Changes you’d like to see in the 2025-2028 Code

[RAFIKI]

The British judge really didn’t like Domi’s floor in Atlanta finals!

The 14 year old Moceanu-obsessed me was upset with this judge for a long time

 

[GymBeauty]

“For example, I am very much in favor of long Uneven Bar routines that have lots of half-turns” - Really?

A routine should be unpredictable. Which direction the gymnast is going to go, how they get into handstands, at what point in the routine they transition between bars and what methods they use to do it, how many total moves they are going to do, when the dismount is going to come - all of these things used to be so much more dynamic.

The lengthy 2008 era routines are what we should be seeing from the apparatus, combined with the 90’s era freedom to do many more types of moves and to be rewarded for more types of connections.

Regarding half-turns, look at the medal winners in 2008 - all of them have at least 3 in the routine (and also 1.5 turning pirouettes). Amy Chow’s 2000 routine had 4 and most routines from 1997-2008 had at least 2. Now these things are something to be avoided since they only lead to deduction, but that’s not how it should be. We need an environment that promotes routines being completely different from each other, with gymnasts being able to show all kinds of different moves without fear of it being crazily punished. Intricacy and personality should be welcomed, not this dull “do 8 skills with as little inbetween as possible and no real sense of tempo changes, no interesting mounts, only shaps to get up to the high bar, no extra flair on a skill since it means nothing”.

We can’t give out Olympic gold medals based on “good” and “very good”.

We can, and did for decades. Obviously there is more nuance than your description though.

The point of a judge is to provide an opinion that should be among the most informed and fair in a field, to RANK the various routines in the best way possible, and thus provide the most accurate competition result. Examples can be distributed of what constitutes great quality within gymnastics and what deserves to be seen as better. It’s up to the judge to recognize those things in the performances they see and score the ENTIRE performances in relation to each other.

Looking at parts of a routine in a vacuum isn’t enough to tell the story, particularly when poorly fabricated numbers are being used to quantify each part. The attempt to quantify various qualities within gymnastics is something that will never be fully accurate on paper. An overall understanding of gymnastics is always going to be the best determiner of what is truly more difficult or aesthetic. Just because the rules currently say a pirouette with 2 turns around the bar and finished at 46 degrees is worth nothing (E element with .5 deduction), that doesn’t mean anybody actually believes this element was less impressive and less worthwhile than a basic Giant swing to handstand (B element).

So in the case of that pirouette example, less severe deductions and better assessment of skill value (let’s say it deserves F value and .3 deduction for the angle, and a Giant should just be A value) definitely helps to create a more correct judgement of the routine. Now the skill is worth .3 total in the routine, compared to .1 for a giant swing. A far better assessment than 0 vs .2! But there will be constant instances where the numbers simply don’t line up “correctly”. They should be something of a guideline, with the judge being able to modulate the numbers more logically if necessary, adding or removing borderline deductions at the end, so the comparative end score feels accurate.

I will give another example that’s relevant to the situation. Let’s look at awards for films. The amount of nominations you give each film does not mean that’s exactly how much you like each one. You can’t just look at each prescribed category in a box and add it up and that’s the answer. There are intangibles and things that don’t fit into an exact formula, no matter how accurately you try to weight each aspect. The most correct answer is the one that is reached with the ability to intellectually reason without borders, drawn from life experience, and from perspective. Judging art is complex and gymnastics is supposed at least partially be judged as art.

 

[KristyJ]

I would argue that a refinement of the numbers used to evaluate a routine (instead of “poorly fabricated numbers”) should mean a judge can both judge accurately to the Code of Points and also award the best routines.
Putting back in .05 increments alone would make judging much more accurate. The .1, .3, .5 option at current is like trying to do a fine motion with a blunt club, but more precise options in both execution and artistry would allow the deductions and quality of the routine to match more closely.

 

[Doug1233]

That’s a long post with no actual recommendations.

How should the artistry of a routine be quantified and put into the gymnasts score? It cannot not be quantified.

 

[Denn]

@GymBeauty You said you wrote up a Code of Points. Can you share that?

ETA: I agree with a lot of what you said in principle. The devil is in the implementation though.

 

[Denn]

One possibility, never explored but which would address so many issues, is to allow judges to adjust the base value of an element directly instead of reporting D and E scores separately. Here’s how it could look:

• 0 no errors
• -.05 Small errors, but worth including instead of an element 0.1 less in value
• -.1 Small errors; exercise would have been equally good with an element 0.1 less in value
• -.2 Enough errors that a lesser element would have been a better choice
• -.3 …
• etc …
• -1.0 Dangerous (could lead to injury) or fall
• -2.0 So dangerous that it should not have been attempted

Bonuses:

• connection bonus would be added in here directly
• +.1 bonus can be added to any rating if the element is done in a “special” way: amplitude, signature variation, part of a creative combination, etc.

Other rules and guidelines to make this work:

1. The eight best elements would still count, but after the adjustments
2. Elements with negative values would count first, e.g., an ugly Back Handspring worth -0.2 or an element with a fall
3. A creative series of 3 or more A or B elements could count of as a C (and possibly get bumped up to D using the “special” +1.)
4. Dismount and vault landings might need to be evaluated as separate “elements” since there’s so much to evaluate in a landing and because we traditionally care about dismount and vault landings more.
5. You could continue average the middle scores to address some of the inherent subjectivity, but a nice possibility would be to average middle scores for each element This even could (easily) be done in real time on screen the way skating scoring is done.

