Tuesday 18 October 2011

Decoded?

The end of the 10 system was treated by many as the end of a golden age. And in many ways, it was. Gymnastics since 2006 has felt somewhat different, and in many ways less exciting. Gone are the days when a step on a dismount loses a medal, when an OOB knocks leaders off the podium and a wobble on beam spells a goodbye to a world title. Excitement on the level of the 1996 AA is lost: there is no longer such a thing as the underdog. In a hypothetical competition where all the competitors hit, the winner is pre decided on the basis of the much slandered open ended D-score.

But is this a bad thing? The debate about open ended scoring is too deep and complex to be considered in any single article. But broad brush statements can still be made. Although the above is true, there are definite benefits to the new system. We see far more exciting skills and a real push towards difficulty and technical ingenuity. The classic gripe of the gymnastics fan is to whether or not this comes at the expense of perfection.

Steliana Nistor being hit by a bus. Oh, wait...

I think pictures such as this represent perfectly the issues with the new code. Here we see Steliana Nistor blocking for a DTY, and resembling a mosquito squashed against a car windscreen. One would argue that the value of difficulty in the new system encourages skill chucking and discourages a fine tuning of skills. This certainly seems true in part for the past few years, but are we seeing a change in the tides?

In recent discussions of possible changes to the code, an idea that caught my attention was that of “D+2E”. Basically, that instead of a final score produced from a combination of difficulty and execution out of 10, the value of the execution score should be doubled before it is added to the difficulty so creating a system that favours the execution side of gymnastics in a throwback to years gone by. This sounds great in practice, but one has to ask the all important question: would it make any difference?

Being a big geek I decided to test this based on the scores from this weekend’s world championships women’s event finals. The following tables represent what would happen were the D+2E rule enforced with these scores.

Vault


Bars


Beam


Floor


I was shocked to find no change whatsoever to the medals. Why? Because in each discipline, the competitor with the highest execution score took the gold medal. This to me suggests that the code might be maturing into something that actually works, favouring both difficulty and execution. It seems that gymnasts and coaches have begun to see renewed value in perfection and are using it to win medals. Yes, the gold medallists also usually had the highest D scores, but the difference now is that they can complete all their skills to an impressive standard. This is, of course, a matter of opinion, but I believe much of the work we saw at this year’s world’s to be of the highest standard of its kind in years (particularly the gold medal winners on every apparatus).

Compare this to the event finals from the 2008 Olympics: with D+2E there would have been a change to every podium except bars.

Vault

YES ALICIA!

Bars


Beam


Floor


I think the times are changing. Execution is coming back.


Results all taken from www.gymnasticsresults.com. Apologies for any potential error in my calculations. Important note: I did not include penalties in the calculations which would certainly have an effect on the outcome but would surely be weighted differently in the d+2e system.

3 comments:

  1. Actually there might be another explanation. Its hard to get a high E score if your D score isn't high enough. (Vanessa Ferrari's FX in EF last year sticks out particularly). Judges seem to be more strict with routines of lower difficulty, even though the D and E panels should be completely independent. So most of the time, you still can't compensate for a lower D value and better execution because in all likelihood, your E scores are going to be low too.

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  2. That kind of bias is absolutely a problem I agree. Its a shame there is no way of the E judges not being able to tell the D score, but of course they have to watch the routine and so know.

    Its a real tricky one because it is hard to think of any solution. For now though I think it is a step forward enough if the routine that wins is difficult and well executed, even if not THE best executed overall.

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  3. Actually when I think about it a bit more it really isn't that bad. You are rewarding difficulty (opposed to the 10.0 system), and to win on top of that... you need good execution.

    I just wish they would clean up the whole execution scoring mess this quad, really differentiate between good form and bad ones, not just major mistakes. (Uchimura's E scores, travesty) Maybe that would encourage gymnasts to really clean up their forms, if they know they will be rewarded for it.

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