Awesome / Stick It

• The final competition of the movie has one of these. After one of the main characters does a very difficult move perfectly and isn't given the deserved score (she gets deducted simply for an exposed bra strap), the other gymnasts scratch on purpose in order for her to get the gold medal, doing the same for other events as they choose by consensus who they think deserves to win and let her do it while they all scratch, so that instead of the judges controlling the scoring with obscure rules, they do it by leaving the judges no choice.
  • The judges' reactions are especially sweet to watch. They're very clearly unhappy with having the power they no doubt enjoyed wielding arbitrarily stripped from them, but there's nothing they can do — only the chosen winner for each event even has a score, so no matter how lowly they grade her, she wins. They just sit there impotently, stewing in their anger.
  • That "very difficult move", incidentally, is the Produnova vault, aka the handspring-double-front. To this day, only one female gymnast — Elena Produnova herself, the Russian gymnast who debuted it — has ever landed that vault in competition. Mina landing that vault makes her only the second woman in the history of the sport to complete the most difficult vault in women's gymnastics. ^note As of 2014, a second gymnast (Dipa Karmakar of India) has been able to land it in competition, though not consistently (and not without significant deductions on form). However, this does little to diminish the rarity or the awesomeness of the skill.
    • Mina also does it way better than anyone ever has, including Produnova herself. It's clearly special effects^* if you watch carefully, it's apparent that the gymnast only did a single front tuck, and the footage was cut together in such a way as to create the illusion that it was a double — which is why collegiate gymnast Maddy Curley was able to do the stunt herself, but it's still incredible to see what a near-perfect Produnova would theoretically look like.
• Wei Wei's beam routine, full stop.
• Haley's floor routine.
• Nastia Liukin's bar routine, which is all the more awesome for the fact that it isn't done with special effects (there is some slow motion, but that doesn't really count; she's still doing all the skills for real, and the slow motion just shows them off that much more). This is an actual elite gymnast doing her actual bar routine, and it's incredible. (Liukin would in fact go on to become the Olympic All-Around champion two years later in Beijing, as well as winning a silver medal on uneven bars^note she actually tied with He Kexin for the top spot, but was bumped to second after a tiebreaker, albeit with an upgraded routine compared to her routine from the movie. That routine was literally world-class.) ^note Regarding Nastia having an upgraded routine for the Olympics, it should also be noted that Nastia in 2008 was competing under a new code of points that more heavily rewarded difficult elements, while the film is still using the old code. Nastia's routine in the film might not have won her a medal in 2008 because of the code change, but it is about the same level of difficulty that Nastia's gym-mate Carly Patterson had in her bar routine when she won the 2004 Olympic All-Around gold.