How Apparatus Difficulty Scores Affect All Around Results in Men's Artistic Gymnastics

On a sample of 49all-around male gymnasts at the 2009 European Championships the implications of the difficulty scores were tested in relation to the success in all-around competition. After the regression, cluster and ANOVA analysis, three groups of quality all-around gymnasts were determined, while only one group had a chance to win an all-around medal; difficulty scores between all six apparatus were not equal; the highest prediction of the all-around score was the parallel bars difficulty score.