(no subject)

[whispercricket]

Whether or not the judging is wrong, once the crowd is allowed to determine if a score is too high or too low, that is no longer sport.

Comments

[frozencapybara.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

Of course, I can't completely rule out the idea that they would have changed it even had the crowd not gone nuts, given that the judging was absolutely atrocious. So bad that I almost wanted to believe that someone was getting paid off, because I find it hard to believe that olympic-level judges could be that incompetant.

Also, I'd like to note that this PROVES that FIG and the IOC are full of crap with their football metaphors (every time they've said they won't change the men's individual final results, they've compared it to football, to the point where I think they're all considering changing careers and becoming football refs next year). To refuse to change that and then change this score because of crowd reaction... SO full of crap.

[whispercricket]

I've been trying to find out if Nemov's coach submitted a proper protest. If he did (before the FIG president went over there), then that's a little better. However, I've heard (not completely sure) that protests can only be made about start value, and possibly about too wide a range of scores.

(Dragalescu got a range from 9.0 to 9.5 for a fall on his second vault - unless the judges that gave him a 9.5 didn't see him fall, that's a ridiculous score, because with the mandatory 5 tenths off for a fall, it means they thought the vault was worth a 10 if he hadn't fallen, and it's not like he broke his ankles and that's the only reason he couldn't stick the vault. That was a much wider range than Nemov got for his routine, and they tightened that up, so to be consistent, they should have reviewed Dragalescu's scores also. However, I believe they rejected the Canadian protest.)

[whispercricket]

In fact, I should have just waited to post - from internationalgymnast.com:

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Russia is the latest to join the accusers, announcing Tuesday that it would lodge an official complaint to the International Olympic Committee over the judging in Athens. Monday's high bar competition was halted for ten minutes by boos from the audience, which disapproved of the low score given to Alexei Nemov. Nemov finished fifth.

"The public's reaction to the judges' actions (scoring Nemov) clearly supports our position," said Russian spokesman Gennady Shvets. "There will be an official protest and our lawyers are studying the grounds for giving it a legal character."

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Which seems to say to me that they did not protest at the correct time per the standard procedure, which was right after the score was posted. In my mind, unless something new has come up (like the judge bribing for ice dancing), if they didn't protest when they had the chance, they shouldn't come forward later and do it. I mean, how long should the grace period be?

[jiggliusceasar.livejournal.com]

So the only reason the crowd intimidated the judges into changing their scores was that they were clearly more qualified to make the decision?

Maybe they should let the crowd vote, a la "America's Funniest Home Videos". Or even better, let people watching on TV text message their votes for best performance - but if you can't spell Dragalescu, you can't vote for him.

[thastygliax.livejournal.com]

That certainly was...weird. As has been much of the gymnastics this Olympics, but this was a new level of baffling.

And the commentators clearly had no idea how to respond to it. After a while, I almost expected them to say, "Uh, Clem, the natives is gettin' restless...do we have a safe way outta here if they come down and start a-lynchin'?"

[paladin-of-gaia.livejournal.com]

It's all about marketing and appeasing the masses anyway, why are you surprised? Reason #736 I wont watch any form of professional sport.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

I was disgusted!

[jiggliusceasar.livejournal.com]

A link, because I at least had no idea what you were talking about until I went digging for it (and somehow, it's not on the front page of even many Olympic websites).

I've seen the argument made that anything with a subjective method of determining the winner (e.g. gymnastics, figre skating) is not a sport. I'm not sure whether or not I agree, but the events so decided have not been doing a good job of making it seem like they deserve it.

I don't want to take anything away fromt he athletes, because they are all incredibly talented and have put in a ton of work to get where they are. But in a game where early routines get lower scores simply because they're early, how can victory be truly claimed?

This comment has been judged a 9.762.

[whispercricket]

I was trying to keep it vague so that I didn't spoil anyone, and I was too upset to rant in detail even in an lj-cut. Sorry about that.

I disagree with the "subjective judging = non-sport" argument. However, I think that even subjective judging of a sport should have clear explanation behind it. In the case of gymnastics, it should be absolutely clear that X amount of bonus was gained, and X deductions were taken, and the main difference would be that one judge might take .5 tenth and another might take 1 tenth, depending on each feels about the deduction. Also, one might give bonus and take a deduction while another doesn't give bonus but doesn't give a deduction (in the case of the Olympics, separate judges set start value and deductions, so all the judges should give the gymnast the same amount of bonus).

The issue with getting lower scores because they go early is because there needs to be "room" for later gymnasts who might do better routines. This is one reason I'm happy figure skating moved away from a flat maximum (6.0) because it gets rid of the whole issue with lower scores earlier, because there's no maximum score. In any case, the scores are either supposed to 1) count the number of deductions (and thus be objective / not care about whether you go early or late), or 2) rank the athletes appropriately (not an issue in event finals, but could be an issue if scores are being added together, in which case it's really the ranks should be added - again was something that happened with the old type of figure skating judging).

Actually, gymnastics - especially men's gymnastics (MAG) - should be *more* objective than skating because there's the whole presentation aspect of skating that's murkier than presentation in MAG. For example, if the men don't point their toes or their legs come apart in a skill, that's generally a .5 - 1 tenth deduction, but it's still more quantifiable, for example, than changing speed during a skating routine (unless a radar gun is used :) ).

I think the big issue that happened during parallel bars and high bar last night is that there's no longer any way to reward athletes for going past the requirements - there's no way to separate a routine out of 10.5 from a routine out of 10. Alexei Nemov could have done a routine that added up to 10.3 in bonus, and Paul Hamm did one that added up to 10 in bonus, but if Alexei had 3 tenths deductions and Paul had 2, Paul would still be ahead of Alexei even if Alexei's routing was much more exciting. (I just made up these numbers for illustration.) There's no way in the current code of points for gymnastics to reward more risky routines.

Some people on forums I read think that they should reintroduce bonus points (e.g. 2 tenths) for ROV, or Risk - Originality - Virtuosity (not sure about the V). In that case, someone like Alexei could do a riskier routine, or someone like Cheng Fei in women's floor could do an amazing tumbling run and be truly rewarded for it. Currently, especially for most of the men's apparati, everyone is starting out of 10 (or more than 10), so it's less about which routine is most exciting and more about who has fewer deductions.

Crowds tend to prefer the exciting to the nit-picky deduction taking. I find it much easier myself to score deductions in the women's routines than the men's (or see them after they're explained to me).