Evidently, you can win a gold medal in gymnastics by not having the highest scores. Last night, the gold medal standing ended with a tie. With the new scoring system, a tie is broken by taking away the top and bottom score. Well, that still left the two gymnastics tied. The rule then was to take off the next bottom score. That gave us a winner. What is my gripe? Why do I care?
My issue is with taking the top score off to begin with. Why take the top score from an individual judge to determine the top athlete? Doesn't make sense to me! In the old scoring system, the top and bottom score were taken off everyone's score. That fair...but I still didn't like that the gymnast was not receiving the highest marks. The new scoring system gives the gymnast all the scores, highest and lowest. OK, fair. Then fairness is thrown out the window when there is a tie.
Now, it could be argued that the two top girls last night should not have received the same score. But since they did, I think the new scoring method screwed the silver medalist. All other contenders had their top score added to the mix, the top two did not. I do not see the fairness in that ruling. I could go on and on but I won't.
If it were up to me, the ruling would be as such: the tie breaker would start with the lowest score and work its way up until the tie was broken. We could have ended with the same winner last night, but I would have at least felt it was a fair win.
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2 comments:
My confusion had to do with the comment the announcers kept making: "You can't have a tie in the Olympics." Umm, yes, you can. It happened for the bronze in swimming last week. It's happened in ice skating. Or can you just not have a tie in gymnastics? The new scoring system had written that tie-breaker scenario into the rules. I don't agree with it, either. And I don't agree with what happened to Alicia Sacramone on vault the day before. :( I'm going to start screaming like Bela!
Yeah, I don't know if the new scoring in gymnastics is the only system that can't award ties. I am just ticked for the top scores in a tie, the system throws out a top score. If you are looking to award the top athlete, why take away a top score?
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