Sports with judges should not be in the Olympics

r/

The Olympics should be about celebrating who is definitively the fastest, the strongest, the best athletes on the planet.

Running 100m in X time or lifting Y amount of weight or throwing a javelin Z distance is concrete and definitive. Something thrown 90m can only be beaten by something thrown further than 90m.

A race won in 9.5 seconds can only be beaten by someone running it in less than 9.5 seconds.

Yet events like diving, gymnastics, breakdancing, etc are determined by a panel of judges who get a few seconds and one angle to judge an athlete’s attempt. Their scores determining who is crowned the best on the planet. Unconscious bias, errors, a bad angle, or even a bad day can affect these scores.

As impartial as the judges may be, they are not definitive results such as time, distance and weight are.

If it can’t be measured by a quantifiable amount, it shouldn’t be in the Olympics.

Comments

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  2. RumJackson Avatar

    Don’t get me started on dressage. Horse dancing is a farce

  3. MintyPastures Avatar

    Yeah and one bad day can also mess up someone who usually runs fast too. Your point is invalid.

  4. DanielSong39 Avatar

    “Impartial judges” LOL

  5. Ok-Watercress-7914 Avatar

    The Olympics is just some corporation. They can do whatever competitions they want. Art used to be in the olympics, and that is fine.

  6. Background-Top-1946 Avatar

    Weightlifting has judges

    Game-based sports have referees

    What you really mean is that you don’t want artistic sports.

  7. BiggyWhiggy Avatar

    Olympic weightlifting has three judges and a jury for every lift.

  8. EmperorSangria Avatar

    How do you feel about the X-Games? Skateboarding, freestyle motorcross and BMX, freestyle skiing/snowboarding

    By your criteria, if it applied to the X-Games, I dont think there’s by any sports left in it. And now, many of these are in the Olympics too (I recall BMX and skiing/snowboarding being there)

  9. hawkayecarumba Avatar

    I think that’s a fair, nuanced opinion.

    Human error is bound to happen

  10. In_A_Spiral Avatar

    You seem to have a real narrow view on sports.

  11. Soya21 Avatar

    No boxing?

  12. BusinessForeign7052 Avatar

    So you think that gymnastics and diving and synchronized swimming shouldn’t be in the olympics… figure skating??

  13. RealisticBox1 Avatar

    I disagree simply because I don’t believe your premise, which is that the olympics should only exist to determine absolute winners of athletic events

    I would replace that premise by saying that the olympics exist to showcase the peak of human athletic ability across many forms of sport — some of which are not quantifiable as they blend sport with art — in the context of global cooperation

    I don’t disagree that declaring absolute winners in sports like gymnastics or synchronized swimming is inherently more difficult than doing so in basketball, but i disagree that they don’t belong in the olympics. The olympics exist to showcase the pinnacle of human athletic ability, in all the forms it takes, in the context of a violent planet that for a few moments takes a deep breath. Artistic sports fit in that goal.

  14. glass-2x-needed-size Avatar

    No soccer/football, volleyball, basketball, etc. since they have referees (a form of judge) that impact the results in this case, right?

  15. Glad_Possibility7937 Avatar

    I do a compétitive dance form. Putting amateurs in as judges made no difference to the results. 

  16. bradlap Avatar

    I’ve noticed it’s really easy to have opinions like this if you’ve never played the sport.

  17. HR_King Avatar

    I fully agree. I’ve been saying this for decades.

  18. niccolonocciolo Avatar

    Even ‘objective’ sports like track and field events have judges all over the place. Sure, a long jump can be objectively measured, but someone still has to decide the take-off was valid.

    Same for running: You may break the record, but it won’t count if you had too much tail wind. Someone still had to decide on that cut-off point, which is subjective.

    Sure, figure skating, gymnastics or diving have way more subjective scores, but even they have predetermined base points based on difficulty, so it’s not like judges pull the entire score out of thin air based on how much they liked it.

  19. evmac1 Avatar

    Hard disagree. Especially with the case of gymnastics being the original Olympic sport (albeit it obviously looked quite different). Besides, there’s a technical and difficulty component that goes far beyond brute strength and endurance.

  20. RealNotFake Avatar

    Alternative unpopular opinion – if subjective sports with judging are allowed, then allow ballet as a sport. From what I’ve heard it’s freaking elite and hard as hell and requires peak athleticism, and if you ask any ballerina they can tell you who is better than who, and who is the best of the best.

  21. TheShoot141 Avatar

    I agree. I had to switch to individual sports around 12 as I couldnt deal with coaches opinions in a healthy way. Wrestling, running. The best athlete should compete, not some assholes son.

  22. cez801 Avatar

    Why not? Should sports that require a judge be banned? Or should there be an alternative olympics?

