Judging International Artistic Gymnastics from the comfort of your couch--Part 1

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International Gymnastics Judging 101

~Basic Knowledge & A Quick History~

Another Olympic artistic gymnastics competition has come to a close.  For those folks hiding under a rock, this year the Olympic competition took place in Beijing, China.  For those viewers at home (or in the stands) that only see high-calibur international gymnastics once every four years, you might be wondering what happen to the perfect 10.0?    Well, quite simply, it doesn't exist anymore. 

Nadia Comaneci of Romania receives the very first perfect 10.0 in the 1976 Summer Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada.  Back then, the display equipment was not designed to go about a 9.99, so her score of 1.0, really a 10.0, caused quite a bit of confusion at first.

The 10.0's days were numbered when during the 2004 Athens Summer Olympic games there was a huge controversy involving an error in S. Korea's gymnast Yang Tae-Young's parallel bar routine.  The judges had given it a start value(1) of 9.9 instead of a 10.0.  Because of this error, Paul Hamm ended up with a higher all-around score to take the men's all-around gold medal.  Due to S. Korea's not filing an inquiry DURING the meet and after months of IOC deliberation, Hamm was allowed to keep his gold medal. 

An ecstatic Mary Lou Retton finds out her vault was scored at a 10.0 during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California...look out Wheeties!

I think the F.I.G. (Federation of International Gymnastics) realized that the 10.0 was a ceiling; fixed, with no room for growth in the sport of gymnastics.  Similar to diving, a new Code of Points was adopted and a degree of difficulty score for a routine was put into place for international competition in 2006 which would eliminate the aforementioned scoring cap thus leaving room for the sport of gymnastics to grow.  Using two panels of judges (Panel A and Panel B), a gymnast's score suddenly became a mathematical nightmare for everyone, including coaches and athletes.  It doesn't have to be a nightmare, though, for the average gymnastics viewer.  Let's break it down:

Panel A consists of judges that are like teachers from school correcting tests.  Each gymnast's routine is submitted to the panel at the beginning of the meet and then reviewed by the Panel A judges to make sure that the degree of difficulty submitted matches the intended routine.  During the routine's performance, the judges then make sure that the gymnast actually performs all the skills that they said they were going to perform.  If they don't perform those skills (due to a fall, a failed connection, deliberate omission, fewer twists/revolutions or whatever), the judges then have to recalculate the routine's difficulty and come up with the actual degree of difficulty, usually a lower number.

Panel B consists of judges that use the 10.0 score but in terms of execution.  You'll hear the commentators refer to a gymnast's second score as the execution score.  Every gymnast that performs has the capability to score a perfect 10.0 but in execution of the routine only.  But if a gymnast makes a mistake, the judges have a set value of deductions that they are required to take.  For instance, a gymnast takes one step out of bounds on the floor exercise--this results in a .10 deduction which lowers the execution from 10.0 to 9.9.  If that same gymnast during the floor routine has separated legs during their back-hand spring series, another deduction can be taken.  Sometimes there's a range that the judge can take for certain deductions.  If a gymnast is on the balance beam and slightly corrects a balance check, the judge can take a .05 or .10 deduction.  However, if that same gymnast is wildly waving her arms in great big circles trying to stay on the beam, the judge can take .30 or greater.  After a routine, the number of deductions are subtracted from the 10.0 start to come up with a gymnast's execution score.

All-around Men's Gold medalist Paul Hamm from the U.S. is flanked by the S. Korean silver and bronze medal winners of the controversially judged 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

What the heck is a 15.125 score?  When Panel A and Panel B scores are added together, then we see some funky numbers that seem to have no meaning.  But really, the new score is a result of adding two numbers together.  Understanding what those two numbers are will help viewers assess whether or not they agree with the judging of that gymnast.  For instance, perhaps Panel A said that the gymnast's routine had a difficulty of 6.8.  Panel B, the execution judges, deemed there were deductions that, when averaged, resulted in an execution score of 8.325 (evidentally, there were a lot of errors in this routine example!   )  At the 2008 Olympics, a good score for most events was anything over a 16.0. 

