LINK: List of Every Perfect 10 Ever Scored
LINK: List of Gymnasts Who Scored the Most Career Perfect Tens (Not Counting Olomouc)
LINK: List of Gymnasts Who Scored the Most Career Perfect Tens (Counting Olomouc)
LINK: List of Gymnasts Who Accounted For the Most Perfect Tens in a Single Competition
If you know anything about gymnastics then you areguaranteed to be familiar with the Perfect 10. The 10 point scoring system iswithout question the most iconic part of sport and propelled gymnastics intoone of the most popular sports at the Summer Olympics. In this article I willprovide a statistical breakdown on all the Perfect 10s and analyze thefrequency at which they were given out.
But before I get into the nitty-gritty, there are a fewthings I want to clear up. The image above is a key for terms that I will beusing throughout the article. Another term I want to address is “Olomouc.” Thegymnastics component of the 1984 Alternate Games (Alternate Olympics) were heldin the Czechoslovakian city of Olomouc. I will refer to this competition as“Olomouc” throughout the article. I also use the word “event” interchangeablyin the graphics/images to mean either “competition” or “apparatus.” Lastly, atthe top of this article are links to four different lists that provide a fulldata set on every Perfect 10 that was ever scored.
And for those wondering: The total number of Perfect 10sscored is 116 and that number rises to 150 when Olomouc is included in thedata.
Despite being one of the most famous aspects of gymnastics,the Perfect 10 was only given out during a very small window in the overallhistory of the sport. The era in which judges awarded it lasted just 17 yearsand only 12 major competitions. The era where it was a common occurrence waseven shorter lasting only seven years from 1983-1989.
The most obvious takeaway from its frequency is how widelyit varied in usage among different competitions. And this first graph is themost controversial aspect of Olomouc. It is notorious for its absurdly highusage of the Perfect 10. This is a frequent argument made by those who doubtthe legitimacy of Olga Mostepanova’s legendary performance at Olomouc in whichshe scored twelve Perfect 10s (shattering the Olympic record of seven) andscored a Perfect 40 (a Perfect 10 on all four events) in the AA. The data showscriticism of Olomouc for awarding too many Perfect 10s is absolutely valid.
As the Perfect 10s are not evenly distributed among the various competitions, the same can be said for the 16 different rotations of a single gymnastics competition. In modern gymnastics the team stages of a competition feature a team qualification and a team finals. Prior to 1997 major gymnastics competitions had a compulsories stage followed by an optionals stage for team scores. The optionals stage is similar to what gymnasts did in Rio where each gymnast could creates their own routine. The compulsories were different in that every gymnast had to perform the exact same routine. Optionals were a measure of who could pull off the most difficult routine. Compulsories were a demonstration of technical skill measuring who could perform the same routine better than their competitors.
With every gymnast doing the same routine in compulsories, trivialmistakes that would otherwise have been forgiven by the judges were penalizedharshly to distinguish the gymnasts. Perfection was more difficult to achievein compulsories when the standards on minor details were so high. But there wasanother factor as well, trend-scoring.
In gymnastics scoring the scores naturally rise as agymnastics stage progresses. If a gymnast earns a high score, it becomes easierfor the next gymnast to achieve the same or higher score. To put it simply, themore Perfect 10s that are scored, the easier it becomes for the gymnasts tokeep scoring Perfect 10s. Because compulsories always came before optionals,the compulsories stage was inevitably going to have lower scoring thanoptionals. These two factors put together gave compulsories a reputation forharsh scoring and Perfect 10s rarely being handed out. And the data proves thiswith just 13% of all Perfect 10s coming from the TC stage.
The AA and EF stages also have far fewer Perfect 10s thanthe team optionals stage, but this is not due to a Perfect 10 being moreinherently difficult in those two stages. In the team stages every gymnast inthe completion (which often exceeded 100+ competitors) participated. In the AAonly 36 gymnasts competed and in the EF the number of routines performed dropsto 32. As the number of routines the judges scored decreases, so does thenumber of Perfect 10s being given out.
