After reading
The All Around's post about the artistry course at the World Championships, I had to write this letter…
Dear Ms Kim and Fellow Members of the Women's Technical Committee:
This moment in gymnastics history has been coming for quite some time.
Over the years, there has been a steady push to reduce subjectivity and to promote objectivity in the sport of gymnastics. I don't mean to give an exhaustive history here, but to cite one example, in the late 90s, the objectivity debate centered on judges' scores. The big question was, What is the best way to determine a gymnast's average score and to evaluate the judges?
Some pundits pooh-poohed the Swiss Timing system. Developed in the early 80s, the system penalized judges for their variance from the average score. (To refresh your memories, the tolerance for average scores between 9.5-10 was 0.1. Thus, if the average score for a gymnast was a 9.7 and a judge scored a gymnast 9.55 or 9.85, that judge would be out of tolerance.) The detractors thought that a system developed by Jackie Fie and Lance Crowley in the 80s (i.e. the Judges Objectivity Evaluation system) was more effective.
Many gymnastics fans have forgotten about this battle, but in the 90s, it was a big deal in the gymnastics community--much in the same way that artistry is a big deal in the gymnastics community today. In fact, two articles appeared in
International Gymnast on the matter--one in the November 1998 issue and another in the January 1999 issue.
Of course, all the late 90s chitter chatter was silenced when this happened
and then this happened
I recognize that the open-ended system was conceived of prior to Hamm-Gate 2004, but it's indisputable that the events of the Athens Olympics pushed the FIG to completely overhaul the way gymnasts were judged. In order to prevent another Hamm-Gate, the Technical Committees decided to take action to ensure that the sport would be as objective as possible. The Swiss Timing system was left in place, and the open-ended scoring system was implemented.
Perfecting the System
We've now spent a full quad with the new system, and the undying question seems to be, How can we perfect the open-ended system?
For Bruno Grandi, perfecting the Code means examining skills in light of physics so that we can know whether a triple back is harder than a double-twisting double layout on floor.
For you, the Women's Technical Committee, perfecting the Code means reviving artistry while still operating under the objectivity of the new system. We gymnastics fans have watched you try to break floor routines into their basic components so that you could determine what constitutes a "good" floor routine and so that you could assign artistry deductions accordingly.
I certainly do not envy the task, and I have to say, I have to tip my hat to you. In a short amount of time, you identified several problem areas with the women's floor exercise. (I, for one, do
not want to watch women stand in a corner for 5 seconds before a tumbling pass!) Furthermore, I commend you for educating your judges. I think it's terrific that
you used music theory to educate your judges. (Theory was one of my least favorite parts of my music education, so props to the judges who sat through that lecture!)
All that said, in your haste to uncover the nuts and bolts of artistry and what constitutes a "good" floor routine, you have failed to address a crucial part of the equation. No matter what you do, artistry is subjective. You can make 100 rules about artistry, but at the end of the day, artistry is a question of personal taste.
