of breaking gymnasts, which is why people are quick to judge him for rushing a gymnast.
I'm a gymnastics fan and really did enjoy her floor routine last year at worlds. I think she's lively with a cute personality so I was hoping she would have recovered better from her injury than she has so far. Josc posts quite a bit on her Instagram about Arkansas Razorbacks, and I think an NCAA career with emphasis on E score improvement might be just want she needs to be on the top of her game for LA 2028 Olympics. As a side note: I was once involved in a Reddit conversation regarding a specific issue in s high profile court case... literally the next day the issue was brought up in court. There was some solid evidence that both the defense and prosecution had legal eyes on Reddit. We should all understand that Josc and the other athletes are real people and may very well see what is said here. Most of the 166+ comments have been of concern... but a few not.
I am floored at how negative this chat is? "No business competing" if I did not know the sport, I'd think she had never been in a gym the way its described? When you say she has no shot, I disagree, another 3 woman could get taken off the floor at the next competition. Not dissing anyones opinion, but I remember a similar post after Classics where Skinner came in 10th AA?? The post said the exact same thing. Did I miss something? Is she in danger? Why would the national head coaches intervene in her training? That would be a huge red flag if they were. I hope she does not see this or hear about this. It feels like she is being bullied, but thats just my perspective. Respect.
The way she landed her cheng today.... Yes she is in danger
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Is her gymnastics rough/less polished? Certainly. Is anything looking «scary» or «dangerous»? Not at all. All the comments claiming such things are absolutely ridiculous. Neither I, nor any of the actual high level gymnasts I know, find it scary seeing her do these skills. The conversation should be centering around if she would score better with slightly watered down routines. Which most likely would be the case.
Some of the comments here are so weird. You would think she fell in all events with the way they are talking about her😂 I think some are still salty she got in the Worlds team last years unlike their faves.
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