Olympics Frustration
By bobmnu
@bobmnu (8157)
United States
August 20, 2008 12:25am CST
The more I watch the Olympics the more frustrated I get. The final blow came with the individual competition in Gymnastic. There was a tie in the Uneven Parallel Bars between the USA and China. As the commentators talked about the tie breaking procedures and finally the judges, I was upset. With the medals on the line the gymnastics were judged by the least experienced judges and it seemed that one judge deducted more points than should have been deducted for the infraction.
This brought back memories of the winter Olympics of several years ago. It became know that only certain figure skaters were going to compete for the medals. Those skaters who had paid their dues to the sport would be scored higher than new comers.
Part of the problem is the scoring has never been understood by the fans. They talk of degree of difficulty of a routine and then execution points. Once the judging is done the next step is to throw out the top and bottom score. There are even rules for who can judge the different events.
In an attempt to explain the sport the media has hired former coaches to evaluate and comment on the contests. As these people explain what is happening and what faults the judges will deduct points for in the scoring it is becoming more confusing. As they point out errors and suggest what the score should be then the judges score it differently. More Confusion.
Do you feel that the rules and scoring should be changed?
1 response
@jonesy123 (3948)
• United States
20 Aug 08
As long as you have humans judging humans in a competition there is always room for errors and bias. I don't think that can be changed. They came up with the tie breaker because the IOC didn't want to award double medals in Gymnastics anymore after the Atlanta Olympics. I don't think the way it is calculated is particularly fair but as long as the computer was programmed correctly the result is what it is. Who competes has signed up to follow the rules and has to live with them even if they are to a disadvantage.
I hope that enough ruckus will be caused by this that the tie breaker scoring will be revisited and improved. Maybe they'll put away with it altoghether and give out double medals again. There can be more than one winner, there are in other events. The IOC should finally live and learn.


