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.
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Don’t get me started on dressage. Horse dancing is a farce
Yeah and one bad day can also mess up someone who usually runs fast too. Your point is invalid.
“Impartial judges” LOL
The Olympics is just some corporation. They can do whatever competitions they want. Art used to be in the olympics, and that is fine.
Weightlifting has judges
Game-based sports have referees
What you really mean is that you don’t want artistic sports.
Olympic weightlifting has three judges and a jury for every lift.
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)
I think that’s a fair, nuanced opinion.
Human error is bound to happen
You seem to have a real narrow view on sports.
No boxing?
So you think that gymnastics and diving and synchronized swimming shouldn’t be in the olympics… figure skating??
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.
No soccer/football, volleyball, basketball, etc. since they have referees (a form of judge) that impact the results in this case, right?
Boxing?
I do a compétitive dance form. Putting amateurs in as judges made no difference to the results.
I’ve noticed it’s really easy to have opinions like this if you’ve never played the sport.
I fully agree. I’ve been saying this for decades.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
But no one watches those sports outside of the Olympics and some of them are cool
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
Get outta here with the blasphemy
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.
Ironically, weightlifting is notorious for having some of the the most atrocious rules and judging out there (agreed upon even by its own community)
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.
I only watch for the figure skating because races are boring
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.
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.
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.
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.
Olympics is about proving your economy against other nations.
Oh. This one again.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t think anything without a defense should be in the Olympics
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.
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.
There use to be Poetry contests at the Olympics.
Half the sports in the olympics shouldn’t be in the olympics.
No more subjective opinions in sport!!! (Based on my subjective opinion)
I understand score based sports in your point. But all olympic sports have judges.
Why do you care? Just ignore those events
The olympics are about sporting excellence and friendly worldwide competition, not just measurements.
>The Olympics should be about celebrating who is definitively the fastest, the strongest, the best athletes on the planet
Why?
8.5
What about tennis and long jump?
All sports in the olympics are judged to some degree or another…
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.
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.
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).
Everything has judges. Referees are just judges that are not infallible.
Boring. Come up with a more interesting opinion that isn’t posted twice a week.
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).
Someone made this exact same post while the Olympics were going on….. so very thought provoking
What a the difference between a judge and a referee?
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.
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
I really like how you added breakdancing in there!
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.
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.
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.
Gymnastics is probably the most fun to watch of all the events
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
YES ! why on earth should gold medals be given out based on opinions ! Been saying this for years.
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?
The Olympics is a fucking joke and corrupt as fuck. Just like Fifa.
Is there a sport that doesn’t have a judge of some kind?
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.
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.
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.
Referees also make mistakes sometimes or make subjective calls.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Starter is a judge, whoever does timing is a judge. There are judges in throwing events.
So this means they are not competitive sports, but an art form that nobody cares about. Stick them in the Louvre.
The ancient Olympics had poetry as an event… if you want quantifiable events, just watch track and field.
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.