Friday, August 08, 2008

The Olympics vs. The Perfect 10

What a travesty!

From YahooNews,

"Four years after a series of scoring errors marred the competition at the Athens Olympics, fans who tune into gymnastics once every four years are in for a big shock Saturday. The perfect 10 is passe. Fifteens, 16s—maybe even a, gasp! 17—are all the rage."

Like Fahrenheit, I think it's more accurate, but I don't like that there is no offical perfect score. How do I gauge the creepiness of the Russian gymnasts?

"The FIG’s solution was an open-ended scoring system. Unlike the 10-point scale, where evaluations of artistry and difficulty had to be jammed together, each now gets its own space and, theoretically at least, there is no limit on how high a gymnast can go.

The first score, the difficulty mark, measures how hard the routine is. Starting from zero, the values of the 10 hardest tricks in a routine are added together. The harder the routine, the higher the difficulty score will be.

The second mark is for execution. Starting from 10—the FIG’s way of claiming the 10 still exists—deductions are taken for errors big (wobbles) and small (bobbles).

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