Tuesday, August 12, 2008

In defence of Tom Daley

I feel sorry for Tom Daley. A few months ago we thought it almost miraculous that a 13-year-old could qualify for an Olympic final.

A few months later he is 14, the press has made the mistake of believing its own hype and as a result he is treated as a failure for not having won a medal.

But I did like Sam Wollaston's take on synchronised diving in the Guardian this morning:
It's clear that no one understands the scoring, not even the people doing it. A dive by the German pair gets four and a half out of 10 for execution from one judge, and nine out of 10 from another. And none of the numbers corresponds with what the commentators have just said about the dive. It's basically the Eurovision Song Contest, in Speedos.

1 comment:

Kris Lucius said...

I believe of the four execution scores there are two for each diver. So in the synchronised events you may see 4.5, 5.0, 8.5 and 9.0.

If so, it is not the judges who are off balance...