I just did a bit of geeking on the Gymnaverse Olympic spreadsheet for the 32 EF routines, and if you use the FIG released E Score as the “Expert” score, all of the Gymnaverse Panel judges would have been given an “Excellent” on the E portion of the exam. Which would have made all of us eligible to be R Panel judges at the Olympics… (don’t worry, I’m only half joking!). Of particular note are MRR and psi who both scored a 100% on beam, and yours truly with a 100% on FX/VT. Only one of us dipped below 90% on any one apparatus (psi on bars - and to be frank, we all pretty much agreed that FIG was too high for Suni and Seitz on bars anyway).
For most vaults, you can be 0.2 either side of the “Expert Score” to still get a 100%. For most hit bars/beam/floors (i.e. where the E Score is between a 7.6 and an 8.4), the tolerance grows to 0.3.
That means that, for a routine that gets an 8.0 E - you can give anywhere between a 7.7 and an 8.3 and still score 100% on that portion.
If the “Expert Score” drops to a 7.5 E, your tolerance is 0.4. Imagine being able to give a routine anything from a 7.1 to a 7.9 and still get 100%.
I’m surprised the tolerances are so wide. You’d really have to miss something spectacular, over and over again, to dip below a “Good” (which requires an average score of 80%).
I guess it is a bit easier to judge the top top routines, from home, without having to script - as opposed to the pressures of the FIG Intercontinental course. I hear that often the video quality is poor, the video skips without pausing, etc. And I’m sure they throw some curveballs in terms of routine quality etc. But the tolerances are actually really wide.
I am sure most of us armchair judges on the Forum could pass this exam if we weren’t required to script at the same time. To me, scripting is a pretty unnecessary hurdle to place on an E judge at the Olympic level. There are entirely separate personnel doing the D Score, with their own video review processes.