From: morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)
Subject: Re: Gymnastics: Instant Replay for Judging
Keywords: gymnastics, instant replay
    <1992Aug13.171911.6384@cbnewsh.cb.att.com>
Organization: The Puzzle Palace, UKentucky
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 21:27:28 GMT
Distribution: usa

europa@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (r.j.capik) writes:
>
>I don't believe that the judges are "virtually required" to keep the first
>scores low. (that they in fact do keep their first scores low is another
>story) Yes, there must be room at the top, but if the first performance
>was the best in the meet then everyone else should score below that level.

They *should*, indeed; however, this rarely happens in major meets.  I've
seen too many wonderful routines receive scores in the 9.7-9.8 range, merely
because they came in the early stages of the competition.

>Now, if the driving force here is that people (the public, the media, the
>coaches, the parents... ) want to see 10.0s, then the answer is to normalize
>all scores. 

Actually, I'm one of those people who has a hard time accepting the notion
of a *perfect* routine.  In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen one.

>Then there is the other serious question; What is the point of the score?
>Are we ranking the quality of the performance, or are we assigning a
>value to the "level of compliance" with the rules as currently written?

Does "artistic expression" come in there anywhere?  If we want to judge
gymnastics as a purely athletic event, that's fine; however, it seems
that most routines are filled with aesthetic flourishes (hand gestures,
head bobs, et cetera).  If those are ignored, why are they performed?

Should gymnastics scoring be broken down into areas, like that of figure
skating?  Should we see an "technical merit" score, followed by an "artistic
expression" score?

>>   - The judges should have access to instant replay before scoring.
>
>...and the eliminations take 4 days, the finals take 14 hours, and
>there is no one in the stands, all the sponsors have fled, but the
>commentators just keep talking and talking and talking... like an
>energizer bunny.

Well, perhaps we could do something like this:

	- Gymnast completes routine.
	- Judge may, if he/she wishes, score immediately.
	- Judge has three buttons on a TV monitor, which will provide
	  a front, side, and back replay.
	- Judge has 30 seconds to request a replay; if one is not requested,
	  the judge must go ahead and score.

>Also, zeroing in on the hop at the end is more an artifact of the
>commentators (Ohhhh, she fell right in front of the judges... )
>than anything else. Believe me, the judges watch ALL of the event.
>Though it sure "looked" like landing deductions got more than their
>proper weight. 

They certainly did.  8)

>But then, who am I to say. I'm not a gymnastics
>judge.

Neither am I; I've just been watching for years and years.....

>>   - The judges in a given event should NOT represent the country of
>>        a contestant (If an American is in the final, there should be
>>        no American judges; no Finn should judge a Finn, etc.).
>
>This one is just too far out in left field to address.

After some thought, I'd like to forget I wrote this....I guess I
was caught up in the "nationalistic judging ripoff" postings...8)

>>   - The scores have become far too high; I saw many efforts which
>>     received inflated scores (Goutsou and Miller really benefitted
>>        from the 'superstar' factor)
>
>As above, the scores are not too high as much as the head room is too 
>small. Sad to say, it looks like this has become a judges game of
>'how close can we come to giving the winner a 10'.

Yup, and that's ridiculous.

Thanks to this inflated scoring, gymnastics is falling into the same trap
as figure skating, namely the "gotta kick their butt" factor.  Did you watch
the Winter Olympics' figure skating?  Every major competitor fell at least
once!  There was no aesthetic beauty in the performances; everyone felt obli-
gated to try the triple jumps, since "you just can't win without them".  Feh.

What would happen if the scoring were broken down into categories?  Consider:

	Balance Beam - 10-point maximum
        Mount - 1 point
	Dismount - 1 point
	Artistic Expression - 2 points
        Difficulty - 2 points
        Execution - 4 points

Why wouldn't something like this work?

>>   - Coordinated medical care.  Several nations have swapped athletes
>>        at the last moment due to 'injury'.  
>
>This is not a judging issue, but I like the idea of NO substitutions.
>If an athlete is injured then the finals will be one person short.

Sounds good to me.

>>   - Interpreters at EVERY judged event.  If a national federation
>>        sends an official to the Olympics, they should also send an 
>>        interpreter.  The language barrier reared its head in several
>>        events (synchronized swimming, decathlon, volleyball, boxing).
>>     Why not use the same "official" languages as the United Nations,
>>     i.e. English/French/Spanish/Chinese/Russian?
>
>EVERY judged event? At ALL levels? I think not!

I'd think that, for international meets, the federations could send
interpreters (or bilingual judges).  We've seen far too many contro-
versies stem from the language barrier.  I certainly don't expect
English to be the dominant language at every international meet, but
I think that the "five official languages" would cover most situations.

>> Wow! What field do you adjudicate? What international events have you judged?
>
>First off, with the exception of the Americas Cup, very few sporting 
>events are adjudicated.   :-)

Sorry; I had a thesaurus for breakfast, and I'm still belching in syllables. 8)

--Wes

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