I need some help. No, not the psychological kind, (unless you're offering), I need the kind of help figuring out sports judging.
Becky and I have been watching the Olympics...a lot. Well, last night, something happened that has me shaken, and I can't shake the shakened feeling. The event was Men's Gymnastics...All Around Finals. The theory in this event is such: Everyone does one routine on each of six stations...Pommel Horse, Rings, High Bar, Floor Exercise, Vault and Parallel Bars...each is scored, and the one person with the best overall score, wins. Hence the title: ALL AROUND champion.
To me, call me crazy, I think in order to be the All-Around champion, you should be really good at EVERY event. Maybe not the best at Rings, say...but good enough to be one of the best.
Well, last night, Paul Hamm for the US was in the Gold medal hunt after 3 events, scoring above 9.70 on each of the Pommel Horse, the Rings, and the Floor Exercise. Then, in his fourth event, the Vault, his dream collapsed.
He took off running, hit the ramp, did the flips and gymnastics type stuff that gymnists do, and landed not on his feet, but rather on his butt. He would have landed on the judges, had they not stuck their arms up there and held him on the stage. Too bad for Paul, right? WRONG!!
On the next event, the Parallel Bars, he received a 9.8 something, and on the last event, the High Bars, he got a 9.83 something which gave him the Gold by 0.012 of a point!!
While I am extremely excited he won, and his last two events deserved every tenth they got, (absolutely awesome) but he surely can't be the ALL AROUND champion when he fell on his ass, now can he? It slaps the face of conventional wisdom to let someone be all around the best, when the silver and bronze medallists didn't fall...in fact they were solid the whole competition.
It's just so wrong on principal. Don't you think? Who's with me on this: All Around Champion should be the one person who is really good on ALL events, not really crappy on some. but good enough on others to not worry about that one fall you had. It makes no sense.
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