Blog Post Outsourcing (BPO)

This morning I wrote a beautiful long post about how gymnastics and similar sports that rely on judges to determine the outcome should not be a part of the Olympics. Unfortunately the post is lost forever because IE crashed before I could hit the "Publish Post" button. But not to worry, because this article covers it perfectly (hence the title).

Don't get me wrong. I think gymnastics is a great sport and worthy of a spot in the Olympics. But until they figure out a way to make it judging-error-free I also think it is criminal to subject the participants to the kind of trauma that Hamm, Young, Bhardwaj, Urzica, Jovtchev and Nemov have had to go through in Athens this past week. They and their coaches work too hard and sacrifice too much to deserve this.

The Olympics motto is "Swifter, Higher, Stronger," not "Swifter, Higher, Stronger Subject To A Judge's Decision." So why include sports like gymnastics, diving, synchronised swimming where subjective judging is the only way to select a winner? Sure all sports have referees, umpires, line judges etc. But their job is make the right call on specific plays, not decide the outcome of a match. (Although in a purely scientific and sadistic way I'm curious to see what the outcome of an England: 2 - Brazil: 1 football match would be if the referee then had to choose the "better" team on the field, whatever that means.)

Look at the rest of the events. There's hardly ever a problem with the 100 m dash - the swiftest sprinter wins. In the pole vault, the highest jumper is declared the champion. And in weightlifting, the strongest athlete is the gold medalist. Even in fencing, boxing and other sports that rely on accurate judging the system is fairly objective, barring blatant error or obvious bias.

I could simply say, shoot the judges that made the mistakes. But that would be treating the symptom, not the real illness.