How to solve the problem for Olympic Sports like Gymnastic

[LynneSin]

and any other sport that relies on Judges to determine who really wins.

This is the 2nd Olympics in a row where there has been a problem with judges scoring. I"ve heard one of the judges involved in the Paul Hamm/Korean issue for the Men Gymnastics All Around was an American Judge. Makes you question whether that judge used any influence to get folks to use 9.9 instead of 10.0 for that Korean's base for his one routine.

Unfortunately this has gone on forever. I remember during the cold war that you could see the difference in scoring between Soviet-Bloc countries vs. American allied countries. It's still happening today and it's ruining the sport.

Personally, I think the best way to do it is to increase the number of judges. Then use a computerized system that will randomly select 4-5 of those judges and use their score for each performance. That way a judge will never know if this is the time his/her score will count hopefully taking away influence on judges convincing other judges to somehow altar scores in order to benefit certain competitors.

I use to love watching Gymnastic & Ice Skating but honestly I think both of those sports are ruined. Not by the athletes but by the judges. It's a shame!!

[glarius]

1. This particular case could be solved if the U.S.A would agree to the

solution....I heard an analyst on CBC say if U.S.A would agree to Hamm and the Korean both getting a gold medal, that would solve it, but U.S.A won't agree to it....By the way, in Salt Lake City, when the judging was shown to be wrong and they were talking about taking the gold away from the Russian skating pair and giving it to the Canadian pair who had actually won it, the Canadians said they just wanted their own deserved medals and wanted the Russians to keep their medals, since what the judges did wasn't their fault....That's real sportsmanship....The same should be done here, but watching the different spokespersons for the U.S.A. gymnastics this morning on NBC....They seem to be saying "tough luck, Korea....them's the breaks."

[YellowRubberDuckie]

2. And we wonder why everyone hates us...

God, that is so juvenile. Why are so obsessed with medals? I thought the olymics was about something BIGGER than that!? Oh wait. This is a republican state. Nevermind me.
Duckie

[LynneSin]

3. The Koreans just want to share the medal

Which right now makes Korea the better sportsmen then the United States.

I have a feeling Paul Hamm will be the one that makes this happen. He seems like a pretty upright guy who would rather reward the right people with the medal than to own a tainted one throughout life

[Vladimir]

4. I think the problem is us spectators

who expect perfection from the judges. They are only human, and I think the vast majority of mistakes made are honest ones. Obviously if a judge is proven to have taken a bribe or something... but that is different.

Its like my favourite sport, football, where people are always calling for more use of technology and about how referees get crucial decisions wrong. I find the human-error factor a quite charming element of sport, but you know, de gustibus non es disputandum and all that.

[Commendatori]

5. Petty or not, this bullshit will never go away, so the answer is to

eliminate all sports which are decided by judges.

I know that won't be a popular solution on this board, but we've got bigger fish to fry than listening to Svetlana Khorkina rag on Corey Patterson. Also, if we're supposed to be repairing damage in international relations, having people blame us for fixing medals in Greece is not productive.

Read Khorina's ramblings and tell me that this was worth it, especially since the world will agree with this little bitch only because Patterson was one of ours, and then tell me what Patterson did to deserve this:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/gymnastics/08/22/bc.olympics.gymnastics.khorkina/index.html

[VelmaD]

7. Sveta needs to get over herself

Yes the sport should be judged partially on grace and beauty and whatnot. But it also has to be judged on the tumbling and hers frankly wasn't up to what Patterson did on floor. I hate to say it but Sveta's work has deteriorated since the last olympics. Her jumps and leaps lack the amplitude of the other gymnasts and that she herself displayed in the past. She fell out of a simple triple turn in her floor routine and got duly clobbered for it by the judges. She had some bobbles on beam on simple elements. And her tumbling isn't as high or powerful as a lot of the other women. That's why she lost. Period.

That said, Carly Patterson's floor routine, while filled with spectacular tumbling, was boring as hell.

[VelmaD]

6. This isn't even the biggest judging problem...

from this olympics in my opinion. I'm still livid about the Japanese official on high bars getting to decide to devalue a move 2 days before the competition started. That totally fucked over the US team because it dropped the start values for some of their high bar routines. They were valued at a 10 at last year's world championships. There haven't been any changes in the code of points since then. But all of a sudden 2 days before the olympic competition starts "oops, you've gotta change that routine you've been working on for over a year or take a lower start value". Disgraceful. And who knows how many other gymnasts it affected besides the US.

The Koreans might want to be careful about encouraging the gymnastics federation to change their policy of not looking at the videotape after a competition. There were plenty of other deductions that could have been taken and weren't on their routines, and on some of Paul's routines, and on the routines of every gymnast in the competition. I've already read where some experts have looked back at the gentleman in question's p-bar routine and found mandatory deductions that weren't taken. You could likely do that with just about every routine in the competition and think about what that would do to the results.

Oh, and by the way, the Canadians were not robbed in Salt Lake City. If you'd really like a detailed explanation of why their long program was not as technically difficult as the Russians and some of the other reasons they lost pm me some time. I'm a long time skating fan and I can discuss this topic to death. :)

[glarius]

14. Long time skating fan here too and sorry I don't agree

The reason the Canadians won was because they did their program flawlessly on that particular night....The Russians may have had a more technically difficult program, but they made several errors....:)

[mrboba1]

15. Isn't that point moot anyways?

Did the French (?) judge confess that she fixed her score??

So any talk about whether the Canadians deserved the gold is moot - since the judge admitted it - so they did deserve it!

