Category: judging

interview with Morinari Watanabe

Dwight Normile:

The December 2016 issue of International Gymnast features an interview with Morinari Watanabe, who will succeed FIG President Bruno Grandi on Jan. 1, 2017. …

On how to improve the popularity of gymnastics…

To those who are not familiar with gymnastics, it is hard to understand what is excellent in gymnastics or why those scores are given. In such circumstances, the number of fans will not increase. I will transform a gymnastics competition into one that is easy to understand and exciting for everybody. …

FIG President-Elect Morinari Watanabe Has Innovative Plans

Morinari Watanabe

deciding Baseball balls & strikes

Sooner or later Baseball will use #RobotUmps rather than human beings when deciding whether a pitch was a strike.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

A machine called Hawk-Eye decides whether Tennis serves are in or out.

Trampoline uses both technology and human judges to decide score. I’m looking forward to Artistic Gymnastics doing the same.

triple salto vaults banned in 2020 MAG Code

No triple salto vaults (forward or backward) will be permitted for value in the 2017-2020 Code
of Points.

FIG MTC newsletter Nov 1, 2016

Good decision. Especially in comparison with WTC – still encouraging badly performed and dangerous double salto vaults for women.

Congratulations Elena Davydova

Elena is the 1980 Olympic Champion. Coached Kristina Vaculik to the 2012 Olympics. And judged Floor in Rio.

And she was recently elected to FIG WTC.

related – Amanda Turner – Padurariu, Canada Dominate Olympic Hopes Cup

Beam skills upgraded in the 2020 Code

A few examples:

• 3 flying flairs upgraded from a C to a D.

• Split leap fwd (leg separation 180°), upgraded from an A to a B.

• Split jump (leg separation 180°) from cross position, upgraded from an A to a B.

• Straddle pike jump (both legs above horizontal), or side split jump from cross position, upgraded from an A to a B.

• Walkover bwd, with support of one arm, upgraded from an A to a B.

• Free (aerial) cartwheel into salto bwd tucked, upgraded from a D to an E.

wogymnast

Komova, split leap on beam

related – Beam Skills Which Got Downgraded And Which Are No Longer In 2017-2020 CoP

NBC scoring colour code

NBC anchor Tim Daggett in London:

“We have our own little scoring reference,” Daggett explained several times throughout the Olympic competition, “1.2 deductions or less, [the score is] green; it’s a go score. It’s great. Then there’s cautionary… And then there’s red, and that is obviously bad.”

NBC scoring key

Elizabeth Stranahan – Pushing perfection: Exploring activity systems through elite gymnastics scoring (PDF)

In that thesis Stranahan weighs the pros and cons of NBC trying to simplify the new (2006) Olympic Gymnastics scoring.

Personally, I like it.

When I next saw Tim I made a point of telling him that the colour code truly does help the general public. The very worst thing about the Code change was losing the marketing value of “Nadia’s perfect 10.0.