Vault amplitude is one of those things that I feel like a lot of gym fans know about but havenāt looked at the rules for. (It doesnāt help that broadcast angles are often useless for this.) Hereās a quick primer.
There is no hard-and-fast height everyone has to reach in flight. For one thing, you canāt really expect judges to be able to consistently gauge X centimeters from every judging position on every athlete. Instead, the amplitude is judged by two positions:
When the gymnast is vertical on the table, look at the level of the knees.
When the gymnast is at the apex of flight (upright in the air) look at the level of the hip bone, which is the center of gravity/center of rotation.
If the level of the hips is higher than #1, there are no amplitude deductions. As you can see in the picture above, this would likely get a small deduction for amplitude.
This means that amplitude is tied directly to a gymnastās height. If youāre 4ā8ā, you are not expected to reach the same height as someone who is 5ā2ā.
Hereās some more examples from 2019 Worlds qualifying:
The top two (Steingruber and Yeo) are handspring vaults. The rest (Martins, Fidelis, Kovacs) are Yurchenkos.
Simoneās at the top is a Cheng, and her amplitude may not look super impressive there. Video of her second vault (an Amanar) is unfortunately not available from the side, so Iāll have to give you this slightly awkward overlay of the end view.
She gets so much amplitude here that her knees are nearly above the minimum level. But itās important to remember that there isnāt a bonus for this. This gets zero deductions for amplitude, just like someone whoās getting less height but is still above the standard for no deductions.
