During the Gymnastics and Olympic Diving viewers learned that the judges do not use slow-motion cameras to review the athletes when they compete. Things that move in fast motion or subtle mistakes that cannot be seen in real-time thus, such points cannot be docked from their scores. Still, those mistakes are real, they did occur and should be counted, but are not. Why? Simple, because that is always how it has been done at the Olympics, and yet, such excuses seem preposterous in this day and; “We are doing it this way, because that’s the way it has always been done!” Sounds like a sorry excuse for those who are afraid of change supporting the Status Quo.
What should we do? Well, first it would be fairer to get rid of the judges all together and use a slow-motion optical recognition system to do the judging, the scores will appear faster and it takes out the human element – the human element of cheating judges for instance. Or what about the curse of the fist athlete in competition, it is known that the judges are more relaxed in scoring as time goes on in the match thus giving the advantage to the lucky diver or gymnast who goes last or next to last in the competition.
You see, the Olympic Games are about fairness – no cheating, no doping, no interference of other athletes, and in the spirit of that motif of fairness, let’s fix an obvious problem and save the Olympic Committee from embarrassment next time someone is caught cheating whether it be a coach, athlete or judge.
Okay so, now that you are with me on this, here is what I propose. Have 100 judges watch slow motion videos of divers and gymnasts and have them rate those videos and show where and why they took off points from a perfect score, thus they will be training the artificial intelligent video optical recognition system for flawless judging.
The viewers at home watching the TV can watch the instant replays and see exactly what the computerized artificial intelligent software judge saw. There will be fewer disputes and fairer play and the best athletes will win and there will be no more ambiguity in the judging anymore. If I were a gymnast or diver at the Olympic Level, I’d applaud such a system to render the events fair and I’d trust such a system that allowed the absolute best man or woman to win. Please consider all this and think on it.
