AO1 Gymnastics based sport

Vault



The vault is a gymnastics event done by men and women. The vault is very dangerous therefor the participants in competitions have had years of practice to do the different acrobatics in the air.

EQUIPMENT

For many years piece of equipment that was used to vault was a horse vault. It is called a horse vault as it looks like the body and the legs of a horse. But this caused many injuries that sometimes even led to death. Julissa Gomez was one of few that died because of the horse vault shape. In 2000 there was a new piece of equipment that was brought in instead of the horse vault. This new invention was a lot safer and is slightly more higher up, for men it is 4ft 5 but for women it is 4ft 3. There is also a spring board which allows the gymnast to jump high so they can perform a flip.

RULES

Gymnasts are given a number on a screen of which they have to reach, they then sprint and then jump on the springboard. Whilst in flight they perform a rotation or a kind of flip over the table/vault. They then land on a landing mat and are judged on how well they landed and their execution. If the Gymnast does not get the score given then they are penalised. If a gymnast feels they started poorly or bad they have 30 seconds to get back to the start but they are not allowed to do this if they have already touched the spring board.

GYMNASTS

·Cheng Fei (China): 2005, 2006 & 2007 World Champion

·         Leszek Blanik

·         Alicia Sacramone