Topic: Subjective sports scoring

[hans]

Just finished watching the womens uneven bars finals and as a viewer and former athlete I'm really disappointed with results. They should have at least given them both gold medals but the larger issue is the stupid subjective scoring.

In most sports, you finish the race first, or score the most points and you win. There should be some sort of way to be more objective about the sport. Do this skill, get some points, do some other skill get a different amount of points. It just seems every olympics we have these stupid issues around the subjective sports. Like figure skating in the winter olympics a while ago, it just makes viewer upset. Maybe they should wait to score everyone until they all take their turns. Then they might be able to compare and give better relative scores if that's the way it has to be. But I'm still in favor of figuring out some sort of objective scoring system.

[PJYelton]

I'd think judges in gymnastics would argue that they are being objective.  Each skill is worth a certain starting value, and if they did the skill properly they get full exectution credit and if they didn't they get deductions.  Problem is there is just such a fine line between the different levels of deductions that its nearly impossible to represent a fair and honest score without spending hours on video analysis, hence the extra judges and the throwing out the highest and lowest scores.  Without making everyone do the exact same routine I don't see how it can get any more objective.  If one girl does a simple routine almost perfectly and another girl does a harder routine but makes a couple more minor mistakes, who should win?

I completely agree though that they should have been both awarded the gold medal.  Apparently thats a new rule, I think prior to the 2000 olympics they did share the medal if tied.

[Mike]

One of the reasons I didn't watch any of the gymnastics (that and 12 year old girls do nothing for me).

[ober]

(that and 12 year old girls do nothing for me).

They're not 12... most of them are actually in their 20's... they're growth is just stunted by all the stuff they do.

[Mike]

Ok lets just change that to "girls that look like they are 12 do nothing for me"

[ober]

Ok, agreed then.