Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, UNER

skill has very particular guidelines describing whether it has been performed correctly. For example, on rings any holds must be held for between one and three seconds to be counted. Thus, whether a gymnast performed this is easily confirmable through watching a video and timing the hold. Yet as described in the previous section, human judges can be unreliable and make errors.

By contrast, technology is assumed to be more accurate than a human. For example, in a swimming race a stopwatch is far more reliable than a human in determining who wins. A human cannot always see the difference in time if two athletes touch the wall at close to the same time, by contrast a stopwatch can be relied upon to do so. The assumed reliability of technology led to the International Gymnastics Federation greeting IRCOS with enormous enthusiasm. The new video system was expected to have the ability to solve the mistake that occurred in the Olympic Games in 2004 where the wrong gymnast received the gold medal owing to a judging error52. It allows the difficulty judges the chance to check that they have made correct judgements and it allows coaches to protest and use the video as evidence of perceived incorrect judgements. After each routine, the difficulty judges are able to

immediately view either parts or the whole of the routine again on a laptop to confirm they have made the correct judgement. If a coach or gymnast disagrees with their difficulty score, they can issue a protest and the routine will be reviewed by other judges to ensure the mark is ‘correct’.

Despite the assumed advantages of the video, concerns have been voiced that relying on technology can be dangerous as machines lack the capacity to explain (McFee, 2004, p. 102). For example, if a stopwatch malfunctions and shows a time that does not seem correct, it is not possible for the stopwatch to explain why it gave that particular time. This is where the system introduced in gymnastics is particularly effective. It is neither a human nor a machine, but a hybrid of the two (Latour, 1991). In this way, accountability is provided in the sense that there is an inscription created in the form of a video which allows the routine to be circulated amongst other judges. As a result, the score can be checked and confirmed yet explanations can still be provided. However, in order for this to occur, the judge must enrol the technology; the video must become an assemblage with the judge. Interviews with judges revealed that there was variation between how often judges made use of the replay system. Stuart, a judge

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Paul Hamm received the individual all around gold medal which should have gone to Yang Tae Young from Korea. The FIG and IOC investigated the situation and discovered that three judges had accepted bribe money and consequently marked Yang down. These three judges were banned for life for judging at any further gymnastics competitions. Paul Hamm was asked by the FIG to return his gold medal in the spirit of fairness but he declined to do so (Grandi, 2004).

of men’s gymnastics, described how in his experience of using the system at international competitions, it was often enrolled:

Roslyn: So how often did they use it at Worlds? Stuart: Quite a bit I suppose.

Roslyn: Every routine, every 10th routine?

Stuart: In rings, if you don’t hold a skill for a second it doesn’t count, if you hold it for a second it does count. So, if it’s not going to be counted, they’d probably look at it then. If it’s between 1 and 2 seconds, they won’t look at it because they can see it’s counted, that’s their job. And generally if you say it’s “1001” (counting) they’ll give it credit without looking at the video. But if it’s really short, that’s where they’ll look at the video to get the proof… And probably looked it 20 – 30% at the time. At a guess.

Stuart’s description suggests the men’s judges perceived the system to be a useful tool and enrolled it regularly. They perceived the camera/judge assemblage to be definitely useful in particular situations. He believed it assisted with ensuring accurate judgements. Alyssa’s comments, from women’s gymnastics, were quite different:

Alyssa: I didn’t use it to make any judgements at all. But we used it on vault to confirm a decision we’d made… both times we were right.

Roslyn: So it wasn’t used that often?

Alyssa: No. They used it a few times on bars just to check the completion of

something… And I don’t know if they used it at all on beam… But on floor we used it later to confirm what we thought.

