INTERNATIONAL GYMNAST Editor Dwight Normile part way through the 2009 World Gymnastics Championships:
… While scanning the hundreds of scores from the women’s qualifications here in London, I realized something odd. The results sheets included zero scores above 9.0 for the E-score (execution). And how many scores of 9.0 appeared? Two: one each for American Kayla Williams and North Korean Hong Un Jong on vault.
What shocks me most is that I saw some very good routines that would have scored 9.5 and above under the old 10.0 system. …
The men’s scores were more realistic, with numerous gymnasts cracking the 9.0 barrier, and well into the mid-9.0s.
It’s a pity that men’s and women’s gymnastics is judged so differently right now. This new Code was supposed to restore artistry by emphasizing execution over difficulty. The best way to do that is to lower the value of the D-score as severely as the E-score is being evaluated. …
I agree with Dwight. The Men’s judges are more confident to adjudicate. The range in execution scores is greater between best and worst.
Why are the Women not doing the same?
Are they afraid of being “out of range”?
Or, … are there so many vague deductions listed in the women’s code that they feel obliged to deduct something on every skill?
Leave a comment if you have an opinion. Especially if you are a judge.
25 comments ↓
Quite simply, YES. The execution scores are too low. I was convinced that the judges invented up to 0.5 in built-in deductions and after having spoken to a judge, I can confirm it. There are some vague deductions applied to everyone; lack of flow on BB, missed handstands on bars, bent arms on VT (as if it’s humanly possible to do a Yurchenko with straight arms!), lack of artistry on FX (it might seem fair, but EVERYONE would be deducted, Nastia included!), low chest landings, etc.
What’s really alarming is that the judges don’t use the replay, they deduct according to what they see. Let’s be honest, half the deductions aren’t visible unless watched in slow-motion and under different angles. Safe to say that women’s scores are completely unrealistic.
It takes guts to reward perfection (I’d be very curious to see the execution score for Ye Fan’s BB routine from the 2003 Worlds). Let’s hope there’ll be a judge with guts like that.
I agree that they are too low, and I think it is probably very confusing to people who aren’t gymnastics fans. When I see something that looks like a nearly flawless routine and the judges award at 8.5, I’m confused too.
it’s a tough place to be in. if they don’t deduct for everything under the sun, they are criticized for missing errors, and in tight competitions they make all the difference. On the other hand, they are letting what is left of the perfect ten slip away and making it confusing for the audience (or even the gymnasts).
ian, this is unrelated but, no, it is not impossible to do a yurchenko with straight arms. there was even an article on this site a while back about doing yurchenkos with straight versus bent arms.
I wonder if it’s even feasible to review the video of the routine. It seems like the scores are so slow in coming right now and this would slow things down even more. Also, how would they ensure that all competitors are treated fairly, since those reviewed on video would get greater scrutiny than those who are not.
It seems like video reviewing judging would work better on vault since it is so fast and furious. The review would also take less time since the performance takes only a few seconds. Have they ever considered doing this?
I’m a judge and I totally agree that there should be a wider range of scores. Some of the routines at worlds were wildly over deducted I think. it is true that you feel like you should be taking something off every move – I hardly ever judge with people who feel confident enough to doa zero deduction. some moves actually ARE perfect. The artistry deductions are almost universally applied so that true artistic gymnasts don’t get the credit that they deserve.
remember that part of the rationale of “open scoring” was the retention of “the perfect 10″ in E-panel….nonsense then, utterly absurd now. I was in London for all comp I sessions (both men and women) and the execution scores were ridiculous…..there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that with these judges and this code that ANYTHING a gymnast does can come close to receiving a 10.
thanks bruno.
I wouldn’t say deducting for missed handstands is vague.
Another way of looking at this is are mens execution scores too high? Example: Leszek Blanik, won olympic vault title, but he quite plainly tucked his piked vault and he wasn’t really deducted for it.
