Judging International Gymnastics from the comfort of your couch--Part 4

Finally!  I have time to post up answers to some of the questions that people have left on the other three blogs in this blog family of posts!  So, without further delay, I give you....

International Gymnastics Judging 101

~Q and A~

Flagday: I wondered what exactly was going on there...duh, it's added together!  So the first number is actually pretty much "objective", skills etc. are rated so if they do them then the difficulty level is there.  The second number is also "objective" to the extent that there is a set deduction for certain predictable errors.  So if they start at 10 then if someone gets a 9.5 they've probably make .5 worth of mistakes?

You got it!  You may have a recreational career as a judge, Flagday! 

Flagday:  By the way, I'm a big stick your landing kind of girl.  If you have some super fantastic trick but them you can't land it, I don't like it.  It ruins it for me.  Is that too harsh?

No.  That’s why a lot of people get ticked off that a gymnast who falls on a vault landing can be awarded a medal whereas another gymnast who sticks the landing perfectly seemingly gets cheated out of a medal.  It all comes down to the degree of difficulty score being so much higher that the gymnast who falls can afford to take that ugly deduction and still get on the podium.  Perhaps the fall deduction should be even greater than .80.  Hmmm…..

As far as the Olympics go, during the women’s vault finals, Cheng Fei’s second vault (called a Cheng Fei…it’s her signature vault), was not correctly judged and that caused a lot of hard feelings and harsher words.  Understand that it wasn’t her fault, it was the fault of the judges.  So, her first vault which she did extremely well scored a 16.075. 

The second vault was where she fell but she received a 15.050.  This is where it gets weird.  Her degree of difficulty score was a 6.5 meaning that if she performed that vault perfectly, she would have received a maximum score of 16.50.  However, she had five major problems with this vault:  (1) when she did her half-on onto the springboard, her hands were skewed; (2) when she did her half-on onto the vault table, one hand was in front of the other and that is a huge execution deduction of .80; (3) because of the previously listed execution deduction, she wasn’t square when she hit the vault table; (4) due to the amount of errors, she didn’t have a lot of dynamics; and (5) the landing was a fall and that is valued at a .80 deduction.  So, if you take the two .80 deductions alone off of the 10.0 start value for execution, here’s the math:  6.5 + 8.4 = 14.90, less than the 15.050 she received. 

That .15 difference, even when averaged with the first score, was just enough to bump her into the medal running and knocked out Alicia Sacramone who had performed two very nice vaults (lower degree of difficulty vaults, but very well executed).

Peachey:  Thanks for the education. Do they do the same thing for rhythmic gymnastics?

No.  Rhythmic gymnastics judging is an entirely different animal.  They have three different areas of judging: difficulty, artistry, and execution.  The difficulty and artistry scores are averaged and then added to the execution scores for the gymnast’s final score.

Butter:  This was very interesting and educational to read.  Thanks for sharing your knowledge :D How do you feel about that tie-breaker rule btw?

I believe a tie is a tie.....they certainly don't make track and field athletes have a tie breaker if two (or more) cross the finish line at the same time.  I think there should have been two gold medals and one bronze medal for the women's uneven bars.  Again, it has nothing to do with the countries....it has to do with how well an athlete performed.  

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to explain to a really young gymnast in her first big competition that even though she had the same score as somebody else, she is ranked lower by some complicated mathematical formula?  It was obvious looking at 19-year old Nastia Liuken's face that she was confused and hurt.  I know she's not going to look back on her excellent performance with a sense of accomplishment at how well she did, rather, she'll remember her bar routine (with a stuck landing) with a taste of bitterness because of the judge's tie breaker rules. And that's a shame.

JaneChu:  OH! also about sticking your landing... I remember hearing it from the commentators that during your landing, and you are too bent forward it can cause a deduction, right?

Yes, you are right.  If the chest falls below the hips, it can be a huge deduction.  So, stick the landings and stick out your chest!  Haha!

 

D.Y. Sao:  Shawn Johnson always lands feet apart.  y is that?

Let me answer this two ways because I’m not sure if you’re being specific to just this Olympics or just the way Shawn lands in general.   