    Also, where does boxing fit? I mean a knockout is a win… so do we just say ‘draw’ if there is knock out?

    The olympics, is and always has been about the audience, more than the competitors.
    For the audience running the fastest, or lifting the heaviest weight, or throwing something the furtherest is not more impressive than seeing a gymnast do amazing stuff, or a high diver.

  23. pisceanhaze Avatar

    you sound like this one “bro-dude” that I know that always loudly proclaims that gymnastics and competitive figure skating aren’t “real sports”. reeks of “bro-ism” and anti anything remotely graceful.

  24. vivid_jalapeno Avatar

    There are still levels in those sports that make one person better than the other though, if you are the only gymnast who can compete a certain very hard skill then objectively that makes you better. Same as diving if someone wins because they can do a flip that no one else can then it is still in a way showing that they are the better athlete

  25. highrollr Avatar

    But no one watches those sports outside of the Olympics and some of them are cool 

  26. SyderoAlena Avatar

    We need more judgeless entertainment. Like I do wanna see cool people do cool stuff but I don’t wanna see them cry because some arrogant person said they suck

  27. Smitch250 Avatar

    Get outta here with the blasphemy

  28. stercus_uk Avatar

    The olympics to me is a showcase of sports that most people probably wouldn’t watch unless they were in the olympics. My gripe is the inclusion of things like football, tennis, golf which already have huge international audiences. The olympics should be a special event where you see things you wouldn’t at another time.

  29. LoopsoftheFroot Avatar

    Ironically, weightlifting is notorious for having some of the the most atrocious rules and judging out there (agreed upon even by its own community)

  30. ThomasDePraetere Avatar

    Gymnastics judges aren’t pulling numbers out of thin air. There are a lot of moves in a short down of time and clear rules how many points each move is. There are also rules about how much each imperfection costs in points. It’s all defined in the manual.

    However, due to the speed, not everything can be seen by everyone so there are multiple judges using the same guidelines for scoring.

  31. LoqitaGeneral1990 Avatar

    I only watch for the figure skating because races are boring

  32. ThisI5N0tAThr0waway Avatar

    Sports exist on a spectrum between raw athletic performance demonstration and skills at exceeding around arbitrary rules.

    There is no sports that purely represent one sides without some the other. Even the sprints needs to establish that every one starts at the same time and what distance are competed in.

  33. seaneihm Avatar

    On top of what everyone said weightlifting and boxing having judges, events that seem “subjective” like ice skating and gymnastics are a lot more concrete than you think.

    Like for gymnastics, each move has a certain number of points. Like a double backflip with a twist is an E difficulty worth 0.5 points, with very specific penalties, such as -0.1 for stepping out of bounds with one foot.

    Also, the Olympics had poetry as a category for nearly 40 years.

  34. red_vette Avatar

    Even the judges events are based on how well the athlete performed the various moves which are given an absolute score based on difficulty. At that level of competition it’s not as arbitrary as it may seem.

  35. Riley__64 Avatar

    The issue with running it that way is you then do exclude some sports from the Olympics.

    Sports like diving, gymnastics or breakdancing don’t have definitive things that would determine your the best in that field. Sure you can do lots of tricks but that doesn’t mean you’re the best in the sport, it just means you’re good at those tricks.

  36. LughCrow Avatar

    Olympics is about proving your economy against other nations.

  37. NicklAAAAs Avatar

    Oh. This one again.

  38. lavenderroseorchid Avatar

    The judges do quantify it though through scores. For gymnastics points are removed for eg bad landings. That isn’t subjective – if they land it they land it. I think perhaps you misunderstand how judging is completed.

  39. ConaMoore Avatar

    That’s a very good point, but I also get why they are there. You could have an argument against the sports without bias. As technology gets better, we have better training, better diets, so many supplements and tablets that can make you peak human now, running shoes are getting better, so you could argue that a score being beaten by a second could have just been down to the track being better cared for that day or the maintenance guy having a bad day and doesn’t do a great job. Maybe the new winner has some new shoes that gave him an advantage. Records get broken all the time for many different reasons.

  40. bershka321 Avatar

    Nah artistic sports are great. Part of the fun of the Olympics is watching a sport you’ve never watched before and becoming an arm chair expert in 2mins.

  41. bubblllles Avatar

    I don’t think anything without a defense should be in the Olympics

  42. Fire-and-Lasers Avatar

    Your argument is essentially “if a machine can’t measure it it shouldn’t be an Olympic sport”.  Well guess what?  We could make any judged sport machine-judged if we wanted to, with quantifiable measurements from technical perfection.  Computers are that good these days.  We just haven’t done it yet because human judges are currently considered good enough.

