Has the "perfect ride" outlived its usefulness? Does gymnastics offer a solution?
Does the scoring of rides at a WSL event sometime leave you feeling a little odd? Cold? Confused? Maybe wrung with despair?
I remember, once, spending a day in the judging tower at a WSL event and not being able to get close to the numbers being punched into the little blue machines that look like they were made by IBM in 1978. My threes were their fives; my sevens were fives. When I hyper-ventilated over two Toledo airs and yawned at three safety turns by Brett Simpson, the judges gave ’em identical scores.
It wasn’t until the fundamentals were explained to me: judge for the conditions and all that matters is that you’re consistent in the heat, that I got it.
And, so, a ten-point ride, the theoretically perfectly ridden wave, can happen in two-foot surf, as it can at 10-foot Fiji.
Doesn’t that irritate you?
Don’t it make you want to get rid of the 10-point scale for something that reflects the…difficulty… of a wave, of a move?
That a 10-foot Cloudbreak barrel will always…always… score higher than a full-roter in two-foot beachbreak? That a Julian Wilson or Kelly Slater turn, more earth shifted, more ground shaken than a bottom-rung guy, will always score higher.
Difficulty!
There’s a precedent.
Gymnastics were all about the perfect 10-pointer, a mix of artistry and athleticism, but then in 2006 they tweaked the game for a system that rewarded difficulty over everything.
Ten pointers? Gone!
Was there a consensus? Not exactly.
“It’s crazy, terrible, the stupidest thing that ever happened to the sport of gymnastics,” the gymnastics supercoach Bela Karolyi told the New York Times. “How could they take away this beautiful, this most perfect thing from us, the one thing that separated our sport from the others?”
Reeves Wiedeman in The New Yorker explains:
“By the turn of the century the limitations of the ten-point scale had begun to stunt the sport’s growth. To score well, a gymnast simply had to meet a minimum level of difficulty and not screw up. Gold medals were being given to safe routines that limited mistakes, while gymnasts who pushed the sport’s boundaries received no reward… The new system, laid out in the Code of Points, is an open-ended one, in which gymnasts are given two marks: one for execution, worth up to ten points, and another for difficulty, which is theoretically infinite.”
Change gymnast to surfer and you start to feel it, right?
Should there be two scores, each from its own panel of judges, given to a ride?
The first, say, is the usual, best moves in the most critical part of the wave, combos, speed and flow etc. The second, is a score given to the technical difficulty of the moves, of the wave.
Overly complex? Or beautiful in its transparency and bias towards the best in the game?
THEY SHOULD OUTLAW CLAIMING OR DEDUCT 1 POINT PR RIDE IF THERE IS A CLAIM
Careful what you wish for, in five years we could have “fans” SMSing scores like The Voice
due to all the hardships brasilians have to endure, they should be scored higher on every wave.
Does anyone from the WSL read this or is this all just cannon fodder into a black hole? Hands up WSL people, even anonymously, gawd.
Give those fixes a shot, why not. While you’re at it:
1. Don’t let the competitors talk to the judges before heats (or ever) about what’s scoring well. It blew me away when Turps said that’s common. How can that not bias the judge in favor of that surfer? Do you think that would that fly in gymnastics, diving, or any other sport where you need judges to determine the winner? Of course not. What does skateboarding and snowboarding do?
2. Don’t let judges collude or talk to each other to determine a wave score. That would be a joke in other sports.
3. Try out that TraceUp technology in competition. Wassel and others were blathering all day at Cape Fear about who went faster on each wave. Well there’s a way to find out. Assuming the speeds are accurate (and could be calibrated by the WSL often), why not add an objective way to compare surfers?
Scoring is fine as is.
The perfect ten score is simply five judges looking at an imperfectly ridden wave perfectly the same.
