I never understood this damn argument. Gymnastics is nothing like skiing. Maybe in the "thrill" sense and the fact that your boosting yourself into the air and flipping or spinning or whatever. These two sports are so damn different though. Heres my experience:
Gymnastics: No such thing as off axis anything. Never, never. That was extremely frowned upon. If you accidentally went off axis you were in big trouble. Essentially going off axis would result in a huge deduction and angry, angry coaches.
At high levels you have "halves" fulls" "double fulls" triple fulls" etc.
"half in, half out" and "full in, full out" are dubs along with traditional dub fronts and backs. Occasionally you would see a side summy(lincoln) but those were often side passes on floor or beam.
Basically, everything is a flip, where as skiing has different axis's which are more prevalent in my opinion.
In gymnastics you tumble- which involves way more than just flips.
In gymnastics you dance on floor and on a beam. Don't even try to compare beam to rails, i've heard the argument before. just don't.
Bars and vault, I can't even see a relevant comparison.
When I was in level 7, 8, and 9 it was 6 hours a day 5 days a week- 2 hours of hard conditioning/warm ups and 1 hour on each respective event(vault, bars, beam, foor). You were held to a strict diet at all times. Competition season was from November to June and in the summer you were training new skills to compete at the next level. Each year we spent 5-6 weeks at woodward PA as coaches and also training.
Coaching/judging: if you think the judging of skiing is strict, lol. when I was in gymnastics we had a scale out of 10.0. Now they do a 2 score system which I won't get into.
Anyways, some common deductions:
Unpointed toe- .1 to .2
Not high enough releve(standing on your toes)- .1 - .2
Each step from landing- .1 to .3 PER STEP
slight wobble on beam - .1 to .2
fall .8 to 1.0
bent arms or legs .3 to .5
butt out/arched back .3 to .5
bra strap showing: 1.0(the same as a fall)
EVERY PERSON WAS THERE TO WIN- NO ONE PAYS $15,000 A YEAR TO COMPETE FOR "FUN."
After a meet if you didn't place well enough, you were coming in to the gym 6 or 7 days a week until you picked up your "slack." If you got hurt and weren't likely to make a "timely" recovery your ass was out of there.
So yeah, tell me how gymnastics is like skiing?