Steve Penny for it, Bela Karolyi against it:
[quote]
"Before, the space was so tight between a 9.6 and 10.0 value for a routine, it was hard for judges to clearly delineate," said Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics.
Still, the change, which took effect at the 2006 world championships, has been criticized by some of the sport's most recognizable figures, including Karolyi.
"Why they did it?" Karolyi, the legendary Transylvania-born coach, asked during an interview this week. "Why? Why take the simple perfect 10 out? It was so understandable. It was our trademark. The gymnastics trademark. It gave us such visibility and recognition.
"Now they pull it out and push in some complicated (stuff) that nobody understands. Not even the ones who are every day in the sport understand it. Just the other day I had a chat with coaches. ... They have no idea what's going on. It's terrible. Terrible."
According to the FIG, most of the scores then being compiled by elite gymnasts were crowded into such a tiny numerical range - how, for example, did a 9.6 differ from a 9.7? - that distinctions became harder and harder to rate.
"So where you had instances like you had in Athens, where controversy developed based on how audience perceived a routine and how the routines were being judged, (the FIG) felt like it was time to open things up," Penny said.
"The sport had gone beyond the 10-point system. Now they're able to easily quantify the skills without having to squeeze it into this one little space."
[/quote]
Karolyi doesn't like it at all:
[quote]
The new system, like the changes made in figure-skating judging, was intended to take some of the subjectivity out of the process. Each judge, theoretically, knows what a perfect skill looks like and can judge it accordingly.
But Karolyi believes one judge's vision of a perfect somersault might differ from another's view. And the "B" panel, he said, has too much power to interpret a performance.
"Tell me what is interpretation?" Karolyi said. "One judge may say, 'Oooh, I like it.' Another, 'I don't like it.' One might say, 'I like a stocky-style gymnast.' Another might like a long-style.
"There's more subjectivity than before. Not less. It's frustrating. The whole thing just tears you apart."
[/quote]
Exaggerating??!!
The new code of points gives more credit to the hard skills. Before, the Russian gymnasts doing a lot of risk-taking hard skills didn't get the points they deserved for it.
[quote]
The new system also provides each gymnast with a risk-reward temptation: The harder the element, the higher the points awarded. But miss it and the deduction is larger too.
"Someone before could obtain a nearly perfect score by doing safe elements," said Tim McNeil, a gymnast from Falls Church, Va. "It just didn't always show who the better competitor was."
Another result, perhaps an unintended one, is that the pressure to incorporate more skills leaves little time in a routine for the kind of artistic expression that made Comaneci and others so wildly popular.
"You definitely have to add more and more difficult things," said gymnast Jana Bieger, seeking a berth on the women's team that will be coached by Karolyi's wife, Martha. "You want to do the highest skills possible. But I think the new system actually benefits a gymnast like me because I never did too much (artistic) stuff."
[/quote]
The new limits on number of skills etc. for the 2012 Olympics will be a good addition.
Not like college gymnastics, which still has the 10.0 system - scores so close together, and it comes down to who had the extra step on the dismount and who stuck the landing.
[quote]
"At first, I thought it was a terrible idea," said McNeil. "Now, after using it for a while, I really do like it. It shows more separation in the athletes. With open-ended scoring, if the people who do the hardest skills do them cleanly, they'll win. Before, it was whoever loses."
All this change doesn't mean that the FIG won't make more. The organization reviews its rules and scoring policies after each Olympics.
"We have continuous changes to the Code of Points, though maybe not always this major," said David Durante of Garwood, N.J. "There are always changes and always new things to accommodate your routines to.
"You can have a great, brand new skill in your routine and think it's great, and get to the world championships and they tell you it's not worth anything. That is really tough to deal with. There's no set standard. It's always changing."
[/quote]
http://www.miamiherald.com/653/story/576086.html
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