Chitter chatter and innuendo - how judges' gossip shapes gymnastics

I was browsing my Facebook yesterday, looking for some news of women's podium training, when I came across the above entry on International Gymnast's Facebook page.  It has provoked a significant response, with over 30 comments, including one from Aimee Boorman, coach to World Champion Simone Biles.

Only a few years ago, details of podium training, judges' meetings and so on were inaudible to the fan's ear.  Without accreditation, a fan had to travel to World Championships and network, network, network to find the most reliable source of information.  Mostly, there was the odd snippet to add colour to your picture of Worlds, if you were lucky.  A few months later your print copy of IG would drop through your letterbox, and you would read between the lines, eager for the slightest hint of behind the scenes tittle tattle.  But generally, judges' chatter was reserved for those privileged enough to be attached to a delegation, or to have media accreditation for Worlds.

Social media has changed all of that.  The curtain between the fan's view and what happens in training, qualifications and beyond is becoming gradually more and more transparent.  In America, USA Gymnastics has provided live streaming of some of podium training and most of qualifications, and soon enough we will all be able to see everything that happens in this early stage of competitions, and not a moment too soon as, like Christmas Eve, podium training is often more exciting than the main event.

Yet, not content with live streaming, we all want to hear what the judges and coaches and gymnasts are saying and we all comb the internet for the merest scrap.  Which is what makes IG's innocent little comment so intriguing, and I was a little bit surprised to see somebody from USA Gymnastics react so freely to it on a public forum.  The behaviour described is, after all, accepted practice and, presumably, ethical.  Why would Aimee be so sensitive to it?  We have to take into account the context, in which many pro-American bloggers are sounding off about the fabled improvements the American team - the weakest we have seen in many years - has made on uneven bars.  Better marks here might prove vital in a close final if margins on other apparatus, for example floor, are diminished.  Clearly, there is a lobbying strategy going on, to maximise the possible score the US can achieve on bars, no everywhere, and this isn't just about how the girls perform on the apparatus.  All the same, I don't believe that anything was going on that fell outside the boundaries of usual podium training behaviour. 

At this moment, I am reminded of the 1991 World Championships and the much disputed resulted of the women's all around final.  The competition, based in Indianapolis, USA, saw America's Kim Zmeskal win gold and become her country's first ever all around champion.  It was controversial because her main rival for the title, Svetlana Boguinskaia, had gone through her routines faultlessly and with unmatched artistry.  In a small way, the competition was a microcosm of things to come in the sport of gymnastics.  An energetic bundle of power, Zmeskal had impressed the judges - and the American public - with accurate acrobatics and youthful enthusiasm.  For once, the grace and elegance of gymnastics was forgotten, the line and weightlessness of artistic gymnastics was sacrificed at the altar of acrobatic skill.

It was devastating, incomprehensible - how could the judges have made such a basic error?  Only corrupt judging could possibly have created such a result, I mumbled.  But no - a conversation with a British gymnastics coach put me right on this.  No need for bribes, he said.  Of course judges, coaches, gymnasts talk to each other, and of course the subject of gymnastics, and marks, does come up.  But it's relatively rare for money to actually change hands - in fact it's not really necessary.  Judges, coaches, delegation heads, all know the relative strengths and weaknesses of both individual gymnasts and teams.  All that's necessary (if you want to skew the marks) is to talk about particular characteristics in gymnasts' work and gently nudge the conversation towards the idea that deductions should be taken for particular types of fault, or bonuses given for particular skills or characteristics. 

You might have to be a bit gullible to take this kind of direction from an isolated contact, but people can be really easy to convince of anything if enough people say it at once.  So on a gymnastics level, for example, if you had a really large delegation at a World Championships, and you were all well coordinated, promoting the right message, you could create quite a buzz about anything that pleased you, really.  At the 1989 World Championships, for example, there had been quite a furore when West Germany's Andreas Aguilar had beaten East Germany's Andreas Wecker on rings.  Eventually, poor Aguilar gifted his gold medal to Wecker, so convinced was he and the rest of the world that the outcome of the competition had been unjust.  But how on earth had such a result been possible?  Well, perhaps it came out of a judges' meeting, over a drink in a delegation's hotel, a casual conversation in which opportunities for deduction and bonus were suggested that were detrimental to one gymnast and favourable to the other. 

Karl-Heinz Zschocke, Ellen Berger, and Yuri Titov - judges and officials

Of course, the Codes of Points have changed since the late 1980s.  Execution deductions are much more specific than they were in the qualitatively ruled era of artistry and innovation, but in many ways today's more specific judging method is one that is more open to manipulation.  It can be imagined that this kind of lobbying very much shapes the sport, in fact.  How else would deductions be agreed amongst the various technical committees, and where do the ideas for changes come from if it is not through the channel of interaction with fellow sporting professionals.  That may be one of the reasons why Andrei Rodionenko, for example, has highlighted how important it is that his coaching staff learn to speak English.  I would moot that this is not only so that they can understand the Code (the translated versions are often at odds with the primary English language edition), but also so that they can discuss the merits of gymnastics with judges and other coaches, make a fair argument for their gymnasts and have a fair chance of completing the rather tricky appeals documentation.  In this, of course, it is essential to have a knowledge of one's rivals, which is, no doubt, why the American judges, assigned to floor and vault, were taking such an interest in the Chinese bars.

Maria Simionescu - a leading judge of the 1980s and 1990s

Sometimes, judges' gossip takes over and we have to witness bitter feuding between judges, coaches, and other officials.  Those of you who are old enough to remember the 1980 Olympics will recall how a dispute between East Germany's Ellen Berger (then Head of the WTC) and Romania's Maria Simionescu (Head Judge on beam), halted the women's all round competition for around half an hour, keeping the cameras glued to the gymnastics arena for once.  The argument revolved around the score given to Romania's Nadia Comaneci for her beam routine, that ultimately led to the crowning of the Soviet Union's Elena Davydova as all around champion. Only two years previously Simionescu's Romanian team had walked out of the event finals at the 1978 Prague European Championships over a similar dispute on vault.

And, of course, we have the never to be forgotten interview with Nelli Kim, head of the WTC, in which she panned the Russian system; quite unprecedented behaviour for a sporting official in such an influential position, and really quite unacceptable.  Nevertheless, part of the tapestry of gymnastics life, the gossip and innuendo that contributes to the ever changing picture of our sport and that is ever more in the spotlight now that social media has opened the curtains to this world. 

Gymnastics is constantly in motion.  Much earlier in this blog, I have written about the battle between artistry and acrobatics that has taken place.  While this remains of interest to me, the battle is almost over; acrobatics have won for the time being, until the next big change comes along.  And this change will be effected not only by the gymnasts' performance, but also, in large part, by the gossip and chatter that goes on in competitions.  International Gymnast's Facebook post was significant in ways that reach well beyond the mere scandal-mongering of a few fans.  It reveals how important power and influence are to the sport - this is a fact of life.