Olympic Outlook: Goodbye Perfect 10, Hello 15.65
May 28, 2008Occasional gymnastics viewers, those that tune in only during the Olympic Games (which, to be fair, are all but diehard fans), will be in for a shock on August 9, when gymnastics gets going at the Games and the scores they see look very, very different than in the days of Nadia.
“We need to reconnect with the American people and help explain to them how the sport has changed, how the Code has changed, how the scoring has changed,” USA Gymnastics (USAG) president Steve Penny implored the media. “Prior to the ’04 games there had been a push for the open Code, but people thought it was just crazy. … The real pressure was to try to hold onto the 10. Everyone thought that was just sacrilegious to dump that from the sport, but when the FIG (International Gymnastics Federation) did, all bets were off.”
Amongst those vehemently against losing the perfect 10.0, Bela Karolyi, coach of Nadia Comaneci, who scored the first Olympic 10.0 back at the ’76 Games and went on to earn seven perfect marks in Montreal, making her an international darling and legend in the sport.
“I, personally, thought it was the craziest, the stupidest thing on Earth,” Karolyi said of his first reaction when he heard of the new system. “To abolish a system which created Nadia, which created Mary Lou, which created the superstars we identify with perfection. … Gymnastics is a beautiful sport that has attracted so much attention through the years and the perfect 10 was [something] people had been cherishing and loving. I said, ‘It’s crazy to take that out and it’s a humongous waste.’ I still kind of feel that way.
“Maybe if Nadia hadn’t got that score back in 1976, a sensational and revolutionary moment in gymnastics, I would say that, yes, I’m wrong,” Karolyi added, “but she [ushered in] a totally new era in the sport of gymnastics, a totally new appreciation and excitement. … But, you know what, it’s part of the times. You better get on the train when you can, and that was Martha’s approach. She said, ‘Well, if that’s the case, we’re going to go after it. We’re going to work and we’re going to apply and we’re going to be ahead of the game,’ and she was right. She was right 100 percent.”
“Well, we could fight and argue against something, like some countries did, or we could be quiet and working and be ready for the change,” women’s National Team Coordinator Martha Karolyi explained of her early acceptance of the new Code. “Now, you know, I kind of like it. I think it has been very, very good, at least for [the U.S.]. There are some definite advantages.”
Even Bela sees some improvements under the new Code. “This crazy race we’ve had to raise the difficulty level, higher and higher and higher, we’ve finally had a break on it,” he noted. “In this new Code, … you can get the difficulty score not necessarily with [extra] somersaults or things like that. Particularly on floor exercise, you can do some beautiful artistic movement in order to get a strong value, … which is kind of nice. [That helps] some of the athletes that are not that strong physically … but are very artistic and coordinated.”
Though the USA was initially against an open-ended Code, when it was clear that was where the FIG was going, they quickly got on board, adopting the scoring system for all levels of gymnastics. (Only the women’s NCAA competition continues to cling to the perfect 10.0.)
“It changed three years ago and we’ve adapted,” Penny said. “The athletes have adapted, the sport has adapted, but the American public may not have adapted yet. Most of these folks haven’t watched gymnastics since four years ago.”
Penny and USAG hope to use the mainstream media to help educate those casual fans. “I, personally, feel the sport is easy to follow, because you can see the rankings and you can see [a] 14 versus a 15, versus a 16 [score],” he insisted, “but the average viewer is going to be wondering what the heck is going on and we need to help them in that regard.”
“It’s very unfortunate that you have to explain to everybody in the stands what is going on,” Bela bemoaned. “Still, when the score is coming up 17-point-something, it’s hard to take and hard to swallow.”
Penny feels the key to understanding the new totals are the clear posting of the “A,” difficulty (open-ended, combined total of the top 10 elements in a routine) and “B,” execution (all gymnasts start from a 10, and deductions for errors and form breaks are taken from there) scores for fans to see. “In the [United States] that’s what we’ve tried to do with our scoring, and I hope they do it at the Games,” he said, adding with a bit of a laugh, “this is where the FIG has to really pull its head into the right position. They have to help the audience know this is the “A” score and this is the “B” score … so that people can begin to understand that a little bit.
“The general viewer has a hard time detecting what is more difficult about gymnastics than something else,” Penny, never a gymnast himself, noted. “The execution is where, at some level, you can bring the audience back in. This is where the 10 still exists. If someone has perfect execution, they get a 10 in execution.”
One of the biggest problems, even for experienced gymnastics fans is that, until a meet is complete, it’s hard to know what a good score is under the new system. While a 15.1 is a decent score on some events, it’s a terrible total (indicative of a fall) on, say, men’s vault, something only a true insider would understand.
“You’re going to [see] somewhere between 9-10 in execution and somewhere between 5-7 in difficulty on your best routines,” Penny tried to explain.
Karolyi, at loss for words to make clear the event-by-event discrepancy, just threw up his hands and laughed: “Well, there are lots of things I don’t like.”
Karolyi does add that the new Code makes some inroads towards combating collusion amongst judges. “The old-style buddy and connections and those types of things, those are going to be around as long as human beings are involved, period,” he admitted. “But the introduction of the “A” panel and the “B” panel [which existed prior to the new Code,] limited the authority of one or two perverted judges to eliminate you. Besides, they are now asking to be involved neutral judges from countries that are not having athletes at all at the Olympic Games; … hopefully they’re going to have a much fairer view. There is improvement.”
But a new scoring system is just beginning of the changes in the sport since Athens.
Following the flap over judging errors, real or perceived, during the men’s competition—Yang Tae Young’s miscalculated Start Value during the all-around, Dimosthenis Tampakos’ controversial rings win and Alexei Nemov’s high bar event final score, in particular—video review was introduced almost instantly, and re-judging routines became, well, routine.
Longines developed the Instant Replay and Information System, better known as IRCOS, which captures every routine for immediate, frame-by-frame review. The system can also be used to evaluate judge’s overall accuracy. But how, and when, IRCOS is used has created its own controversy.
“There is a big push from all of the countries to remove the use of video from the field of play,” Penny advised. “It has not entirely been removed, and there are a lot of advantages to having video [but], back in 2006, they were using video almost constantly on the floor to judge routines. It meant that judges could go back and … go frame-by-frame and see what deductions should be taken, instead of just, by the naked eye, making determinations. Well, there was a lot of pushback around that. We, in particular, have been pushing that video should only be used in the case of an inquiry by a coach. We’ve pushed that pretty hard the last couple of years. … The current interpretation of using video is in the event of an inquiry OR if there is a discrepancy in between what the “A” panel believes and what the technical supervisor believes. Our mentality is that it should be used like an NFL red flag. The only time it should be used is if the coach or athlete feels their score is incorrect.
“I will say that, in the last couple of years, the FIG has done a good job of cleaning that up, … the women more than the men,” Penny continued on the use of video review. “There is a lot less time being taken to judge routines, but there could be situations in Beijing where you’ll see 10-15 minutes to get a score out, and how that will be received is very interesting. I will say that their goal is to give the right score to the athlete—that does seem to be the driving factor. What we saw at the last Worlds is that people are feeling good that the right athletes, are in the right place.”