Also, is it really fair that women get deductions for going past handstand on a pirouette even slightly on bars, when men seem to be able to pirouette as late as they want on high bar, and they haven’t even got a low bar in the way.
It’s a shame we’ve lost our trademark. I wonder if we’ll ever see a 10 again.
Seeing that my judging experience comes from using the 10.0, I have to say that what is lost is the “opinion” of the judges.
Using replays and finding so much technical fault seems to be taking away from what judging is – it’s an opinion! Yes, it is confined within a rule system. Yes, there are certain elements that need to be met. What is the point of having judges from different background and perspectives if all they are going to do is mechanically pick apart a routine for long stretches of time? If this is what the IOC/International Gymnastics wants for gymnastics, it should just hire and train judges who will do just that. Why bother bringing in judges from different cultures?
The artistry of gymnastics is lacking in artistic gymnastics. There is so little different between American, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian gymnastics (sorry.. I should have said, all cultures), that what used to separate the flow and distinct feeling of the culture is now missing (in my opinion).
I will admit, the Chinese still manage to show some of their flair and culture on floor and beam, but it still seems somewhat… stale? They are doing what is expected of such a wonderful team, that it’s almost par for the course now.
Over all, there needs to be something done to help differentiate what “perfect” is again. Humans, by default, are flawed. It’s what makes us human. Artistry gives us an outlet to explain the human condition – perfect or otherwise. Artistic gymnastics, in my opinion (please, read again in MY opinion) is supposed to represent the pinnacle of pushing individual human limits. Being considered “perfect” should be something to strive for – because it speaks to everyone watching, and captures an audience in awe. Not because it has the most difficulty thrown together, but because it captures the viewer and helps them see the difficult made “simple” and “clean.”
So why are the scores so low? Because the emphasis on performing is so low. It’s big skills, and big combinations. While that moves the sport somewhat in the right direction (entertainment wise), it fails to consider what we all consider the perfect routine – one that captures the audience, and leaves everyone in awe that it was done just right, that one time.
To paraphrase somebody else’s comment after last year’s Olympics, the FIG stick figure could not score a perfect 10 with the current judging criteria…
I think especially women’s gymnastics has gone completely off the deep end with execution deductions and it seems the criteria that are being applied are totally unrealistic from a biomechanical perspective and often from what is actually humanly achievable given the inescapable laws of physics.
Let’s take a look at bars where the expectation for a pirouette is to start and end in a perfect handstand. This of course is only possible if the gymnast is in a perfectly still handstand or if she can execute the hanstand turn instantaneously while in motion (as in a giant). So you either take the deduction for the angle deviation or you take deductions for loss of rhythm, interruption of motion and whatever else they can cook up at the time. In other words there is no humanly achievable way to do that pirouette as demanded by the judging criteria with zero deductions.
Another of my favourite impossible deductions are the landing deductions where the gymnast is expected to land without any noticeable knee bending and/or postural deductions such as piking in the hip, arm motion and any other absorption type strategies. Hmmm, let’s see, are we to understand that we can stop a trick such as a double layout on floor, or double double, with immense rotational momentum, by landing upright on straight legs and without any noticeable postural deviation? And if so who’s skeletal structure could take such a landing? And how many times?
The sad thing is that all of the people responsible for the judging criteria are themselves former athletes. You would think that they would know better.
george n, i think you’re mistaken, but i do agree that some of the deductions are asking too much.
i am almost positive that a pirouette on bars can start early, it just can’t finish late. so that solves your first problem of it not being possible to get no deduction on a pirouette.
also, sticking the landing, which by definition means bent knees, is not a deduction. what is a deduction is piking down a dismount before needed, and also sticking does not require piking. that solves your second problem of it not being possible to get no deduction on a landing.
“Another of my favourite impossible deductions are the landing deductions where the gymnast is expected to land without any noticeable knee bending and/or postural deductions such as piking in the hip, arm motion and any other absorption type strategies.”
EXACTLY.
“sticking does not require piking.”
