Gymnastics covers a family of related sports built around strength, flexibility and control of the body, judged on how well an athlete performs set movements rather than on a race or a score against an opponent directly. Artistic gymnastics, seen at the Olympics on apparatus like the vault, bars and beam, is the best known form, alongside rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, and aerobic and acrobatic disciplines, each with its own scoring detail but a shared judging philosophy.
Objective
A gymnast performs a routine on a given apparatus, or on the floor, aiming to combine difficult skills with clean, controlled execution. Judges assess both how hard the routine is and how well it was performed, and the gymnast or team with the highest combined score wins.
Rules and regulations
- Routines are scored across two main components: a difficulty score, based on the skills attempted and how they are linked together, and an execution score, which starts high and has deductions taken off for wobbles, bent knees, poor landings, falls or steps out of bounds.
- The final score for a routine adds these together, so a gymnast can choose a harder routine performed with more mistakes, or a simpler one performed cleanly, and either can score well depending on the balance struck.
- The Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique, known as the FIG, sets the technical rules for the sport worldwide and issues a new Code of Points every Olympic cycle.
- The current code, covering 2025 to 2028, adjusted difficulty values and execution criteria across several apparatus, part of a regular process of keeping scoring in step with how the sport is evolving and rewarding cleaner, more controlled gymnastics.
Equipment and playing area
- Each apparatus has its own specifications set by the FIG: the vaulting table, the asymmetric and parallel bars, the balance beam, four metres long and just ten centimetres wide, and the sprung floor area used for floor exercise and rhythmic routines.
- Landing mats are required at a set thickness to cushion dismounts, and apparatus dimensions are checked before major competitions to make sure they meet FIG standards.
- The FIG governs the sport internationally and organises World Championships in each discipline.
- In India, the Gymnastics Federation of India is the recognised national body, responsible for developing the sport and selecting gymnasts for international competition.
Scoring
- Individual routines are scored by a panel of judges, with difficulty and execution scores added together to produce a final mark for that routine.
- In team and all-round competitions, scores from multiple apparatus are combined to produce an overall total, and the gymnast or team with the highest combined score is declared the winner.
