I know that is is completely unfair and it will devastate a lot of great athletes but let's agree here and now on this one thing so that we can move on past all of the old, current, and new controversies, and really enjoy a fair and unbiased Olympics.
I am of course referring to doing away, at least at the Olympic level, with all sports that are judged by a random group of so-called expert judges.
Why?
Because the clock never lies, gets tired, gets
bribed, is inept, is from this nation or that nation, needs glasses, drinks too much, carries a grudge, sneezes, and/or has any emotions or subjective opinions.
The clock just tells the time. So any competition against the clock can never be disputed...especially with today's technology and high speed camera's.
And Yes, to the naked eye it looked like Michael Phelps was out touched at the wall, but when you combine the clock with the underwater high speed camera's it is pretty plain to see that he did win by a finger nail.
Now when you combine a convoluted scoring system with an inept judging, you end up with the woman's individual Gold Medal in both the vault and the high bars going to the wrong athlete. I think that's pretty much obvious to anybody who is not living under the communist Chinese dictatorship.
The same thing happened a few years ago in Salt Lake City when the IOC awarded two gold medals in pairs figure skating because of a judging scandal that rocked the figure skating world.
The problem is that as long as we have humans doing the judging we'll always have these sorts of errors and controversies. Let's face facts Humpty Dumpty is broken and not even the Olympics can put him back together again.
So that only leaves one possible and painful answer. We'll just have to bring the Olympics back to their roots and do away with any sports (at least in the Olympics) that are scored and judged by subjective human analysis.
Of course there is an obvious solution if you don't like my draconian solution.
I believe that it would certainly be possible and very doable to have a computer judge these non clock timed sports.
I'm, of course, referring to all of gymnastics, diving, trampoline and any other sport that solely depends on a panel of judges.
Here's my straightforward solution.
Have an athlete model the perfect move on any equipment, have everybody in that sport agree that the model move is indeed the gold standard, and let the computer compare the score the athletes move to the gold standard.
Please let me explain what I mean in a more straightforward manner. Take the best athlete in the world at the vault. Put that athlete in one of those black suits that can be covered with reflective dots at all of the critical points on the body. Have the athlete do a vault (let's say a Handspring, Yamashita, round-off) and capture that vault with slow motion cameras hooked up to a computer.
Now you have a digital perfect version of the Handspring, Yamashita, round-off stored in the computer. As long as the sports governing body agrees that this digit vault is the gold standard, the computer can now instantly compare the same vault done in competition to the gold standard digital vault, and more importantly subtract points and deductions based on how much the competition vault varies from the stored digital vault.
No guessing, judges, or even endless waiting for scores needed.
Now you might wisely argue that a lot of gymnastics, as well as figure skating, and even diving are not only judged on execution but also on artistry. In other words it's not just about the release, or jump, or dive, but also how you present the entire routine. And you'd of course be correct if this were 1923.
But today all these sports have one thing in common. It's all about the difficulty of the vault, release, strength move, jump or dive. The more you release, twist, and spin the higher the score.
So let's get real and forget how artistic any of this stuff really is because truthfully nobody cares. In figure skating it is all about landing the combination triple jumps, in high bars its all about the release skills, in diving it is all about how much you spin and how vertical you are when you enter the water.
This is all something a computer can best judge.
The best thing any of these sports governing bodies can do is take the human factor out of these sports and make them truly fair to the competitors, coaches, and viewers.
This is the least the competitors deserve after so many long years of hard training. I can't even begin to image how crushing it must be to have you gold medal stolen because some judge sneezed during your 23.3 second routine.
Now if we could just get a computer to accurately judge a competitors age. That would really be something!