As your typical college-aged American, I'll be the first to tell you that I have very little knowledge pertaining to the sport of gymnastics. However, I do enjoy watching those men and women from around the world flip and stick every four years in the Olympics.
That being said, I, along with most of my fellow fair weather gymnastics fans, am very confused by the scoring in many of the events.
I understand the concept of the starting value and execution scores. I understand that deductions are what the judges are responsible for and that the highest mark someone could receive is their starting score plus a perfect execution score of 10.
What I do not understand is how so many deductions are missed for certain athletes, which is a confusion shared by gymnastics experts such as Bela Karolyi and Tim Daggett.
- B/R Ticket Guide
Many would say that the Chinese have assembled some of the best gymnastics teams on both the men's and women's sides for this Olympics, and I would agree. The high-flying stunts of the Chinese this year have had little competition from other competitors.
Yet, whenever someone seems to have beaten a Chinese gymnast, the scores rarely reflect the level of performance.
From Shawn Johnson's low score on the balance beam during the women's all-around final to Alicia Sacramone's loss to Cheng Fei despite a fall by the Chinese gymnast, things have not seemed fair coming from the judges' table.
The fact that two executed vaults do not receive a high enough score to beat one good vault and one tremendous flop is more than my fragile mind can handle.
Tonight was a different story, however, when it wasn't just the judges who were in on the controversy, but also the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
A rule passed by the IOC stated that there could not be a tie in scoring that would grant more than one person the same medal. This is understandable. However, the method in which tie-breaks are decided is not.
Statistics prove that averages are more accurate when they are taken from a larger pool of people. The IOC rules decided to go the other direction. The tie-break takes away the lowest scores until a winner emerges.
This travesty of a system destroys any point in having a panel of judges because the winner may ultimately be decided by a single judge's score. Something needs to be done about this mockery of a scoring system and it needs to be done before the next Olympics.
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3 months ago
When the judges have no clue what's going on, how can anyone else? I agree, the scoring needs to change before London. How 'bout bringing back the perfect 10? Why was it dropped before Beijing?
At least when it was still possible to achieve it, gymnasts had something to shoot for (being like Nadia). Now what, I want to get a 15.6 or 16.1, what the heck is that?
3 months ago
yeah i was really shocked when china was awarded gold medal in tie case. its not fair.
3 months ago
What kind of message are we sending to young athletes all over the world? Here's the message: human accomplishments scored by human beings just don't matter any more. Hooray for us, we've developed computer systems that can split hairs down to the 100th of a second or the 1000th of a point.
If we're in a nerdy computer competition measuring how fast a microprocessor can calculate to the millionth digit of PI, fine, but we're talking about human beings doing super-human things in real time.
Why do we care that Michael Phelps won with 1/100th of a second, or He Kexin won with 1/1000th of a point.
Milorad Cavic and Nastia Liukin are both astounding young athletes who gave gold medal performances, and there should have been two golds - in both swimming and gymnastics.
from 3 months ago
I agree with that, or at least some sort of more effective way to decide, the current system is flawed.
3 months ago
Here's my view on it all: After I watched Nastia Liukin get the silver medal last night in the uneven bars, I feel that the scoring system isn't right. Nastia's performance in the individual uneven bars was nearly flawless, as she only separated her legs once, meaning that she only had one mistake. The girl from China ( I can't remember her name right now) also had a very solid performance, but I don't think it was as good as Nastia's. I am not saying this because I am from the US, I'm saying this because it's true. The scoring system makes absolutely no sense when it comes to tie breakers; The only thing that stood in the way of Nastia getting the gold medal was the comparison of her and the girl from China's score. Dropping the highest and lowest score from both competitors and then the lowest score from each meant that the girl from China won. I don't understand this very confusing scoring system and I doubt I ever will. The Judge from Australia didn't give Nastia the score she deserved. Oh, and by the way, the rules for the World Championships does not include any tie breaker rules, meaning that two tying scores would equal two gold medals. Scoring should be consistent between all International Gymnastics competitions.
3 months ago
I would like for someone from the international gymnastic world that isn't from USA or China take all the gymnastic events on tape or DVD, edit out the scores from Beijing, and show it to someone high up in this sport, perhaps people involved with Worlds. Ask them to score each participant and at the end, we'll compare the scores from them with the scores from the Olympics. Ideally, you'd want someone who didn't watch the Olympics, but that's probably not going to happen. Basically, I'm calling for a viable explanation for these judges' scores because with each gymnastic event, I am increasingly questioning the judges' decisions and the overall integrity of this event at these Olympics. Crowd reaction should not influence judges' scores, but I think it is.
3 months ago
It's not the judging system or that the judges are inexperienced. The starting values were the same and the American made fewer mistakes and the Chinese made more mistakes. If it was the inexperience of the judges then they would have either docked to much or not enough for both girls but instead they charged America for more errors then she made and didn't charge the Chinese girl for all the mistakes she made. If it was inexperience then they would have made the same errors on both girls it was bias against America.
3 months ago
It's not the judging system or that the judges are inexperienced. The starting values were the same and the American made fewer mistakes and the Chinese made more mistakes. If it was the inexperience of the judges then they would have either docked to much or not enough for both girls but instead they charged America for more errors then she made and didn't charge the Chinese girl for all the mistakes she made. If it was inexperience then they would have made the same errors on both girls it was bias against America.
3 months ago
As Nastia Liukin said, another chinese girl was underscored. It's true if you watch the replay. She should get the golden one. Any comments on that?
from 2 months ago
I agree that another Chinese girl was underscored, my roommate and I agreed that she was the best. However, Nastia still should have beaten the girl who beat her. Nastia may have still gotten the silver, but at least it would make more sense.
3 months ago
Okay, if you are going to have a tie breaking system in place (which by the way this is the only sport in the whole Olympics that does), you need to make it fair. This lowest scoring is wrong. Even highest scoring is wrong. They should have had the top judge decide -- the one who is in charge of all the judges. That way at least it would have been as "unbias" as it could be for a tie breaker. Or they could have just had to do it again. Why not, in vaulting you get two scores.
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