Chinese gymnast He Kexin tied American rival Nastia Liukin on Bars. But under a complicated but logical tiebreak system, China got the Gold, USA the Silver.
(AP Photo / August 18, 2008)
Nastia’s father / coach Valeri tied for an Olympic medal in the past — when both athletes stood atop the podium, both winning gold.
Tiebreaks determined Beijing medals, so far, in
About.com Gymnastics has a poll on the topic. And some background:
… The rule to break ties has been in effect since after the 1996 Olympics, and was at the direction of the IOC, according to FIG president Bruno Grandhi.
He told NBCOlympics.com, “For me, it’s not correct. When two people arrive on the same level, they are champions. But this competition doesn’t belong to us. It is the IOC’s.”
Tiebreakers Add New Controversy to Event Finals Day Two
But before you get too outraged about yet another complication in our sport, frustrating the media and the general public, think back to what happened before the rule was imposed.
Judges who could not decide who should win a Final … deliberately tied gymnasts. We ended up with too many ties.
I’ve got mixed feelings on the tiebreak rule. I liked it in 2004 when Kyle Shewfelt took Gold on Floor over Dragalescu in a tiebreak. But it’s yet another barrier between our sport and the general public. First we lose the “perfect 10″. Now this.
6 comments ↓
“Judges who could not decide who should win a Final … deliberately tied gymnasts.”
Well, that goes back to judges cheating or simply misunderstanding their role. There should be no “deciding” who should win. Take your deductions and leave it at that.
And I love the ties all over the place in a system that was supposed to eliminate ties. I don’t have a problem with ties myself. Big deal if two people get the same score. If you make the judges explain how they came up with all their scores and some can’t explain or seem to be off kilter, then they should be banned from judging. Yeah, I mean banned. They should be able to explain their score and demonstrate consistency.
There seems no logical reason why they can’t tie.
I disagree with it. The score is the score. Eliminate the tie-breakers (I don’t care who they benefit…also I really think judging finagling is on the decline anyhow…that is one of the good things about A and B score split.)
if there is going to be a tiebreaker, it needs to be less subjective than a question of how many hundredths of a point did this judge deduct from the score. use the higher prelims score to reward consistency.
Traditionally speaking the “evolution” of the code of points has always centred around rewarding the athletes and at the same time eliminating the cheating that has always gone on. Or at least that standard line that the FIG has always used.
Also traditionally speaking we can say that each and every iteration of the code of points has been implemented at the expense of the athletes who are still not being rewarded accurately for what they do while the cheating persists. I hate to agree with ‘rag but unless FIG is willing to implement some real measures against judges who cheat it will continue to be this way. As I mentioned in another post, if Pavlova can be penalized for breaking a rule by being denied what for her could possibly be her best and perhaps the only chance at an Olympic medal, then by the same token a judge guilty of cheating or incompetence should also lose their opportunity to judge at this level. Perhaps forever. I’m sure that cheating would be gone overnight once a few judges have been heartlessly sanctioned.
As far as the tiebreaking goes, if two athletes achieve the same level of excellence, even by differing methods, they should both be equally rewarded. If prelim scores need to factor in tiebreaking then they should be carried over to the finals as well.
I’ll say up front that I have no background in artistic gymnastics, but I’ve been involved with TnT for the past 4 years. I’ve found the whole discussion about the new scoring methods and the controversy around tie-breaks in the artistic world fascinating because these “new” things are the only way I’ve know it in trampoline. You have a DD (or “starting score”) and execution score. If you tie in the final, whoever scored best in the preliminary optional routine is given the higher rank. Simple. Balancing DD and execution is an important consideration, and sometimes it makes sense to go lower DD to get a higher execution. (The men’s trampoline final is a good example.)
It took me a while to figure out why it is such a big deal in artistic. In Trampoline, you perform 10 skills, period. You can establish a DD, and there are 10 skills that can receive a deduction. In artistic, as near as I can tell, an athlete can perform as many skills as they can squeeze into the allotted time (except for the vault, of course). Balancing start value and execution is much more difficult because the number of skills you can perform are variable.
Just doesn’t seem right somehow. (I think I need to give it some more thought.)
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