From: choy@skorpio.usask.ca (I am a terminator.)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.olympics
Subject: Re: Gymnastics: Instant Replay for Judging
Keywords: gymnastics, instant replay
Date: 13 Aug 92 23:42:18 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

In article <1992Aug13.172728.26204@ms.uky.edu>, morgan@ms.uky.edu (Wes Morgan) writes:
|> 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
|> 
|> -- 
|> MORGAN@UKCC         |       Wes Morgan       |        ...!ukma!ukecc!morgan 
|> morgan@ms.uky.edu   | Engineering  Computing |   morgan@wuarchive.wustl.edu
|> morgan@engr.uky.edu | University of Kentucky | JWMorgan@dockmaster.ncsc.mil
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Let's have the gymnasts go in slow motion. The heck with replays.

Henry Choy
choy@cs.usask.ca
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