[VelmaD]

19. Not necessarily...

Let's say someone bribes me to score you the highest in a competition. But then on the day of the actual event you actually do perform better than everyone else. Does that mean you don't deserve your win?

[VelmaD]

18. The Canadians were not flawless that night...

I have it on tape and there were little mistakes that Scott Hamilton and company didn't bother to point out. The Canadians skated an old program and frankly didn't skate it as well as they did when they skated it in previous seasons. The program they had been using in 2002 up til the olympics had much more difficult connections and they had not skated it all that well for most of the year. I think going back to an old program was a big mistake. Put it in everyone's minds that they were vulnerable and out of new ideas.

The only real deduction in the Russians' program was the turn out of the double axel by Sikharulidze and since he got immediately back into the flow of the program (he managed to do the second jump in the sequence in unison with his partner) it was only a small deduction. In my book it was morme than made up for by the fact that their program was so much more difficult than the Canadians.

For a much better analysis of this competition I highly recommend this essay at Skateweb.
http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/articles/slc-pairs.shtml

[glarius]

20. Sorry but you are wrong

They skated an exceptional program....Also they had beat this same Russian team twice during a couple of previous skating competitions in the year before the Olympics, so it wasn't as if it was a fluke that they should beat them at the Olympics....I think the right thing was done....The athletes should not be penalized for the bad behaviour or mistakes of judges.....

[VelmaD]

21. Still gotta disagree...

that performance was not exceptional in my book. Not when you compare it with the program they used to win Wolrds in 2001, which was much more technically difficult and better choreographed. "Love Story" had some nice moments but they spent way too much of that program either not skating or skating without actually touching - big no-nos in pairs.

If you read the link I provided it lays out what each couple did well and what each couple did not do well. David and Jamie did not land their side-by-side jumps in unison. They almost never have because Jamie has very small jumps. This also causes them to land their jumps a little bit farther apart. Jamie landed forward on one of their throws (the other couple had the same minor mistake, though it wasn't a major balance check for either woman).

The big problem is that one David and Jamie's lifts was technically illegal. Instead of holding her up by the hip in their "hip lift" David was holding her by the leg. This is a madatory .1 deduction on both scores.

I'm not saying that David and Jamie weren't good. I'm just saying that there are reasons aside from "cheating" to think that Anton and Elena deserved to win.

[glarius]

22. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree!

:)

[VelmaD]

23. Who really got hosed that night...

was Ina and Zimmerman. They WAY outskated the 2nd Russian pair (Totmianina and Marinan) and frankly I thought they outskated the Chinese as well.

This is my personal peeve from that pairs competition. I don't really have a dog in the gold medal fight. :)

I also thought Drobiasko and Vanagas should have been third in the Free Skate in ice dance. 'Cause they managed to stay upright. :)

[mrboba1]

8. I don't think that there's much of a problem

Judgement calls are made in all sorts of sports - in fact, any team sport can have problems, so it is not just ones that are judged.

Some minor tweaks in the judging process might be called for, but overall there isn't much more to do. People will make mistakes, and they do drop the high and low marks from the scores to help account for "home team" advantages.

[underpants]

9. Watch ALL competitors and THEN score them

They seem to have streamlined it by starting with a Degree of Difficulty and then following strict rules on what a mistake costs but they really (especially in skating) don't know if the first competitor is going to be the best. I know they have to cut down who is considered to be in the running but why not just have everyone perform and then score them?

[VelmaD]

11. Because no human being can keep...

that many performances straight in their head for that long til everyone was done.

The old scoring system in figure skating has actually been proven to be the one that works best. (Though the ISU refuses to believe that.) Human beings (and the judges are human beings no matter what we sometimes think) are better able to accurately rank competitors against each other than they are able to either compare them to a standard score or give their score a numerical value. It's just how the human brain works. We're much better at saying "this person was better than that person" than we are at giving that difference a quantitative value.

[redqueen]

10. Makes it hard to enjoy gymnastics sometimes

I don't think Dimosthenis Tampakos deserved to win last night - IMO Jordan Jovtchev clearly outperformed him.

Can't even count the other instances... happens far too often.

I agree with VelmaD on the changes two days before the games - that was ridiculous and indefensible.

Oh and on edit LynneSin I like your idea of drawing scores at random.

[mrboba1]

12. How would drawing randomly help exactly?

I'm trying to figure this out. If say, the American judge were to give the American a higher score than all the others, why would the randomness change this? He would still act the same, based on the fact that his score may count. What should be done in this scenario is to increase the number of judges (say to 12, as an example) and drop the highest 3 and the lowest 3 scores.

That would be more accurate as you lose the outliers.

[VelmaD]

13. I disagree with drawing scores at random...

because it hasn't worked for figure skating. Here's why. Say you have two judges...one is consistently scoring every competitor lower than the other though they both have them in essentially the same order. For those competitors where the low scoring judge gets picked...they get hosed compared to the ones who get scores from the judge who is scoring everyone a bit higher.

The best solution is completely transparent judging...all scores used, knowing which judge gave which score, and a system where judges have to justify their scores to the referee. (This third part is where figure skating fell down for years.)

[LynneSin]

16. Great idea

and I do like dropping the "High/Low" Score because it eliminates anyone who judges too extremely high or low

:shrug:

I'm not a judge of sports, what do I know

[redqueen]

17. I do like your idea more

just make it completely transparent. Maybe then judges wouldn't be so tempted to skew the scores.