Scandals in some Olympic events?

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

It seems like there is a problem with events like boxing, martial arts and some others where athletes who land a point are not being awarded it.

Has anyone else noticed this while watching? It has been discussed on CBC and I'll inclined to area. Some of the things are so obvious.
Like the boxers. One gets ahead in points and then just ties the apponant so they can't hit. This is not being called by the refs.

[ZFR]

There was a Polish wrestler (is that how it's called in English?) who lost this way.

But I wouldn't call it scandals. Referee'ing mistakes always happened in sports events and always will. And to tell the truth this time it's not the case that 99% of the referees' strangely happen in the hosts' favor

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

That's true, but I've seen a few boxing events where I thought the judges were color blind. The red player would score a hit and the blue player got a point; weird stuff.

[Ivelliis]

At work a few days ago we were talking about actually the gymnastics. I'm not moaning or calling the refs biased/cheats or whatever, but some competitors were making clear mistakes (nearly falling off the beam, slipping, bad landings) whilst some were flawless performances. I'm not saying I know much about gymnastics, nor the scoring, but when someone with a (as far as I can see) flawless performance gets 15.3, and someone who trips/looks a bit dodgy gets 17 odd?

And then a workmate talked about boxers not getting points for clear hits. I admit referee/scoring people can miss out a few things, but come on it's ridiculous!

[Cerek]

There has been a lot of controversy concerning the Chinese female gymnasts - from the allegations that two of the best are actually underage to some very obvious favoring in their scores.

Cheng Fuey(sp?) is the best example. Records from previous competitions showed her as being 14 this year, but now she is suddenly 16??? In the vault event, Cheng Fuey blatantly missed her landing, ending her somersault on one knee instead of both feet. This wasn't a matter of her taking step or hop, she never landed on her feet to begin with. Yet she tied the American girl who did land on her feet. Both of them had some minor technical deductions on their form, but the landings weren't even close to the same.

However, reporters and commentators all agree there is always bias for the hosting country. In 1996, the American gymnasts got the higher scores. It's just the way it goes.

Referees and judges are human and some events (like gymnastics) have a great deal of subjective voting due to the nature of the event. One judge might count off more for a minor step than another. But when a gymnast falls FLAT, there isn't much grey area.

[Luvian]

Why aren't judges from an international panel?

[Firestormalpha]

Unless somethings changed, they are an international panel. But typically the host country still gets favoritism. There was also an article on msn.com about a study claiming that judges tend to show favoritism towards the color red. Strangely the color red just makes me want to go grill something.

[Cerek]

Originally Posted by Luvian Why aren't judges from an international panel?

There is an international panel of judges for all competitions. However, no panel member can be a judge if athletes from their country are in the event. In other words, you can't have Chinese judges when the Chinese gymnasts are competing. This applies to all countries.

Bart Conners was explaining this the other night. He mentioned that, while this idea looks good on paper, what happens is you end up with judges from countries that do NOT have a strong gymnastic program. IE, you don't have judges from China, America and other countries with "powerhouse" gymnastic programs. Since the judges are from countries that don't have good gymnastics, they often miss minor mistakes that should be deducted, or they don't deduct enough for mistakes they do notice.

While that explains the situation somewhat, I think Bart is missing the obvious flip-side to his argument. If no judges from participating countries can judge an event, then you will ALWAYS have judges from the lesser known countries, which means you are going to have the same basic group of judges for most international competitions. So it seems like, even though their countries may be weak in gymnastics, the judges themselves would have to become pretty good since they would be getting the most experience.

Of course, I think what Bart meant was that judges are usually former gymnasts themselves, or at least are intimately familiar with gymnastics. Individuals that had participated in a very strong gymnastic program will obviously know what mistakes to look for better than those that didn't recieve the same level of background training.

Either way, a lot of the mistakes were not little slips or falters that could have been missed. They were very obvious balance checks, falls and landings being completely missed. Best thing to do is just realize this is part of the game and do your best to work with the system

[thecarrotdude]

Originally Posted by Cerek There has been a lot of controversy concerning the Chinese female gymnasts - from the allegations that two of the best are actually underage to some very obvious favoring in their scores.

I noticed the same thing. The Chinese gymnasts seemed to be getting very high scores when they sometimes performed worse than other gymnasts. I just put if off as having a lack of knowledge of gymnastics and its rules.

Originally Posted by Cerek There is an international panel of judges for all competitions. However, no panel member can be a judge if athletes from their country are in the event. In other words, you can't have Chinese judges when the Chinese gymnasts are competing. This applies to all countries.

This isn't true for all events though. In diving, there were US judges for US divers.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

We also need to factor in difficulty in the scores. 3.0 difficulty over 3.5 when scores are added and multiplied can make a big difference.

I also find that there can be a bit too much emphasis on the landings/entries etc. The rest of it should account for the greater part. I think with the Chinese girl though, her score was still too high.

It has also been said that the cheering of the crowd does affect the scores. Maybe they should be in a sound booth. The angle the judges are on has also had effect on the scoring 'cos they miss stuff.

Our Canadian girl in martial arts filed a complaint yesterday after her match, but didn't get anywhere. I think it's ok with them if they loose, but not due to errors in judging. That's a tough pill to swallow.

With those events and boxing, I believe all 3 judges need to see the hit for it to count. Two should really be enough.

And yes, I've heard the same thing about less experienced judges as well.