  43. Blankenhoff Avatar

    The olympics are just a competition people sign up for. Yeah, it might be harder to get in but its just a competition made by people who made it up and made up some rules for it. You can litterally make one yourself and do whatever rules you want.

  44. Young_Lochinvar Avatar

    There use to be Poetry contests at the Olympics.

  45. Bitter_Procedure260 Avatar

    Half the sports in the olympics shouldn’t be in the olympics.

  46. Green_and_black Avatar

    No more subjective opinions in sport!!! (Based on my subjective opinion)

  47. Commercial_Search249 Avatar

    I understand score based sports in your point. But all olympic sports have judges.

  48. Imaginary_Manner_556 Avatar

    Why do you care? Just ignore those events

  49. throwedaway19284 Avatar

    The olympics are about sporting excellence and friendly worldwide competition, not just measurements.

  50. _jozlen Avatar

    >The Olympics should be about celebrating who is definitively the fastest, the strongest, the best athletes on the planet

    Why?

  51. PerfectUpstairs4842 Avatar

    What about tennis and long jump?

  52. jaeward Avatar

    All sports in the olympics are judged to some degree or another…

  53. Lost-Associate-9290 Avatar

    But…. Basketball goes in. Player walks on line, player pushes the other player. Just a couple of basket examples but the same goes for other team sports. Most of the aspects of these games aren’t really arbitrary. Arbiter more or less is there to fill the gaps of doubt.

  54. youdontknowsqwat Avatar

    Uh, that’s how the world works. Most things are subjectively judged (most work performance, school essays, dating, laws, sports penalties, anything popular or unpopular, etc.) There are winners and losers determined in conscious or unconscious bias. Life cannot be separated for this. We are not robots. Perform the best you can, accept the results (win or lose), and learn from them but most of all enjoy the process.

  55. HaloGuy381 Avatar

    The ancient Greek Olympics had pankration, a type of wrestling. Are we suggesting combat sports not involving a KO should be banned? Because without a judge, there is no way to score properly otherwise.

    Also, judgment calls will still be needed for edge cases where it’s not clear if a rule was broken or not, even in ‘objective’ sports, or where the outcome is too close to call even for machines.

    And if we treat the Olympics as a showcase of what humans can do, and less about a systematic Guinness World Records collection process, then of course judged sports should be included.

    Finally: people greatly enjoy gymnastics, figure skating, diving, and other sports that are judging-oriented, so as entertainment and a global celebration, then of course we should keep them. If anything, some of those are the ones most impressive to us laymen at home, given the visual elements involved (versus, say, bobsledding, where we regular people never get a true sense of what the athlete actually is doing above and beyond a regular person).

  56. ChorkusLovesYou Avatar

    Everything has judges. Referees are just judges that are not infallible.

  57. Xannin Avatar

    Boring. Come up with a more interesting opinion that isn’t posted twice a week.

  58. 1337k9 Avatar

    Every sport has rules, and there is a referee watching to determine if the rules were followed. Even for running they check to see if wind conditions don’t provide too much assistance, and the runner didn’t preemptively cross the starting line. Judging for ANY sport will always remain.

    The bigger focus should be on objective judging. For gymnastics, maybe it’d be how many flips someone does in the air (which is objective) and not “grace” (which is subjective).

  59. midevilmarcellus Avatar

    Someone made this exact same post while the Olympics were going on….. so very thought provoking

  60. TOOL-FAN Avatar

    What a the difference between a judge and a referee?

  61. RobotUmpire Avatar

    ITT: people confusing sports where the judge decides the winner vs enforcing rules and regulations.

    Not saying OPs take is correct as Olympic has been around to celebrate subjective sports since its inception. Objective metrics of determining winners has never been its sole objective.

    Using judges in weightlifting as evidence to prove OP wrong isn’t a very strong argument to why his take isn’t a popular one.

  62. Creepy_Region_133 Avatar

    Although I enjoy watching it, so I don’t want it taken out, skateboarding is a perfect example of this.The classic skate motto is- It’s not what you do , but how you do it. Factoring in style would be difficult for judges and each would do it differently, but it has to be part of the scoring

  63. ProcessAdmirable8898 Avatar

    I really like how you added breakdancing in there!

  64. PrestigiousFloor593 Avatar

    This suggestion seems reasonable on its face but gets weird with some sports. Take fencing, there are three types/blades each with their own ruleset. In 2 blades, foil and saber, when there are simultaneous touches, the point is awarded to whoever had right of way, which is determined by a judge. However the third blade, epee, does not have right of way, and for simultaneous lights each fencer receives a point. So under these guidelines it would be the only style permitted, which would feel a bit odd, and thats nothing to say of the detrimental effect it would have on the practice of foil and saber.

