Bloggers, including this one, love to rant about how Bruno Grandi’s personal mission to push through an “open ended” scoring system will ultimately destroy the sport of Artistic Gymnastics.
How giving up the “perfect 10” was a marketing blunder.
If so, why are over 500 gymnasts entered at the 2010 World Gymnastics Championships?
If tie-breaking scores of 16.725 confuses mainstream sports media, why are 333 representatives of the written press, photographers and TV right holders coming to Worlds?
Why is that meet in Rotterdam selling out of tickets?
Though this is an unimportant World Championships for the top teams, I don’t recall more excitement about a Worlds, ever.
Gymnastike, Gymnastics Examiner and Gymnastics Coaching will all be there. Should be the best online coverage ever, too.
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Related – Ivan Cuk and Warwick Forbes – HOW APPARATUS DIFFICULTY SCORES AFFECT ALL AROUND RESULTS IN MENS ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS
• the open scoring system we use today was first proposed by Fink and Fetzer (1993)
• before before World War II, in some meets, the maximum score was between 11 and 16 points
• open scoring has caused one problem: the “relative weight” of the apparatus is not equal. In a 2009 study taken at European Championships, Vault was the most over-valued, Pommel the most under-valued. (i.e. it is very hard to get a high D score on the pommel horse, easier to obtain a high D score on vault)
• D scores predicted 84% of all-around final scores
Download that report for yourself (PDF) – Science of Gymnastics Journal vol.2, num.3, 2010
Gymnastics Coaching.com 