Olympic Scoring

Amy · Post by **Amy** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 2:03 pm

Did anyone else see this last night? This story is talking about how strange the scoring has been in gymnastics (particularly men's gymnastics) during the olympics...

The kicker, though, was at last night's men's high bar finals, when Alexei Nemov of Russia, the defending Olympic champion, brought the crowd to its feet with a spectacular, crowd-pleasing aerial show. When the judges put up a score that left Nemov out of the medals, 9.725, the packed stadium started booing and whistling with a ferocity I've never seen at a gymnastics competition. It wasn't just Russian fans. Greeks, Americans, Italians -- all were incredulous that two of the six judges could have marked him as low as 9.60 and 9.65. The cacophony wouldn't abate. For more than 10 minutes the booing and whistling continued as Paul Hamm waited to do his routine. Then, incredibly and without explanation, the two judges who'd given Nemov the lowest marks upped their scores to 9.75. (Start value remained at 10.0, the highest possible.) Nemov's total now was 9.762, still shy of a medal.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/o ... index.html

This was pretty moving -- to see everyone support Nemov like that (He had an INCREDIBLE routine)...He should have had at least the silver, if not the gold. No one knows what the deal was with those judges...

A10Pilot3 · Post by **A10Pilot3** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 2:08 pm

They did that last year with the skaters remember? What a bunch of jackasses.

Amy · Post by **Amy** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 2:17 pm

Last olympics I didn't really follow at all...I think I was too busy getting ready for college at that time. I really wish there were some way to have a definite scoring system so there can't be those discrepancies. I really enjoy watching gymnastics and skating and all, but I really prefer the scoring system of timed races like swimming and rowing where it's not so subjective.

Bio-Hazard · Post by **Bio-Hazard** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 4:22 pm

I watched it last night also............

That sort of crap goes on every time in one event or another where there are judges..........

Most of them need to be taken out and shot. It used to happen during the timed events also before the change to electric timing............. :D Yes I'm that old.........

There was always someone screwing up with a stop watch...............

:

Amy · Post by **Amy** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 4:52 pm

u said it! I used to time at swim meets -- there would be 2 timers at each lane, and they would take the average of the 2 times to get the "official" time. If one was way off (it was usually obvious which one was off) or just screwed up, then they took the other person's time...

However, even the electric timers aren't quite perfect... I remember in Atlanta (I believe), a runner was accused of a false start, even though he took off after the gun went off because his reaction was too quick (like 100th of a second after the gun)... I guess nothing's perfect.