(1) Gymnasts are taught that no matter where there feet are when they land they need to hold still…that’s called “sticking.”  If you have one foot slightly ahead of the other and you move it to match the other foot, then it’s a deduction.  It’s better to just salute, flash a beautiful smile at the judges and quickly get off the podium.

(2) If you are referring to Shawn Johnson’s sudden cross-over step that she took after her vaults during the Olympics, here’s what Tim Daggett said:  “The reason she’s been taking that cross-over step is because her shoulders haven’t completely squared at the end (of her twisting) and, as she’s landing, she’s trying to square them up and because of that she’s a little off balance and her weight shifts to the other side.”  So, because of the correction she makes to her last twist, she creates more momentum on her right and in order to avoid falling, she takes that cross-over step.  Hope that helps! 

Flagday:  I just made it through the bars part this morning.  You'll have to give your impressions of the performances in the next blog.  And also why judging can be so inconsistent.

As to why judging can be so inconsistent, well, that’s like trying to understand every human’s choices at that moment in time.  So, I cannot speak for how a judge feels on a particular day as to why they score a routine differently.  However, I have over many years made some observations about competitions that I have personally watched.  There have also been several times I have sat at the judge’s table on particular events (as a time keeper or score flasher) and it’s interesting that some of them will share details of what they’re looking for if they’re of a particularly social nature that day.

Personality traits of judges often play into why one judge may deduct more on a particular gymnast than another. There can be judges that have a particular thing they will deduct for regardless of how the gymnast otherwise performs.  This could be something like always keeping the legs together on tumbling passes (in particular, backhand spring series), or toe-point, or bent arms, or suit tugging (yes, tugging at the suit is a .10 deduction for each tug!).  We had one judge that visited our meets and deducted our little level 4’s (the lowest level in competition at the Junior Olympic level) for not taking the right amount of steps after saluting the judges and taking their position on the floor exercise before they even started their performance!!!  The gym owner gave me the job of making sure that that judge was never assigned to our home meets again!

Another point that I can lend some insight into is the view of the angle of view of the performance.  A judge doesn’t have a 360 degree view of the performance.  They usually sit to the side of the apparatus or are placed in two different spots (usually opposite of each other) on the floor exercise. So, depending on where they are situated in relationship to the gymnast, judge #1 at the far end may see deductions/faults that judge #5 sitting at the opposite end may not see.  It comes down to a matter of perspective, literally!

I bring up this point because of some competitions that I attended while my daughter was competing artistic gymnastics.  The most striking apparatus was the uneven bars.  I had witnessed countless routines while facing the sides of the bars because that’s the way they were situated at our gym and that’s the way they usually are situated at meets.  At Seattle Pacific University where this particular competition was taking place, they positioned the bars so that the audience had a 90 degree different view, a head-on view of the bars.  Sitting up in the stands I was amazed at how some of our team members couldn’t keep their legs together on their routine!  But from the side of the apparatus, it appears that their legs are together.  Unless a judge had a diagonal view of the gymnast, they might not catch the number of leg separations that I saw from the stands.  Let me just say that that was a revelation to me!

Still another point of observation from watching judges judge at competitions (yet another fun sport! Haha!) is that sometimes they don’t pay attention!  Yes, it’s true.  They’re human.  The judges use a special short-hand.  There are symbols representing what move/trick the gymnasts did and then there are annotations for deductions.  So, the judges literally have to short-hand write the routine they’re seeing and deduct, too.  Sometimes they glance down at their paper and that split second might result in not seeing another deduction that another judge would see because they were watching the gymnast at that point in time.

Now, at the higher level meets like Worlds, or Nationals or the Olympics, technology has tried to make it easier for judges.  At the Olympics, the judges had laptops displaying the gymnast’s routines.  This eliminated the need to write down, in short-hand, the routine they were seeing.  There is also video replay so they can replay the routine to see what they’ve missed.  I’ll talk more about this further down the blog.

You’ll also see judges “conferencing.”  That is, comparing or questioning a particular skill/deduction.  It would be the same thing if you and I were watching a particular gymnast’s performance and afterwards started discussing something of interest, like, “Did she have bent arms on her last giant?”

