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The demise of the Perfect
10
After the 2004 Olympics gymnastics officials thought that the "10" was obsolete. They felt that the "10" was too much of a ceiling for the best gymnasts in the world. The gymnastics officials thought that the best gymnasts could do more difficulty and would do more if the system rewarded them for it. So, what they did is change the rules to what they called an opened ended (difficulty) code of points. Now a gymnast that does more difficulty will have a higher start score to then deduct execution points from than another gymnast with a lower start score. I will try to explain as simply as I can with how it works: Every gymnast gets 10.00 points for free from which the judges will use to take execution deductions. If a judge at the end of a routine has taken one point in deductions then his execution score will be only 9.00 points. If a gymnast does a skill from all of the required element groups (there are 5 of these groups) then he is awarded another 2.50 points. If a gymnast were missing an element group then he would only get 2.00. The last part of this new system is the open ended part where the gymnasts can really separate themselves from others. Dependant upon what skills a gymnast does he will get a difficulty number to add to this equation; let's say he does 4.00 in difficulty. Now with the example/numbers we have above this particular gymnast will score a 15.50 Execution 9.00 Elements 2.50 Difficulty 4.00 Score 15.50 However just as before and in any code if another gymnast let’s say Paul or Morgan Hamm were to do the exact same routine and have a better execution score of 9.50 then Paul and Morgan Hamm would beat the above gymnast with a combined score of 16.00. This explanation is meant to clarify things, not complicate it any further for others. When you see the judges scores at a meet or on television you will see the final score broken down into only two scores. An A-score (in the above example that would be 6.50 [2.50 + 4.00]) and a B-score (this is the execution part. So even though the final score is 15.50, the gymnasts total start value would be 16.5. The six judges are broken down into two judges that only do the “A” part and four that only do the "B" part. One of the things that the officials did also with this new code is increase the execution deductions so it is a fine line that we all must walk. We have to balance having enough difficulty with the increased execution deductions. So basically a gymnast had better do the most he can, the best that he can. All that said, it might help a little. But, all in all, it is still a very complicated system. And doesn't even touch on all the other rules about how many time a skill can be repeated, or, or, or.
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