Trampoline at 2024 Paris Olympics: How it works, Team USA stars, what else to know

Here's what you need to know about trampoline at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

When did trampoline become an Olympic sport?

Though trampoline as an activity has been around since the 1930s, and the first world championships was held in 1964, it was only added to the Olympic program at the Sydney Games in 2000.

How does Olympic trampoline work?

Trampoline is an individual sport at the Olympics, with 16 athletes competing in both the men’s and women’s competitions.

Gymnasts do two routines in the qualifying round, each consisting of 10 skills – flips, twists and leaps. They do their voluntary routine twice and it is, as the name suggests, up to an athlete to determine, and all 10 skills are counted for the difficulty score. (The same skills cannot count for difficulty in both routines.)

There is also an execution score, with athletes starting at 20.0 and deductions taken for errors and flaws in form. The highest and lowest scores from the five execution judges are dropped, and the remaining three are added together for the final execution score.

The horizontal displacement score reflects how close the gymnast stays to the middle of the trampoline bed, with deductions taken anytime they don’t land in the center.

Lastly, there is “time of flight,” reflecting how much time the gymnast spent in the air.

The four scores – difficulty, execution, horizontal displacement and time of flight – are then added together to get the final score of a routine.

The top eight athletes after the qualifying round advance to the final, where they do one voluntary routine. At the Olympics, expect to see scores in the mid to upper 50s in the finals.

Who are the top Team USA athletes in trampoline?

Jessica Stevens is the best hope the United States has for a medal at the Paris Olympics. She won the bronze medal at last year’s world championships, making her the first American man or woman to reach the podium in trampoline at a worlds (or Olympics) since 1974.

What's the international landscape in Olympic trampoline?

China has dominated men’s trampoline of late, winning gold at 11 of the last 12 world championships. But that hasn’t always translated at the Olympics, with a gymnast from Belarus claiming gold ahead of a Chinese gymnast at the last two Games.

On the women’s side, Britain’s Bryony Page has won two of the last three world titles and has medals from both Tokyo (bronze) and Rio (silver).

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trampoline at 2024 Paris Olympics: How it works, what to know