  65. insane_contin Avatar

    So Judo should not be an Olympic sport? In Judo, you win the match if you get an ippon, in which you throw the opponent on to their back with strength, speed and control, or pin them for 20 seconds on their back. If you score an ippon, you win the match. If the throw misses one of the three the criteria for ippon, you score a waza-ari. You can also score a waza-ari if you pin your opponent for 10-19 seconds. You need two waza-ari to win the match.

    The referee judges the throws. For all intents and purposes, they’re a judge for technique when it comes to Judo throws.

  66. MaTr82 Avatar

    If your argument is about subjectivity, then many other sports should be removed as well. Football has plenty of incidents where experts with multiple camera angles and replays can’t agree on whether something was a foul or not.

  67. Shotgun_Rynoplasty Avatar

    Gymnastics is probably the most fun to watch of all the events

  68. lospotezbrt Avatar

    Upvoted, I used to train an Olympic sport that relies on judging

    I don’t think the Olympics themselves have had this issue with controversial results, usually the weight of the whole world watching makes judges extremely serious

    But when it comes to regional leagues, and all events that would qualify someone to the Olympics…well, sadly, corruption is pretty common in some form or another

  69. BeardadTampa Avatar

    YES ! why on earth should gold medals be given out based on opinions ! Been saying this for years.

  70. piceathespruce Avatar

    As a soccer referee, even with VAR, you need to make judgement calls (did you actually impede the progress of another player? Was a player who was in an offside position but did not come into contact with the ball influencing play?). What’s your take for those?

  71. Speak4yurself Avatar

    The Olympics is a fucking joke and corrupt as fuck. Just like Fifa.

  72. Dry_Conversation571 Avatar

    Is there a sport that doesn’t have a judge of some kind?

  73. SpaceMonkeyEngineer Avatar

    I used to think this way as well. Turns out, some of the original competitions were things like heralds (kind of like a competition of announcers) and trumpeters. And over the years many other artistic/subjective competitions have come and gone.

  74. neutral-chaotic Avatar

    If the outcome of an event has to be determined by judges, that is not a sport.

    Doesn’t make the competitive event any less competitive, or athletic. I do believe however, certain judged competitive events absolutely still belong in the Olympics.

  75. Apprehensive-Care20z Avatar

    basically all actual sports have “judges”. The umpire calls strikes and balls, the line judge marks the spot of the football, the referee calls fouls and awards shots, calls penalties, determines if there is a touchdown or a goal scored.

    So, basically, only darts and similar recreations can be in the olympics.

  76. Thunder141 Avatar

    Referees also make mistakes sometimes or make subjective calls.

  77. Brave_Profit4748 Avatar

    I mean that’s why yiu have multiple judges the margin that all of them are going to have a bad day or bias or anything that would create a strong standard of deviation is wrong.

    Anyway this seems pointless wrestling one of the oldest sports an original Olympic sport has the ref judge whether a taken down is between 2-5 point in basketball a game can come down to who got lore free throws or who got away with falls does a team get to take the penalty kick.

    You basically just limit it to weight lifting and track style events..

    Also who does this benefit the viewers don’t get to see a whole spectrum of capabilities the human body can do at the highest level, the athletes of those sports don’t get to compete at the most pristine level.

  78. TemperatePirate Avatar

    No referees or umpires, either. They use judgement and can be corrupted. Wouldn’t leave many events.

    It’s called the Olympic Games. Games are fun – don’t be so uptight.

  79. Brokenblacksmith Avatar

    Judged events should be, as the (modern) Olympics are more about showcasing skill and ability rather than just winning something. Plus you’d be removing about half of the events.

    However, there should be a significantly larger panel of judges. Gymnastics is judged by 5 people. Meaning if one person decides to give a lower or higher score for a personal reason, even 1 point, a person can drop several places in the ranking.

    Having a panel of 20 judges randomly selected from a greater pool for each event would balance out any favoritism or aggression.

  80. sadboi_lp69 Avatar

    this should be an unknowledgeable opinion.

    events with judges have objective metrics they follow. if athletes do not meet them, they get deductions.

    for example in diving, if a backflip has 10 points, a double backflip has 20 points, each of these has a corresponding criteria. knees tucked in, ankles flexed, etc. this eliminates the bias.

    what you are actually saying is your hate artistic events.

  81. A_Person32123 Avatar

    Starter is a judge, whoever does timing is a judge. There are judges in throwing events.

  82. BigMattress269 Avatar

    So this means they are not competitive sports, but an art form that nobody cares about. Stick them in the Louvre.

  83. SlimyGrimey Avatar

    The ancient Olympics had poetry as an event… if you want quantifiable events, just watch track and field.

  84. im_from_detroit Avatar

    The original Olympics in ancient Greece had poetry reading as a contest.

    The modern Olympics only really does physical feats and demonstrations because if they tried to include things like poetry, no one would watch.