Don’t abolish the 10, instead at each venue the Pro’s all ride a given shapers pop-out piece of shit. Everyone rides the same model & shaper but in stock dims appropriate for their size. Start with Biolos’s crap pop-outs. Put his creedo to the test, “pro boards are the height of the evolutionary scale in surfboard shaping.” Let everone see what a stock board can do in the hands of a pro. Guarentees smashed board meltdowns a la Kelly at Trestles, Freddy’s rock and roll floater et al…….
the thing that need to be abolished is claims. the root of the ten point ride. fuck the claim(ers) off.
i’ll leave this snapshot of the wsl judging booth here.
In a perfect world it would be for being a complete tool and he would be gone already.
Too complicated, would take too long to be fair to surfers waiting for scores.
Surfing shouldn’t be scored, man. Surfing’s an art form. They don’t score art! Do they?
You know to rile a man to his very core Nick.
All men secretly want to be riled Negatron.
Sure they do – It’s just that Art scores use a $ in front.
Yes well I was hoping somebody would make that very ironic point. I mean, imagine being the WSL investor! Four years of paying for pro surfing…or a pretty good Jackson Pollock?
Pollock would be ok. Picasso sculptures are very nice!
neither you buy Basquiats at the moment. Then you buy living artists
not true at all, since the 80s and 90s yes, before that no way at all. to the unedecated it looks like that but really international art market is like the NYSE without regulation – its about making moneeey
The perfect 10, and overscoring generally, is the bane of the WSL and regularly creates stupid situations like the aforementioned Owen final being over before it can begin, or Parko’s fall-off cutback 10 in Bali. The logic seems to be that mainstream news will feature the 10’s in their 20 second clips, so they need to be “provided with that content”.What’s worse than the 10’s though is pretty good rides being pushed into the excellent range – Fanning and DeSouza getting 9.33 for three off the tops and a closeout float – as it completely kills the impetus for innovative/exciting surfing in heats. The way the bodyboarding is scored is better – “very good” rides get 7.5s, and 9’s and 10’s are saved for stuff that is genuinely exceptional. But as this raises the possibility of a press release starting with “Mick Fanning won in chest-high waves in Rio with a 6.33 and a 7”, there is no chance of it changing.
Owen’s tens were in the last 5 minutes of that final. Hardly over before it could begin.
It should go up to 11.
Just like Spinal Tap’s speakers
oh, suffer. thanks for spelling out the joke. you are a thoughtful and caring.
completely off topic but ive been wondering what Mr Speaker thinks of the images coming from Fiji of the WSL “athlete’s” getting crazy hair cuts and doing skull drags at the bar… It doesn’t really fit into his grand sparkly clean plan for the WSL.
Fuck Paul Speaker. Order him a dozen roses if you’re worried
You kind of missed my point there…
I got it. He’d hate it. He wants everything sanitised and happy smiley etc. He doesn’t get surfing coz he has never been a surfer. He’s a CEO. Money and ratings
once again. helping us to understand. i think you are the most caring person in the world, jocks. i heart you.
Always glad to help an alco. Talking of which, enjoy your evening. Toodles
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
its exactly what surfing needs..now drop the edit of that night and the free surfs in between
You know that, I know that but I’m sure Mr Speaker doesn’t see it that way.
I think the only reason they haven’t gone that way is that it cuts down the high scoring potential to a handful of surfers on the current tour and would make it very one sided in man on man heats. In a few years when all the old men finally retire and the tour is full of surfers with a well rounded attack they should 100% change it. Plus they also don’t get to throw out a few 10s towards the end of the comp to try and make you forget it has dragged on for weeks and mainly been surfed in shitty waves.
WSL overcook scores to try to whip up excitement, especially the final of every event. 9’s and 10’s thrown fucking everywhere. They don’t understand any actual surfer sees straight through the bullshit hype
Hope Owen’s recovering well too
it’d work beautifully for wavepool surfing, although i think the diving model works better than gymnastics.
for regular comp surfing would “difficulty” apply to all surfers equally, or would the status quo remain where some guys get marked up or down based on personal ability, reputation, lack of reputation etc.
they certainly give em away too often. A one move hail mary should never be a 10. What happens if you come out of a 10 point barrel and THEN pull a rodeo flip on the end section?
20?
the ol’ what if… they aint scoren what ifs mate. thats called daydreamin round these parts
Simple: you would get a 10.