The most difficult apparatus to score a Perfect 10 on wasthe beam. The uneven bars would be the apparatus where Perfect 10s were themost common. Whenever I do a data crunch that requires a break down eachapparatus, the uneven bars often stand out as the most competitive apparatus.This data crunch is consistent with other (yet to be published) data cruncheswhere the uneven bars always seem to distinguish themselves from the otherthree apparatuses.
I blame East Germany for this. East Germany was a rathersmall country that found Olympic success that only large countries such as theUnited States and the Soviet Union could match. In their bid to prove theirsuperiority over West Germany via athletic success, the East Germans not onlyinvoked state-sponsored doping, but careful planning and efficient allocationof athletic resources. The East Germans knew they would lose every time if theytried to challenge the Romanians and Soviets on all four events. Instead they theireggs in one basket and went all-in on the bars. The result was an uneven barsdynasty: Janz, Zuchold, Hellman, Zinke, Gnauck, Kraker, Fahnrich, Kersten, andThummler. It didn’t matter if the uneven bars weren’t your best apparatus, ifyou were an East German gymnasts, being a great on bars was the goal.
China adopted a similar tactic. Ever since their arrival onthe international stage in 1979 they have found success in uneven bars. Thatsuccess has continued to this day. And the same can be said for post-SovietRussia. They have not only produced two of the greatest bars workers of the2000s in Khorkina and Mustafina, but have found smaller degrees of success in KseniaSemyonova, Daria Spiridonova, Viktoria Komova, and Elena Eremina.
For whatever reason, a number of programs believe the unevenbars offers the easiest path to success and once they have built a legacy onthat apparatus, they have been able to maintain that level of success. Allwhile the Soviets and Romanians weren’tgoing to let the Chinese and East Germans go unchallenged and they producedsome strong bars workers as well. The uneven bars always seems to be the apparatuswhere gymnastics programs focus a lot of their resources on and that makes it avery competitive apparatus and thus the increase in Perfect 10s.
The difficulty of getting a Perfect 10 on beam is evident inthe above graphic. Beam had the lowest amount of Perfect 10s in all four stagesof competition. The three gymnasts who recorded a Perfect 10 on TC-BB were NadiaComaneci the first gymnast to score a Perfect 10, Daniela Silivas the gymnastwho holds the record for the most Perfect 10s, and Olga Mostepanova. It was oneof the toughest things to do in gymnastics, and only the most prolific Perfect10 earners managed to do it. Mostepanova deserves considerable praise for thisgiven that she did it at the 1985 World Championships, a competition where shewas coming off a major injury and was handicapped by a growth spurt. It is partof the reason that I will contend that she was still a great gymnast in 1985.She was competing at a high level and was a viable contender for the AA goldbefore Soviet officials forcibly removed her from the competition.
Unfortunately the data doesn’t give a definitive answer onwhich rotation was the hardest to score a Perfect 10 on. You could argue it wasEF-VT given that no one ever earned a Perfect 10 on that rotation. It isperhaps the textbook example of how significant score trending impacts agymnastics competition. EF-VT is always the first rotation of the day due tothe EF stage always using the VT, UB, BB, and FX Olympic order whereas the TC,TO, and AA stages randomly assign gymnasts to a particular apparatus. Out ofthe 16 rotations, EF-VT is the only one where a gymnast is guaranteed toperform on that apparatus to open a stage.
And while no one ever scored a Perfect 10 on EF-VT, it alsohad far fewer opportunities for a gymnast to do it. It becomes a mathematicaldilemma to determine if TC-BB and AA-BB which had a combined five Perfect 10sawarded on well over 1000 attempts was harder to accomplish than EF-VT whichhad no Perfect 10s in the same time frame on less than 100 attempts. WouldEF-VT have had five Perfect 10s if we had 900 more attempts on that apparatus?We will never know.
