Center Focus

The Gymnastics Incident

  1. In the 2000 summer Olympics there was a major set-up error with the gymnastics equipment. The vault was placed at the wrong height causing many gymnasts to score poorly due to falling on landing or inability to complete twists in air properly. The poor scores caused many gymnasts to have problems in other events as well because of their loss of confidence or frustration. Click here to read an article about this incident.
  2. Ask your students to consider all aspects of this dilemma and write about how they would solve the problem if they were the one in charge.
  3. The problem was dealt with by fixing the equipment and letting all those affected redo the event. Only 6 chose to repeat the vaulting exercise. Have your students consider this solution and decide upon its fairness.
  4. This would be a great topic for a class discussion after the center has been completed.