Silly Olympic Math

Author: Tommy Leung | 08.18.2008 | Category: Sports

The IOC can officially report that He Kexin of China won the Gold in the uneven bars event finals but, without some meaningful sudden death scenario, He Kexin and Nastia Liukin of the USA should both have received Gold. Liukin and He both scored a 16.725 in the event–creating a tie–but, with some illogical mathematics, Liukin fell into second place and a received a Silver.

The first tiebreaker scenario made sense. The competitor with the higher execution score would place ahead. That makes sense since execution is meaningful in gymnastics. However, He and Liukin had the same execution score.

The second tiebreaker scenario didn’t make sense. The calculation of the execution score takes into account 6 deductions. The two extremes are dropped and the four remaining deductions are averaged and then subtracted from 10. This second tiebreaker drops the next highest deduction and averages the remaining three.

Do you see the ironic and illogical reasoning behind this? The Olympics is a competition to find the best athelete or to put it a different way: an athlete who makes the least mistakes. Deductions are bad. This tiebreaker takes the highest remaining deduction and gets rid of it. The person who made a bigger error benefits. Does that really make sense?

If we took a look at the deductions for Liukin and He, they had the same lowest deduction of .7 but He’s highest deduction was a 1.1 while Liukin’s was a 1.0. Liukin did have three 1.0 deductions while He had 2 1.1 deductions. Anyone with any common sense and understanding of what Olympic competition is can see that this tiebreaker rule makes no sense.

I am not suggesting the Liukin should have received the Gold medal. I may be biased and rooting for Team USA but, I also believe in fair and clear competition. This tiebreaker was neither. I am in favor of a sudden death tiebreaker. Both competitors should have done the event again–probably with a different routine–until a clear winner could be determined.

By Tommy Leung