If it were possible, should computers do the judging, though, to eliminate all possible discrepancies or conspiracy?  No.  Why?  Because we would have nothing to discuss in great depth and with a fiery passion after the performance!

Joanne Sanderson:  Love the rings, but I understand why women gymnasts don't do it. It's my favorite event in the gymnastics routine.

The rings event is truly a strength event.  It simply comes down to men having more upper body strength than most women do.  Most gymnasts these days are specialists.  So few men are true all-around gymnasts meaning they can successfully compete on all six events in the men’s artistic program. There are quite a few gymnasts that only compete rings because of their body shape, training, and strength.    

In women’s gymnastics, the uneven bars are very, very difficult because it takes a lot of upper body strength to do the simplest of moves (like a kip).  The younger girls usually didn’t have too many problems because they were still small.  Their greatest difficulty came from getting the timing down on moves (for instance, when to straighten the arms so that they could finish their kip).  But when those girls reached puberty and that 12-year old growth spurt, their upper body strength suddenly wasn’t enough to hoist their greater weight on the bars.  It’s usually around this time period that lots of recreational gymnasts (and team gymnasts, too), decide to pursue other sports.

Seeker:  Watching the balance beam is always a nail biter, your descrīption makes it clear why! What event did your daughter feel most comfortable with when she competed?

She probably felt most comfortable, most of the time, on the floor exercise.  She really excelled at this event, had great musical timing, was very graceful and flexible, and her tumbling was beautiful to watch.  She still tumbles when she can at her gym and all the people who watch her still go, "Wow!!!" 

Flagday:  I combined these questions because they basically ask the same thing, in my opinion.  Where's the fudge factor?  Where can people get cheated?  I still have a question -- what was your beef with the judges at the Beijing Olympics?

Okay…there’s not only the pressure to qualify to the Olympics (or the World’s, or whatever…), but once you get there, you have to go through another qualifying competition.  The qualifying competition is three-fold.  It determines which teams will compete in the team finals, which individuals will compete in the individual event finals, and which gymnasts who are competing all the events will qualify for the all-around competition.  This qualifying meet is probably the most important meet of the competition.  If a gymnasts has a “bad day” at the qualifying meet, then there competition is over.

That said, the manner in which some gymnasts’ routines were treated by the judges during the qualifying meet was inconsistent.  Inconsistent bothers me. It leaves the judges’ decisions open to speculation and favoritism.  For instance, the judges now can re-watch the routine via instant replay.  With permission of the President of the Technical Committee, the judges can replay the routine in slow motion.  This can lead to over-evaluation of the routine (i.e., nit-picking the routine until a whole lot of errors can be discovered to justify a lower score).  Micro-managing just one gymnast or one country’s gymnasts is unfair.

During the Olympics Men’s All-Around finals, this method was over-used and abused by the rings judges.  Now, rings are one of the easiest events to judge.  It’s not quick like the pommel or vault events.  Yang Wei who ended up being the All-Around Men’s Champion, had his nearly-flawless rings routine picked apart and viewed in slow motion.  Why?  Who knows….but it was unnecessary and caused a huge delay in the meet.

It should also be noted that the rings judges also devalued two of the US men’s rings routines start values using this same method during the highly coveted Men’s Team Finals.  Unfortunately, their routines were not shown on NBC so I’m not sure of all of the technicalities.

Another huge problem with the current way of judging is that of fixing one historical judging problem which then creating another.  The problem that the judges fixed was removing any biasness of judging.  For instance, if an event has gymnasts from China, the US, Japan, Russia, and Romania, no judges from these countries can judge this event.  Who’s left?  These are power-house gymnastic nations with top level judges!  Well, that unfortunately leaves judges that aren’t as qualified, judges that don’t consistently see top level gymnasts…how many judges in countries like Estonia or Argentina see uneven bar routines with a degree of difficulty value above a 6.0?  Probably not many and because of this inexperience, huge mistakes take place.

Thank you, everybody, for your interest into one of my passions.