Is Perfection No Longer a Category?
If you watched world class gymnasts Nastia Liukin or Shawn Johnson rake in the medals at the Beijing Olympics this summer, you may have noticed a winning beam score of “16.225″ or a winning floor exercise score of “15.650.” So why is the scoring no longer on a 0-10 scale, and what does a “16″ even mean?
Though less intuitive to the spectator, these changes to the scoring system have come about in order better evaluate performance, categorizing it more discretely based on 1) execution and 2) difficulty. In the past, judging has been characterized by deducting execution mistakes from a routine’s “start value” which is typically a 10.0 if the gymnast fulfilled his/her difficulty requirements. Thus no deductions = “Perfect 10.” However, there were distortions inherently built into this old notion of perfection: if two gymnasts both met the 10.0 difficulty threshold, but one gymnast added additional difficulty into her routine, this extra difficulty could not be reflected in the gymnast’s start value, as it was impossible to exceed 10.0.
By re-factoring the judging schema, the concept of a maximum difficulty level no longer exists, and daring is aptly rewarded. Though a gymnast can still receive a perfect execution score, there is no such thing as a perfect routine, because there are always new and more difficult tricks to potentially be incorporated. In gymnastics, perfection has become a purely relative term, and by redefining the way in which routines are classified, a different type of champion — one who is flawless and fearless — is surfacing.
Lectures in the Syllabus:
5. Concepts and Categories
7. Controlled names and Vocabularies