The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex

A, B are out because of "is".
C, D are out because "their" and "them" cannot refer to "athlete's performance".
E is correct.

the correct question is:

'Sports Medicine Programs' is plural...hence we need 'are'

The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex where final try outs are held for athletes representing the US in the Olympics, is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation for international competition.

A.) is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation
B.) is geared to enhance the performance of athletes and to prepare them
C.) are geared to enhance athletes performance and their preparation
D.) are geared toward the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them
E.) are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them - CORRECT

A.) is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation ……. Progrms – is: SV problem

B.) is geared to enhance the performance of athletes and to prepare them ……… Progrms – is: SV problem

C.) are geared to enhance athletes performance and their preparation --------athletes performance—apostrophe missing , geared toward is more fitting in the context
D.) are geared toward ‘the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them’ .. parallelism problem
E.) are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them …… parallel and correct choice

C the OA? – surprised

C.) are geared to enhance athletes performance and their preparation------ ‘Geared to’ is unidiomatic and athletes misses the apostrophe. Let us ignore the ambiguity about the pronoun ‘their’, becos, logically no body can say that a program aims at increasing the performance of the program itself.

Similarly, them E must logically refer to the athletes rather than the programs. But your question whether 'them' can refer to performance is all the more wrong because performance is not a plural noun.

Hey

still not clear.. their is a possessive pronoun so it certainly refers to athletes '... so why this treatment ?

Guys explain !

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The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex where final tryouts are held for athletes representing the United States in the Olympics, is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation for international competition.

"Programs" is the subject so plural verbs.

A. is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation
B. is geared to enhance the performance of athletes and to prepare them

C. are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation
gear towards -> aim at. gear towards should be used

D. are geared toward the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them
Not parallel entities

E. are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them
Possessive pronouns can refer to the subject nouns - perfect

this interpretation is not correct . "their" can very well refer to "athletes"

Thanks for pointing it out. Corrected the mistake and will keep in mind going forward.

Just focus on analyzing only 2 answer choices C and E to eliminate one and get the correct one. Basically, gear to and gear toward are the same (at least, I think so :D). So it is not solid to eliminate the answer choices by solely relying on the difference between them.



The main short version of this sentence: The Sports Medicine Programs are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation for international competition.

1/ Clearly, no issue with pronoun "their" - it can perfectly refer to the possessive form athletes'.
2/ However, making "athletes' performance" parallel to "their preparation for international competition" changes the intended meaning of the sentence.
How? - In this choice, the Sports Medicine Programs are geared to enhance two things: athletes' performance and their preparation for international competition, meaning that only preparation for international competition is enhance = The Programs may not help athletes be prepared/ready for international competition.



Short version of this sentence: The Sports Medicine Programs are geared are geared toward the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them for international competition.

In this choice, the Programs are geared to do two things: to enhance athletes' performance and to prepare them for international competition. Setting enhance athletes' performance parallel to prepare them for international competition makes meaning parallel and logic: Yes, this Sports Medicine Programs do aim to enhance performance and prepare athletes for big competition - not just their preparation (as in C)

Hope it's clear!

Quick question - isnt " Sports Medicine Programs" a proper noun as all of them have initial letter in upper case? In that case , "IS" should be used. Isnt "B" the correct answer in that case? Pls clarify as I have read that proper nouns are always singular?

When the plural form is used, the word is taken as plural. Here we are talking about 'Programs' so we must use 'are'. We would take it as singular if it is explicitly used with a singular verb in the non-underlined part.

ANSWER IS E

The first decision point is to find the subject of the sentence and its grammatical number (singular or plural)
Lets do that here by removing non essential parenthetical information from the sentence

The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex where final tryouts are held for athletes representing the United States in the Olympics, is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation for international competition.

As we can see the Subject is "PROGRAMS" which is plural, therefore our options will start with "ARE" and not "IS"

A and B are out
SECONDLY we can see that the coordinating conjunction "AND" is used therefore there should be separate subjects in each clause before and after "and"

a) is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation
WRONG:- SV AGREEMENT

b) is geared to enhance the performance of athletes and to prepare them
WRONG:- SV AGREEMENT

c) are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation
WRONG:- athletes' is used not as a noun but as an adjective that modifies the noun performance. The position of the apostrophe in athletes' denoted that it is used as an adjective. The subject of the clause becomes performance
Therefore there is pronoun error in the clause. "Their " is a pronoun that refers back to performance but logically it should refer back to athlete.

d) are geared toward the enhancement of athletes' performance and toward preparing them
WRONG:- Not parallel - "enhancement" and "preparing" are not parallel forms of verb
SAME AS C. athletes' is used not as a noun but as an adjective that modifies the noun performance. The position of the apostrophe in athletes' denoted that it is used as an adjective. The subject of the clause becomes performance
Therefore there is pronoun error in the clause. "Their " is a pronoun that refers back to performance but logically it should refer back to athlete.

e) are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them
CORRECT:- A proper subject athletes (plural) exist in the second clause and the pronoun "them" correctly refers back to athlete.
Enhancing and preparing are parallel

I understand the correct Option is E.

However, would like to dig more on Option C :

c) are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation

Should this be interpreted as - " are geared to enhance athletes' performance and are geared to enhance athletes' preparation"

or the other version which says - "Their "refers back to performance. Thus " are geared to enhance athletes' performance and athletes' performance preparation.
The second version, if interpreted, is easiest to eliminate

I interpreted the first version and chose C, which is incorrect.

Yes, it is meant to be interpreted as the first option:

... are geared to enhance A and B.
A - performance
B - preparation

But note that it is not logical. The logical meaning is:
The program is geared toward A and B.
A - enhancing performance
B - preparing for intl competition

Hence (E) is better.

Hello. mikemcgarry,
Another one...
I was hesitating between C and E.
I couldn't find meaning differences between them, and picked C. As I found it concise.
Why is C wrong?

Thanks again.... and again...

Dear nahid78,

I'm happy to respond. Here's the question with (C) & (E).

The Sports Medicine Programs of the Olympic Training Center, a complex where final tryouts are held for athletes representing the United States in the Olympics, is geared toward enhancing athletes' performance and toward their preparation for international competition.

C) are geared to enhance athletes' performance and their preparation

E) are geared toward enhancing the performance of athletes and preparing them

Part of this is the parallelism and part of this is the idiom.

In the original, notice there are two actions
(1) enhancing athletes' performance
(2) their preparation
The prompt does not do a good job of presenting those two in parallel. Choice (E) does an excellent job of putting them in parallel, whereas (C) changes their relationship--in (C), the action of "enhancing" applies to both parts, "athletes' performance and their preparation." This is a small change to the meaning.

Also, when the verb "gear" is used metaphorically, it idiomatically takes the preposition "toward." The construction "geared toward" sounds natural, whereas the construction "geared to" sounds awkward. I want to emphasize that this is an idiom that appears relatively infrequently--one might take 100 GMATs in a row and never see a question involving this particular idiom.

Does all this make sense?
Mike