Gymnastics President – “judging will never be perfect”

The best article I’ve seen yet on the new code of points …

Athens was a disaster for Men’s Judging. It was far, far better 4yrs later in Beijing with the new open ended judging scheme. The best were separated from the rest by the difficulty A-score.

But it’s not perfect:

… “The B panel is always the problem,” said John Roethlisberger, a three-time U.S. Olympian who is now the FIG’s athlete representative. “The B panel scoring is where they’re not getting that separation. … ”

Grandi has been harping on execution since the new code took effect in 2006, saying he didn’t want it to become an X-Games-like competition where gymnasts tried harder and harder skills with little regard for how they looked. There’s a reason it’s called artistic gymnastics, and Grandi said he will instruct the technical committees to make it an even bigger priority in the upcoming quadrennium.

“The new system is certainly not perfect yet, but we’re on a good way, taking us to a very positive solution,” he said. “The first thing we will closely have to look at is to make some corrections in the balance between difficulty and execution. At this time, we’re trending a little bit too much toward the difficulty.”

That’s fine to emphasize that, Roethlisberger said. But it seems as if too many judges are more concerned that their marks fall within the average than the mark itself.

“They need to get judges to judge the B panel the way it’s written in the code. I don’t know how you’re ever going to get them to do it,” Roethlisberger said. “Again, I’m not saying the results are wrong. That’s the part of the system—they’ve got to find a way to let judges judge, and not let them be worried about whether they’re in the average or not.” …

FIG President Gives Gymnastics Judges High Marks – Nancy Armour on Gymnast.com

Roethlisberger is right. Especially in the Women’s competition, judges “boxed” the B-scores. A fantastic routine scores 9.0 while an average routine scores 8.0. There should be as great a separation between the B-scores as the A-scores if execution is going to be weighted as important as difficulty.

Expect Australian judge Helen Colaguiri to box the scores next time after getting so much flack over a comparatively large 0.3 range between Ke Hexin and Nastia Liukin on Bars.

Chris Grabowecky, one Olympic judge not afraid to put up the score he feels is correct, regardless if the rest of the panel sees it differently.