Gymnastics risk and reward and a Secret Service visit

There's a lot going on in the auditorium in the sport of gymnastics, well six things in fact in men's competition: floor, vault, rings, pommel horse, parallel bars, and horizontal bar. Women participate in four: floor, vault, uneven bars, and beam.

The Bercy Arena, a 14,000-seat venue, is playing host to gymnastics at Paris 2024. Built in 1984, this venue hosts not only high-level sports events such as the Rolex Paris Masters in tennis, but also concerts.

And so on Saturday morning, the men's competition got underway. Ireland's Rhys McCleneghan is a double world champion and a three-time European gold medallist on the pommel horse and will aim to reach the final of his discipline later today; he's due in action at 8.42pm. You can watch it live on RTÉ2 and the RTÉ Player.

The pommel is McClenaghan's only event, others participate in other apparatuses. Max Whitlock of Great Britain, a leading contender on the pommel, is tackling four disciplines.

From the vantage point of the commentary box, one's attention shifts from one apparatus to another, though there are times when only one or two gymnasts are competing.

Colm Murray, who is part of RTÉ's commentary team alongside Gerry Kelly, was a former international gymnast and is now a coach, working out of the Sport Ireland campus. He also has judged internationally, so one sought his expertise on how scores are allocated in gymnastics.

"There are two values, there is a difficulty score and an execution score," he began.

"We have to marry the two of them - and that's what gives us our final score".

Colm promised he would keep it simple. And in fairness, he did.

He continues: "The execution starts at 10. A perfect 10, still in theory, exists, that's if you execute your routine perfectly.