The incredible Russian gymnast, Alexie Nemov, in an all-familiar release move above one of the most crowd-pleasing men's events:  the high bar.  Does anybody remember the judging fiasco on the high bar event final during the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece?  In one of the most amazing, release-packed high bar routines ever witnessed, the judges awarded Alexie a 9.725 which caused the whole arena to errupt in a 10-minute booing.  Alexie, himself, tried to quiet the crowd so that the next gymnast could perform his routine without distraction.  Because of the displeasure of the crowd, two of the judge's scores were recalculated and Alexie's score was raised to a 9.762 but that still left Alexie out of the medals.  Another bitter moment of poor Olympic judging....

Who are the judges?  Judges at international competitions are people who have been tested and have successfully passed exams in judging therefore resulting in various judging certifications.  A judge has to work up from the lowest compulsary testing all the way to elite standard testing.  They are selected for various international gymnasts events and are usually randomly assigned to judge a particular event so therefore they must be proficient in judging all events.

But, let's step back in time for a moment.  Does anybody remember watching gymnastics on the television during the 1970's and 1980's?  My heart would go out to any western gymnast who was being judged in an event that was dominated by eastern European-block country judges.  There was so much room for playing favorites when the judges consisted of E. Germany, USSR, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, etc.  Maybe there'd be one British judge.  Anyway, if it was obvious to me, as a youngster, to see a Japanese, an American, or a West Germany gymnast to have significantly lower scores than their communist counterparts, it was probably obvious to everybody else involved in gymnastics at that time, too (note:  China had not yet entered into international gymnastics competitions).

Nowadays, In order to avoid obvious cheating, the current practice in Olympic judging is to not include on any of the judging panels a judge who is from the same country as the competitor in the event.  The goal is to be as neutral as possible.  One of the downsides, though, in my opinion, is that some of these judges are not as experienced because their own country's gymnastics programs are not on the same level as some of the current gymnastics power-house nations.  These judges may only see top level gymnastics 2 or 3 times a year in competition.

However, the judging committee tries very hard to make sure all judges are judging consistently.  Before a high-level meet, the judges actually judge a non-participant on each event (a Guinea Pig gymnast, if you will) and then have a pow-wow about what the head judge wants them to look for.  This is to try to get the judges to all be on the "same page" when the actual competition begins. 

Nastia Liukin of the US performs a one-arm pirouetting giant on the Uneven Bars event finals at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

Part 1 Conclusion:  Judges are human, believe it or not (!), just like the athletes and coaches.  I believe that everybody does the best they can to make sure a gymnastics meet goes smoothly and fairly but it's inevitable that there will be some conflict.  When all of the discussion, name-blaming, and rage dies down, the only person who will truly remember how they were treated after their performance is the athlete. 

In my next blogs, I'll get into how you can be a judge from the comfort of your couch without having to know everything there is to know about judging. 

1  Prior to the newly adopted Code of Points, a start value was based on the athlete's routine's difficulty.  Gymnastics skills, combinations, and connections were broken down into skill levels (A, B, C, D, E, & F).  The more difficult the skill, say a D, the higher the value.  These values were added together.  Note that each level of competition from the compulsary levels of junior olympics to the elite levels have mandatory requirements for a routine.  Within these mandatory requirements there's a list of skills to choose from that would meet each mandatory requirement.  For instance, on beam, gymnasts are required to display a jump skill.  They can choose to do a wolf jump, ring jump, or sheep jump (all three of these jumps have different degree of difficulty values).  So, if the start value is only a 9.9, there was no way the judging panel can award anything higher than a 9.9.  The start value was the "perfect" score and then the deductions were subtracted by the judges when they saw less than perfect performance.