How Gymnastics Skills Get Named

Gymnastics’ habit of naming skills after gymnasts — a Yurchenko, a Tkachev, a Biles — isn’t just tradition; it follows a formal process set out in both Codes of Points.

The rules for a name

The 2025–2028 WAG and MAG Codes of Points set the same core conditions. For a new element or vault to be named after a gymnast, it must be:

1. Performed internationally for the first time at an official FIG Group 1, 2 or 3 competition — the FIG’s main categories of international event, with or without an FIG technical delegate present.
2. Valued at C or higher, and performed for value. The men’s Code adds that it must be performed without a fall.
3. Confirmed by the Technical Committee — the difficulty value and the name are only confirmed after the FIG’s Women’s or Men’s Technical Committee analyses the performance.

How the process works

Before the competition, the coach submits the new skill for evaluation, by the deadline in the competition’s work plan, with technical drawings and a mandatory video. The skill gets a provisional value for that competition only.

After the competition, the gymnast’s national federation must send the FIG Technical Committee President video of the performance, and the competition’s technical delegate submits the official video, the coach’s drawing and the details of the provisional evaluation.

Once confirmed, the skill appears in a Code of Points update or newsletter — but only after it has been performed successfully, submitted and confirmed. Naming and difficulty rating happen together, as part of the same process.

Shared names

If more than one gymnast performs the same new skill at the same competition, the Codes say it is named after all of them. Disputes in fan discussion usually arise elsewhere — when a skill was performed earlier at a competition that didn’t qualify, or when a similar skill differs in a detail that makes it a separate element.

Some names on this site

• Vault: the Yurchenko, the Produnova, the Dragulescu, the Korbut and the Biles.
• Bars: the Tkachev, the Jaeger, the Pak salto, the Shaposhnikova, the Kovacs, the Cassina and the Tweddle.
• Other apparatus: the Magyar on pommel horse and the Moors on floor.

Some famous gymnasts have no named skill at all: Kohei Uchimura retired without one, and Max Whitlock has said getting a skill into the Code is one of his goals — see what is a Whitlock skill?. And a name doesn’t guarantee permanence: the Korbut flip on bars is no longer in the Code.