Alex105, if you don’t believe that absorbing the impact forces of gravity and neutralizing the forces of rotation REQUIRE the bending of more joints than the knees then I guess we can agree that “reasonable people can disagree”.
This code is rife with impossible deductions and if not addressed will increasingly marginalize our sport with the public.
It is my opinion that Nastia’s gymnastics was somewhat correlated to the new judging style. Execution-wise, she was/is one of the most precise we’ve seen in a good while. On many blogs and forums, Nastia’s Olympic AA vault (1.5 Y) was analyzed over & over. In real time, the vault was flawless. In super slow motion, we were able to pick up a few tiny errors to equate about 2-2.5 tenths. The judges still found .475 in deductions. I think that this quad so far has been held up to her standards of quality. Of course, most pale in comparison. I’m not a uber Nastia fan, but her execution really sets the bar high in the subjective judging world
About sticking, you just have to watch some exercises from this year’s FX final and you can see a couple of passes with no landing deductions. Myzdrikova 1st pass has no deduction in landing and I think Rebecca Bross’s 2nd pass doesn’t either. Deng Linlin’s 1st pass was perfectly landed too.
What is required in stuck landing is:
No movement of feet or arm waves
No squat (butt at or lower than knees), so you have to bent your kness of course you just don’t have to let your butt drop down too much, which is perfectly posible if you have enough height on the salto.
Chest higher than kness.
No opened feet
If you do that, that’s 0 deductions on landing.
I actually wouldn’t deduct anything on Myzdrikova 1st pass and maybe neither on Deng Linlin’s one.
So it is not like you have to land upright with straight kness not to receive a deduction.
I thought pirrouettes were devalued one letter if they start while the gymnast is in handstand.
Actually I’m very pleased with higher Execution deductions and I don’t get your complains. I’m a judge and I always found execution scores were huge compared to what I’ve been told. In MAG they are ridicoulously high.
And I cannot understand why you think this is going to raise the difficulty, when it’s exactly the opposite. People that chuck skills with whatever form (like fugly sheep jumps on beam) would be hammered now and probably people would learn it’s better to throw easier but cleaner skills (ala Koko Tsurumi…).
Personally I think gymnastics is way too difficult nowadays and no time for artistry or presentation is allowed. It’s very sad. Average people can’t barely distinguish a triple twist from a double but they know perfectly fine that Ana Porgras is gorgeous to look at on beam and Floor and rebecca Bross, well… NO. I hope this escalating difficulty would be cut short soon enough to avoid more accidents like Jessica Gil’s
I much prefered the older code with the 10, but with a much more demanding execution.
If the judges stay consistent with this type of scoring, then, in my opinion, this system will do exactly what it was supposed to do…bring back execution over difficulty. Eventually, coaches will learn that to win at these meets, the gymnast has to execute her skills as close to perfection as possible. This will, in turn, lead to coaches, as mrsolis said, to making sure that the skills these girls are doing are mastered as close to a point of perfection as possible. I, personally, think that this is what our sport needs, and has needed for a long time. Obviously, our sport still will thrive on the high-flying danger that it has always had, but if we keep hammering execution, it will lead coaches to protecting their athletes out of necessity to be competitive in these levels.
The last decade of impatience in coaching and moving kids through levels at a ridiculous pace has virtually destroyed the mastery of basics. That fact combined with trying to compete “with the Jones’ (or in this case, the ’skill-chuckers’)” is creating a very dangerous situation for our athletes.
I, for one, welcome these critical scores, and would add that I don’t care if we ever get back to the mythical perfect “10.0″. It never existed in the first place except by judges that didn’t have the courage (personally, I think that judges that deduct everything they see wrong are the ones with courage–it is much easier to “go easy” on an athlete than to hit every incorrect thing) to deduct things that to an untrained eye looked perfect. The reality is, as all of us who have done this for any length of time knows, that there is no such thing as perfect. This is not a problem as long as everyone knows it and judges every athlete with the same idea in mind. The best gymnasts will be closer to perfect than the ones that are not the best, and we will have less of a problem with “sloppy” gymnasts being on the podium just because they can sometimes do a couple of skills that no one else in the competition can do. (If I accidentally see Ivana Hong do her reverse hecht or double layout flyaway or Jana Beiger do anything one more time, I am going to choke someone).
