- Joined
- May 15, 2009
INHO they don't entirely get away with it. I think gymnastics has the same problem. in part. as figure skating.
However, gymnastics does have sort of a do-or-die moment at the end of the routine -- the dismount. The crowd yells, "Stick it!" She does!! Yay!!! Give that girl a prize!
What the general audience cannot judge is the difficulty of the routine. In that respect, sometimes the audience can't tell who won or lost (or why) until the computer tells them, just like skating.
But even then gymnastics scoring has an advantage. They announce at the beginning, "If performed perfectly, this routine has a difficulty value of 13.5." Then throughout the routine the announcer can say, "Oops, that little bobble will cost her a tenth of a point off the 13.5 mark." If the audience keeps track, it makes perfect sense to them when she ends up with a score of 11.7.
I could not agree more with you. I know less about gymnastics than skating but am able to understand the scores much better than skating these days.
At the Olympics Komova made a mistake on her dismount and her score was still good. We then heard "she had the most difficult routine with the higest point value so her score seems fair."
Even Scott could explain that pretty easily......