Simone Biles nailed her beam routine in Tuesday’s final, earning an execution score more than three-tenths higher than she had in the qualifying round, when she stumbled backward on her dismount. But her total score, 14.0, was slightly lower. In gymnastics, each skill is assigned a letter value that represents its difficulty. Each successive letter is worth an extra tenth of a point: An A skill is worth 0.1, a B skill is worth 0.2, and so on. But because the total difficulty score for a routine is based both on the individual skills and on bonuses for linking multiple skills, changing one move can have a snowball effect.

Source: New York Times August 03, 2021 10:41 UTC