During the competition, the audience can see the athletes standing in front of a white cylinder and rubbing the white powder back and forth with their hands. This is a kind of non-slip magnesium carbonate powder, which aims to increase the friction between the palm and the equipment and prevent them from leaving the lever.
When competing on equipment, those difficult movements require gymnasts to hold the equipment with both hands all the time. It is difficult to prevent the hand from being worn when doing the action on the instrument, but this situation can be well avoided after applying magnesium powder on the hand.
Extended data:
The international gymnastics scoring rules clearly stipulate that athletes should wear uniform clothes in all team competitions, and must wear vests, gymnastics pants and gymnastics shoes (or socks) in pommel horse, rings, parallel bars and horizontal bar competitions. The reason for this rule is that these four events mainly focus on upper limb movements, and wearing pants not only has little effect on athletes' movements, but also increases the aesthetic feeling of movements.
Floor exercise and vault are basically full-body participation in sports, especially leg activities. In order to ensure that athletes can better play their own level and create better results in the competition, the rules stipulate that they can wear shorts or walk barefoot (to prevent slipping) in these two events. If an athlete violates these regulations, a certain score will be deducted from the team's total score or individual score.
References:
Official website of China CCTV-Gymnastics