February 20, 2010
After careful deliberation, the Judge from the Couch gives Figure Skating, Ice Dancing and even Gymnastics the big thumbs down and votes that they should be removed from the realm of “sport”. That doesn’t mean they can’t be in the Olympics, but somehow my sensibilities (limited though they may be) have become offended that these competitions are considered “sport”.
Bear with me, it isn’t like I’m saying these things don’t take a huge (unimaginable) amount of skill or training and practice and dedication, but are they really sports?
I looked up “sport” (online, because I love you but I’m too lazy to get up and get my dictionary), you know in the context of a competitive event (not a mocking nickname), and here is the best one I found:
An athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf,bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc. (From Dictionary.com)
My premise is that a sport is competitive. A sport is something you win (or lose). A sport should be something you leave on the pitch/field/ring, etc. Not something decided by a panel of former competitors or worse yet, some “informed expert” - glad I’m not one of those. It’s so much easier to just blather un-informed.
And by this logic, yes I think boxing should be won by knock out, technical knock-out or surrender. The twelfth round should just go on until someone wins. What? Like that’s any more barbaric that starting the fight trying to concuss someone hard enough that they lose consciousness. In fact, my treatise is that if there were no time limit, strategy in boxing would revert to a more aggressive approach (with a healthy measure of defense built in so you can execute your offense). You’d get a whole different kind of fight to start with. Think about it, if they aren’t trying to “win rounds” (on points) the focus of the event becomes purely based on success or failure, training and luck. Sport.
Which brings me back to ice dancing, synchronized swimming and even diving – aesthetics aside, and who doesn’t love to watch these events, winning is purely subjective. Winning is based on the opinion of a biased observer. Come on now, we’re all biased observers, even if we pretend (or try really hard) not to be. As organisms our world view is shaped by the things we have seen before and are therefore biased.
Let’s call these events what they are: Competitions, with competitors and judges. As opposed to sports, athletes and referees/umpires. And I assert that there is a huge distinction between a referee/umpire and a judge. The purpose of the umpire/referee is to impose the rules of the contest during the contest (except in the NBA, where they are concerned with more fiscal events), whereas a judge evaluates the performance after (during) its completion. On one hand refs (who have an active role) affect the very performance of the game, while a judge only critiques without intervention.
But I digress, back to the contests.
So what about skiing? Or boarding? Well, you can have timed or distance-measured sports, but if the contest isn’t based on something specific, observable and measurable, but is instead measured by a subjective rating it should just be a competition. Which means, yes, skiing and boarding would be relegated to either being races, distance jumps (as sports) or simple competitions.
Yes, I realize that by my definition games like checkers or tic-tac-toe could be a sport. I get that by my narrow definition ro-sham-bo could be a sport. Wouldn’t you love to see the ro-sham-bo championships on ESPN. Can’t you just hear Boomer now, “Oh no! He threw paper… and there go the scissors, cutting back-back-back-back…” okay, maybe not. But that’s not really my point.
One of my points is that even American Idol or American democracy has a better shot at delivering a balanced (fair) judgment than the small handful of folk set aside as experts. So there should be some distinction, for the competitor’s sake, because they aren’t allowed to beat their competitors, but have to win the judges. There’s my real distinction between what makes a sport and why the rest of these really awesome events should be called something else. Weight needs to be given to the notion that these competitors can do rock-on awesome and get screwed by judges. Or perception or whatever. And that is hugely different than making a mistake on the field and having your opponent capitalize on it for the win! (FTW! Baby!)
Okay, so let’s talk about judges. In the age of technology that we live in why limit the number of judges? Instead of whatever measly number they use now, why not have a hundred and fifty judges who have to punch in a score (1-5) within 30 seconds of the completion of the event and use that to evaluate to the performance.
Why so many? Ideally a larger sample will eliminate more bias. So long as the sample is randomly chosen (or in this case “experts” chosen from a variety of spectrums). See, I would pull not only people who measure the technical aspects, but “experts” who have also excelled in other things that are important to the competition. Here, let me give you a graph to explain better. This is how I would arrange judgment for Ice Dancing:
| Judge (spectrum) | Number of judges |
| Technical (specific to difficulty/skating) | 50 |
| Technical (specific to execution/specific dance) | 50 |
| Costume | 20 |
| Overall aesthetic | 30 |
Breaking it down: The two technical categories are pretty clear right? You take former competitors and “experts” in the competition and put them in the appropriate section. No biggie right?
The costume peoples should come from both former competitors and people from the actual fashion industry or costumers from the movies (no, I’m serious). These costumes should be (and are) as much a part of the show (art) as the actions. In many ways these are the perfect physical executions of things that fashion designers and movie costumers dream-up, who better to judge them?
Finally, overall aesthetic should be half made-up of “experts” from various media outlets (like “ET” or “DMZ” or whatever the Ukranian equivalent is) and the other half should be former competitors. And all they should be judging is… on a scale of 1-5, did they like it. No commentary, no decimals, just whole numbers one through five.
In the end, the competitor with the most points wins. Period. Ties go to an average of the two technical scores. If those scores tie, winners are decided by ro-sham-bo.
In no way does this essay assert that these competitions be removed from the Olympics, goodness no. But let’s call an orange an orange and an apple an apple. Lumping Hockey and Ice Dancing into the same designation, “sport” just doesn’t seem right.
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