Get over the OOB - that was worth 0.2 in deductions total, no worse than the steps and unsteady landings we saw from the Chinese girls in their routines. This is shown in the fact that Shawn and Nastia scored the same as the hit routines for the two lead-off Chinese competitors. Cheng watered down her passes losing A score value, and took steps on her landings in an otherwise beautiful and emotionally performed routine. No-one is criticizing the quality of those routines.

In fact, more costly mistakes were Chellsie not getting her jam to handstand on bars, and Shawn downgrading her rudi to a barani on floor- both of which resulted in deductions to their A score. Not that either girl deserves to be crucified for those mistakes either - on beam we saw the Chinese girls fail to connect elements, similarly losing A score value. The final Chinese girl on vault watered down her planned vault to a double-twisting yurchenko rather than her planned 2.5, a large loss in A score. Neither team was perfect - the difference apart from the falls, obviously, was really the bars rotation, where, even without their falls on beam and floor, the U.S had to absorb a 1.6 deficit in difficulty score.

With the difficulty of the code these days, perfect routines are all but impossible. Stuck landings have almost disappeared as exhausted girls dismount after marathon routines three times the length with double the skills of routines in former years. Yes, the falls were a bad mistake. But to characterize the performances of the rest of the team as flawed is unfair given the way gymnastics is performed and scored in this code. Shawn and Nastia were both brilliant during the night and to see them being criticized for minor errors as though stepping out of bounds were somehow horrific is all kinds of wrong. Once again I blame NBC for their ignorant, hysterical and drama-baiting coverage.