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IG Editor Dwight Normile is blogging from the 2009 World Gymnastics Championships at the O2 Arena in London.  While scanning the hundreds of scores from the women's qualifications here in London, I realized something odd. The results sheets included zero scores above 9.0 for the E-score (execution). And how many scores of 9.0 appeared? Two: one each for American Kayla Williams and North Korean Hong Un Jong on vault. What shocks me most is that I saw some very good routines that would have scored 9.5 and above under the old 10.0 system. I've always promoted clean execution over difficulty, but aren't these execution scores a bit severe? At the least, they have to be discouraging to the gymnasts, especially after they absolutely rock a routine. Before the open-ended Code of Points was unveiled in 2006, the quickest path to a high score was supposed to be through clean execution. But now that the deductions have been ramped up, the D-scores (difficulty) have even more clout. Uneven bars leader He Kexin, for example, had a 7.10 D-score and 8.875 E-score. Some gymnasts actually had higher D-scores than E-scores. The men's scores were more realistic, with numerous gymnasts cracking the 9.0 barrier, and well into the mid-9.0s. It's a pity that men's and women's gymnastics is judged so differently right now. This new Code was supposed to restore artistry by emphasizing execution over difficulty. The best way to do that is to lower the value of the D-score as severely as the E-score is being evaluated. Your thoughts? Comments (5)
Susanna Bucci
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... I agree. Instead of improving the Code, officials are making a bigger mess of it. Just simplify the darn thing! Assign skills a value from 1-10, add them up at the end of the routine, and there's your score. No need for confusing decimals and debates about Start Values. A sport as beautiful as this should not be so confusing for the athletes, coaches, and especially the fans.  |
Haylie
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... If there are deductions they should take them off. The judges are doing it right. This is a different code . Did you really just tell the judges to ignore the form breaks and bad execution? wow. I would think a gymnastics magazine would expect fair judging |
Vicki
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... The problem with gymnastics' judges is that they have a tendency to lump everybody's scores together: in the 90's all the top gymnasts had scores in the 9.9-10 range (which is one of the biggest reasons for the demise of the perfect 10 scoring system); for a while they scored everyone around 9.7, then low 9 range, now 8 range. The whole point of execution scores is that they should highlight the DIFFERENCE between gymnasts' performances. It doesn't help to bring everyone's scores down but still close together: a sloppy routine should absolutely score in the 7 range (or worse) but a well-done routine needs to score much higher than that. Having said that, aside from He Kexin, I have not seen many routines that deserved to score above 9.0...I think the judges are trying to learn though. |
Tupelo
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... I don't think anyone said anything about ignoring poor form and execution. I think he was looking at the routine fairly and saying it probably had not more than 5 or 6 tenths deduction, and yet somehow the judges are pulling out low to high 8's. As picky as a judge as I am, and knowing most of the deductions and requirements here, I think I saw ONE routine that I could take no more than 6 tenths from and somehow there was 1.1 taken off. That happened in the last quad, as well, Nastia's vault and beam being the routines off the top of my head that had little to no deduction. |
Robin
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... I agree that this new system is confusing. I especially had a difficult time following it when I was watching the Olympics on TV and the D-score, E-score, AND another score were flashed on the screen. I think this was mostly on floor, where the third column was for out of bounds deductions, but I don't remember. I suppose that such penalties aren't difficulty errors, but they're not quite execution errors, are they? Just seems like there should be a simpler way. Kinda miss the good ol' perfect 10 system. |
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