The above graphic is a comparison between the Olomouc andthe non-Olomouc competitions (World Championships and Olympics). There is asignificant deviation in the allocation of Perfect 10s at Olomouc. This isimportant because the allocation of Perfect 10s directly impacts how easy orhard it is to complete a Perfect 40 as well as beating the record for mostPerfect 10s in a single competition. Scoring a Perfect 40 and breaking therecord for most Perfect 10s in a single competition are two completelydifferent accomplishments.
Trend-scoring dictates that the more Perfect 10s that arehanded out in a particular stage of a competition, the easier it is to keepscoring Perfect 10s in that same stage. The more Perfect 10s that are scored inthe AA by other gymnasts, the easier it becomes for Mostepanova herself toachieve a Perfect 10 in the AA. But the trade off is the more of Olomouc’s 34Perfect 10s that are allocated to the AA (which is what ended up happening),the less that are allocated to the team stages. The less Perfect 10s that areawarded in the team stages, the harder it is to earn a Perfect 10 in those twostages.
In other words, the abnormally high number of Perfect 10s atOlomouc (34) can be used to diminish the legitimacy of Mostepanova’s Perfect40. Butthe less legitimateMostepanova’s Perfect 40 becomes, the more legitimate her eight remainingPerfect 10s become. Either way Mostepanova accomplished something great atOlomouc. While it can be argued the Perfect 40 wouldn’t have happened in a competitionwhere the number of Perfect 10s was closer to the typical mid-1980scompetition, the allocation of Perfect 10s at Olomouc suggest Mostepanova’sscores outside the AA stage were legitimate and she could have broken theOlympic record of seven Perfect 10s had she participated in the 1984 Olympics.
To be clear, the argument being made here is not that Mostepanova didn’t have an advantage at Olomouc, only that those who want to delegitimize the results of the 1984 Alternate Games by invoking the “there were too many Perfect 10s awarded by the judges at Olomouc” argument can’t apply it to both Mostepanova’s Perfect 40 and her 12 Perfect 10s.
The above graphic is a simple list of who scored the mostPerfect 10s in a single competition.
When it comes to the question of which country scored themost Perfect 10s, the answer is Romania. Romania scored only five Perfect 10sat the 1984 Olympics. Even if you throw that competition out, Romania still hadthe most Perfect 10s. It is one of the few (if only) examples of a major statisticwhere the Soviet program was outperformed in women’s gymnastics. It is atestament to the brilliance of gymnasts such as Nadia, Szabo, Silivas, andDobre who are responsible to the bulk of those Perfect 10s.
The only way the Soviet Union beats Romania is to includeOlomouc.
A simple list of gymnasts with Perfect 10s in multiplecompetitions
Gymnastics fans love tallying up Gym-Slams for NCAA. Butwhat about elite? I decided to solve that question. One thing to note is thathad Silivas earned one more Perfect 10 on vault, she could have had a doubleGym-Slam.
Olga Mostepanova again shows her brilliance by scoringPerfect 10s across three different events even after Olomouc has been excludedfrom the data. And this is a gymnast who was allowed full participation in justone competition (1983 Worlds) in her career. She came as close to a gym slam inone and a half competitions as her teammate (and unquestioned gymnastics great)Elena Shushunova did in three full competitions.
Olomouc was not so much a fluke victory for Mostepanova, buta testament that she was so good in regular competition, that when she wasentered into an irregular competition, she shattered the existing standards. Itis another indicator that Mostepanova was going to be a major force had shebeen allowed to compete in Los Angeles.
Another notable gymnast is Olesia Dudnik who recordedPerfect 10s on three different events despite participating in just a singlecompetition (1989 World Championships).
The Perfect 10 was dominated by a very small number ofgymnasts. In both the Olomouc and the non-Olomouc data, the four bestperforming gymnasts accounted for around 40% of all Perfect 10s. When youexpand the data to include the ten best performing gymnasts, both data poolsremain consistent as those ten gymnasts accounted for two-thirds of all Perfect10s scored.
