And if we're confused, and we're the die hards, imagine the harm this is doing for those once in awhile viewers. I've had people ask me the last two years to explain the new system to them and I can't.
Gymnastics is the only other sport I follow on a regular basis, and last month's Worlds was the first gymnastics competition I watched since they replaced the old "perfect 10" system with
their new judging system.
I don't follow gymnastics as closely as skating, and I didn't think the NBC or CBC commentators did a very good job at all at explaining their new scoring system to those of us who haven't watched a competition since the 2004 Olympics. I kept asking, "What the &$%# is this?" every time the gymnasts received their marks...and every time gymnasts or coaches tried to appeal their marks to the judges.
So as a "once in a while" gymnastics fan, I can definitely relate to "once in a while" skating fans who react the same way after seeing COP scores...and even I'm just starting to understand the little details of how the skating COP works.
The old perfect 10 and 6.0 systems were definitely
not perfect, but they were definitely easier for most fans to figure out. And that's my main complaint about the new scoring system in both sports.
I still say there was nothing wrong w/the 6.0. It was the corrupt idiots using it that was the problem. They had a golden chance w/SLC to sweep things clean, but instead, they've created what will be the death knell to this sport.
The judging system had to be changed
somehow after SLC, and there are a lot of things I actually like about COP, especially the fact it forces skaters to work harder on their non-jump elements and the fact it's much easier for skaters to climb back up and win if they're not Top 3 after the SP. And I actually like the fact cheated/underrotated jumps are downgraded if it motivates skaters to work on the proper technique, although I agree they don't need to be downgraded as harshly as they were in this competition.
And while I may not fully understand
how the judges arrived at the final results, I've agreed with what those final results were, for the most part. I certainly couldn't say the same under 6.0.
But I wonder if there's any way the old 6.0 system could have been tweaked to incorporate those things
and clean up the judging...and I'm not talking about that horrible "interim" system used at 2003 and 2004 Worlds, either.
I just posted this in another thread, but I notice a lot of the Asian/Japanese networks not only display the total scores when skaters receive their marks, they also give a breakdown on the side of the screen explaining how many points were given for jumps, how many were given for spins and other elements, etc.
I thought this was a really good idea and I don't understand why the North American networks haven't picked it up. It certainly helped me understand COP better than any of the commentators have managed so far. And I'm willing to bet the average Japanese fan probably understands COP much better than the average North American fan right now because of it.
If 6.0 had to be replaced with a new scoring system, I wish they had chosen something more similar to the system used in diving and freestyle skiing. There seem to be a lot of similarities between those systems and the skating COP, but the main difference is those systems are a
lot easier to follow for those of us who only watch those sports every four years during the Olympics.
You don't need to be a diving expert to figure out why divers lose points when they miss their dives or why Diver A scored more points than Diver B, but unfortunately, that's not the case with skating or gymnastics these days. I wonder if the fact there's no "perfect" mark in either of those sports anymore has anything to do with it?
And could someone please explain how making the judges anonymous is supposed to
reduce judging corruption again?
hwell: ).