The old system didn’t work because it is ridiculous to expect one person to be able to evaluate what skills are in a routine and whether they met all of their requirements and what bonus they received and then still take execution deductions. The reason that execution scores are being hit harder is because that is all that this one particular judge has to worry about, and that is a good thing. I am always confused by how little some people expect when it comes to execution. Why is it such a bad thing to have an idea of what perfection would be if it could be attained, and then strive toward it? Isn’t that what athletics is about to begin with? The strive toward perfection?
Let me make a small amendment to what I said about perfection. There are certain times (rarely) that a certain skill can be done with enough mastery that there could be no deductions to it, but I don’t know that I have ever seen (in over 30 years) more than 3 routines that could even be casually considered as having no deductions in them. As long as everyone is held to the same standards, then that doesn’t matter.
It does matter, because the 10.00 is the icon of the sport. Tens bring fans and money and excitement.
Nastia does not have great form. It amazes me how people refuse to see just how bad her form is.
On vault her height and distance from the vault do not exist. She literally landed less then an arm length from the vault at the Olympics. She was deducted big time for her lack of height and distance.
On bars her giants are level 5. Her feet come a part on every handstand and pirouette (sp) she catches her geinger with bent arms and sometimes her feet come a part. She is short on her handstands.
On beam her skillz are code whored. That is an easy routine with not a single trick and badly done jumps with no height
On floor her cowboyed double front and crossed legs on the twists. She didn’t keep her leg in the right position on her double turn and should have lost credit for the skill because she dropped the leg short of the two revolutions.
If this is good form then the sport is the joke many of you complain it is.
You remind me of another frequent commenter from the past.
How did this become a Nastia bashing thread? What if we picked apart other gymnasts on every single thing they did? Nastia is by no means perfect, but in general she has fewer issues than most. Arm’s length from the vault – your arms must be very long.
Anyways, I don’t mind execution scores being so low if there was an actual difference. Just like in the past, scores are all lumped in the same range and nobody has the guts to differentiate between a well-executed routine and a poorly executed one (i.e., Porgras vs. Tweddle). Neither are pefect, but Tweddle tucked her Dos Santos and has loose knees in general. Porgras’ tucked full-in is sloppy but in general she is cleaner, more extended, and of course has the artistry to show she is head and shoulders above most of the field.
I would love to see what they took off for Kayla’s DTY in finals and why they didn’t devalue her Rudi, which was clearly not laid-out.
Certainly, PERTO, Nastia’s “perfect” vault in the AA at the Olympics should have no deduction for distance from the horse.
Is Apolytongp now hiding behind the name “Gym”?
In regard to the perfect 10: I re-submit my comment from some previous post that a number is meaningless. It was only iconic because it WAS iconic. We will just get a new icon now, like every other evolving sport.
If the average fan tunes in and doesn’t understand that the highest score wins, and that 15 is higher than 14, that fan should stop watching TV and pick up a book. Preferably, a math book.
As far as the deductions being too low: Nothing matters but consistency. Consistency has always and will always be the problem, partly because, as pointed out already, it will always leave room for judgment (which is what judges do). Until vault becomes a speed competition and floor becomes a high jump competition, the subjective element will always be the crux of complaints as to why one girl won over another. But the closer to consistent the judging can be, the less of an issue this will become, because people can train with a better idea of the expectations.
I’d much rather see super-strict judging than seeing the judges go too easy on the gymnasts.
I’d like to see the legs apart on landing deduction only be taken when the legs are apart vertically. If they’re apart horizontally, I don’t think they should get a deduction in most cases.
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