Ski Jumping's Pointless Points
Let me admit, right at the beginning, that I have ambivalent feelings about sports where the outcome is based on subjective judging. I enjoy watching figure skating and gymnastics and diving, to name three of them, but the fact that there's nothing that can be measured objectively to determine who "really" won bothers me.
And that sort of sport seems to be on the increase, at least in terms of the Olympics. To the big three listed above, several others have been added in recent Olympiads: Synchronized swimming, ice dancing, rhythmic gymnastics, snowboarding, and freestyle skiing, for example. And there are at least a couple of others that haven't made it to the Olympics yet, namely water-skiing and surfing.
But the sport that really bugs me is ski jumping. I mean, here's a nice simple sport where the person who travels the farthest wins, right? Like broad jumping, only a lot farther and a lot scarier, right?
Wrong. Because ski jumping has style points.
It's possible, in ski jumping, for someone to win with a shorter jump but more points for style. To my knowledge, it's never happened in major competition, but it could, if it hasn't already. Why on earth should something as subjective as "style" count when a winner can be determined by a simple measurement? It's the only sport I know of that blends objective measurement and subjective judgment, which seems totally pointless (no pun intended).
Can you imagine a judge at the 1968 Olympics saying, "We're sorry, Mr. Beamon, but your world record doesn't count because you tucked your left leg a fraction of a second too late"?
Or an umpire saying to Roger Clemens, "Well, yes, it looked like strike three, but I can't allow it because you didn't follow through properly"?
Or a field judge telling Jerry Rice that his touchdown catch only counts four points because he made his cut to the post a half-yard before he should have?
I don't know why or how ski jumping got that way. Obviously, judging for style points has become a tradition, but it's a meaningless and senseless tradition. I think it ought to be abandoned before it causes a major embarrasment for the sport in front of an international television audience.