This kind of “guided subjectivity” would HUGELY simplify judging, leveraging real experts who know what good gymnastics involves vs people who may or may not have that expertise but who are great at keeping track of and applying mega-complicated rules spread across hundreds of pages of documentation.

 

[Doug1233]

There comes a point where too much subjectivity becomes an issue and leads to money under the table and back room deals, and favouritism and leotard bonus (more than we even have now) because there’s no accountability.

It’s a very fine balance. Personally, I’m not a fan of involving base value changes for E scores. I could potentially get on board with it when determining D Score (or at least CV). The formulas are often too… formulaic. A series on beam with a Tuck Front (D) is usually more difficult than a series on beam involving a Side Aerial (D).

 

[dweiss324]

It feels like a pendulum swing effect where you have strict and punishing objective rules and herd mentality/fear. Obviously the opposite of “total subjectivity with no accountability” is not ideal either (hello NCAA). Finding a more middle ground balance is warranted, which may or may not be what GymBeauty is saying… But yeah it makes sense to me that a professional judge should be able to take into account rational rules and objective deductions, while still allowing for a hyper-qualified subjective lens to differentiate routines. There should be some level of holistic evaluation. That feels to be missing from the current code. The fact that execution/artistic/technique/composition bonus is not a thing in an open ended code is beyond baffling. This of course should be upheld by total transparency and evaluation (and consequences) for judging scores by oversight committees. If you’re a professional, prove it. Judge routines in a way that stand up.

 

[Doug1233]

We all want this.

But we need numerical rules that put it into effect. And therein lies the problem.

 

[YurchenkoLoop]

1.5 and 2.0 pirouettes should be hit with -0.1 ( >30-45 degrees from vertical) or -0.3 (>45 degrees) only, exempt from -0.5

Uneven bars used to be the event with the most surprises. Now it’s arguably the most predictable

Though bellybeating and all that wasn’t healthy, I miss this



bring back turns on the tap

 

[arabiandoublefront]

I think I would like the presence of artistry to be additive, rather than the lack of it subtractive.

 

[KristyJ]

I feel like the skating version of “the amount of the value of the score you receive is reflective of how well you performed it” is possible with deductions, as well, if they are then taken as a percentage of the score value instead of the specific tenths we are used to now. A minimal error might be 20% of the value, a small error might be 40%, medium 50-60%, large 80%, and you-shouldn’t-have-tried-it gets no value. Or perhaps something with more nuance than that. That would be a massive change in how we handle scores, though. Perhaps 20% additive value if a gymnast does a skill superlatively well, though I think we’d need to address some of the criteria that might involve because bias does play in at that point. In skating GOE is often as political as the artistic score.

 

[Denn]

Yep, and that idea is essentially what I was outlining. I think the percent approach is a little flawed because it doesn’t take into consideration what you turn the value into whereas I think judges could easily learn to say “Yeah, that’s an E skill, but with the errors, it feels like it should be worth ___”.

BTW, with a system like this, it’s still easy to evaluate judge accountability — if a judge’s element scores are thrown out above a certain threshold for a given routine, that’s bias. If a judge’s element scores are thrown out a above a certain threshold for all routines, that’s either bias or incompetence — and either way, they’re not judging again.

I feel like all coaches could be trained on such a judging system by the way. Now, nope.

 

[makam]

If a judge’s element scores are thrown out a above a certain threshold for all routines, that’s either bias or incompetence — and either way, they’re not judging again

…or they are the only one applying the rules as written and the other judges are the actual problem. I believe it has been mentioned (here or in figure skating, don’t recall) that judges often temper their deductions to what they think the majority will take so they stay in range. Maybe that horrible routine racked up 4.5 points of E deductions but you know most of the panel won’t take more than 3.5, so you adjust to match so you don’t lose your job. If someone is strict across the board, that is better IMO than someone who is lenient across the board.

I know we like to argue scores but, generally the placements end up where they should. And even when they don’t, it is usually possible to make a case for the result.

 

[MaryClare]

The judges are no more used to marking for artistry than the coaches are for remembering that it matters

 

[Denn]

That’s simply incorrect. The judges are required to systematically go through each item in the artistry list at the end of the exercise. For some competitions, they literally enter data in a spreadsheet with columns or rows for each category

 

[Denn]

…or they are the only one applying the rules as written and the other judges are the actual problem. I believe it has been mentioned (here or in figure skating, don’t recall) that judges often temper their deductions to what they think the majority will take so they stay in range. Maybe that horrible routine racked up 4.5 points of E deductions but you know most of the panel won’t take more than 3.5, so you adjust to match so you don’t lose your job. If someone is strict across the board, that is better IMO than someone who is lenient across the board.

You’re totally right to question this, but there’s three important differences between what I proposed and the 4.5 vs. 3.5 scenario you describe:

(a) The scoring would be by element, not routine. It’s easier to “get it right” without cheating or tempering for one element than for a whole routine.

(b) The rules I propose are more intuitive. It’s easier to “get it right” without cheating or tempering when the rules match intuition; the current rules are counterintuitive.

(c) The rules I propose are far, far, far simpler, not requiring hundreds of pages of documentation. It’s easier to “get it right” when you are using rules that are easier to remember and apply.

 

[Denn]

BTW… We could easily test this out.

Does someone want to suggest, say, a bars final where the scoring didn’t seem to work? And for which we have good video…

We could set up a spreadsheet and ANYONE could participate — no special skills required. Just good gymnastic sense!

After doing a bars final, we can bring up the 1-point artistry rubrics we made years ago and do a beam or floor final.

 

[makam]

I’d say the 4-way tie is a good place to start…

 

[RAFIKI]

That was the first one that came to mind for me as well.