Alyssa described how the system was only enrolled occasionally to confirm a judgement they had already made, however she was clear in saying that she did not require the system and that she was capable of doing her job without the system. Unlike Stuart, Alyssa did not suggest the assemblage was particularly worthwhile. Susannah, a trampolining judge, was even more certain in her belief that the system was not necessary:

… they tend to go to the video only if there is a protest; if you have to go to the video it is like saying you aren't competent enough to do it yourself the first time which is a matter of great pride amongst diff (iculty) judges and you risk getting a bad report - usually its best to take the best guess and hope no one notices! (Susannah)

In trampolining, Susannah suggests the system is deliberately not enrolled. The trampolining judges have created an anti-programme because they are very attached to seeing themselves, and not a technological device, as the ultimate arbitrators. Thus, the camera has not been a solution to solving the problem of accuracy at all, even though technically, the camera/judge has that ability.

Solving Unreliability: Introducing the “Synchro Machine”

Synchronised trampolining involves two trampolinists bouncing on two parallel trampolines. The trampolinists are judged not only on the difficulty and execution they perform, as in individual trampolining, but on how well the two trampolinists are synchronised. The goal is for the two trampolinists to perform every single movement at exactly the same time. As a result, the judging panel for synchronised trampolining includes not only difficulty and execution judges, but “synchro” judges who solely judge the synchronisation of the routine.

The judging of synchronisation is surprisingly difficult. As Vanessa, a trampolining coach and judge described, it is impossible for our eyes to completely focus on two bodies at the same time:

…you actually gaze, you can’t look. You have to gaze. You can’t focus because you’re looking across. If you look at one particular trick, how can you do synchro? You’ve got to look across and gaze and that’s why when I run a synchro course I try and do that. (Vanessa)

She added that it is particularly difficult when the two competitors are “travelling: if one’s down one end and one’s down the other”. She refers here to the common mistake of when the trampolinists do not stay in the middle of the trampoline, bouncing instead at one end, and in synchronised trampolining it can be at opposite ends, making it even more challenging to watch both trampolinists at the same time.

Apart from the difficulty of watching two bodies at the same time, a decision also needs to be made about what dictates good or bad synchronisation. For example, if two trampolinists are unsynchronised, determining the exact point when this lack of synchronisation takes place can be crucial for deciding the score. There appears to be some disagreement between judges as to which part of the movement is the most important to be synchronised.

Vanessa described how for her, she watches how much of each body is unsynchronised, with the routine being terminated53 if the bodies are different by half a body length. She described: “It sort of goes 1 (points to ankle), 2 (points to calf), 3, (points to knee), 4 (points to thigh) 5, (points to waist)” meaning that once the synchronisation gets to 5, meaning 0.5, then the routine is terminated. Terminated means that although the athletes may continue bouncing, the routine is judged out of only the movements they managed to complete before this point.

In contrast to Vanessa, Neil, also a trampolining judge and coach, described how he uses the point of contact with the trampoline to determine synchronisation:

… it all comes down to the point of contact with the bed, not what they’re actually doing. If you can actually determine one person is going up and the other is going down, then technically they’re doing different skills at the same time. So in effect your leeway is your contact with the bed. It’s that split second of going up and down on the trampoline. Technically if someone’s going down, they haven’t hit the bed yet or going up just after they’ve hit the bed coming the other way, that’s when I would determine that the routine is terminated. (Neil)

Neil’s concept of the timing of hitting the trampolining bed being a method for determining synchronisation led the FIG to create a specialised “synchro machine” purely for judging synchronisation. Neil described that it consists of “a beam of light under a trampoline and a timing regulator” that is able to record at what point each of the trampolinists hit the trampoline bed, producing numerical results that can be interpreted into a score for synchronisation. Like the video camera included for judging difficulty, the “synchro machine” was added to the network to judge synchronised trampolining in order to create a more accurate and reliable outcome.

However, Neil described that for reasons he did not understand, the “synchro machine” had proved to be highly unreliable, so much so that at international competitions where it was used, human judges were also employed:

The rumour or theory behind the synchro machine has been around for 20 years, I mean, they first started talking about it in the 80s. And periodically it’s come up, we’ve seen it, but it’s never been relied upon. They had it in Holland (World Championships 2005), but they had synchro judges as well so that what they would do is that the

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In synchronised trampolining, the judges stop judging and the routine is terminated if the trampolinists become too “out of synch”.