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[Gloersen]

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Edited April 10, 2023 by Gloersen

[jimski]

Is that 1,3 or 5

What ever buoy it is it’s no score. It is a miss to ride inside a buoy, over, straddle or hop over a buoy.

I wouldn’t consider this grazing as he clearly is centred over the buoy.

This score would be very difficult to call from the boat and almost impossible from a tower

[bishop8950]

From a potentially irrelevant perspective to officiating, it is a miss. But the question I always ask is what could the event judges see from their seats with whatever tech they had?

[Horton]

4

[jimski]

Looks like a tie for

Second

[Horton]

I do not know why the sport struggles with this so much. I know that a lot of Officials think this forum is always playing "Gotcha!" but there is simply a contingent within the sport that wants an accurate and fair playing field. We must account for honest officiating mistakes but we need to identify systemic patterns of inaccuracy or deviations from the rules.

[Horton]

@jimski No. Ties are broken previous round score.

[ScottScott]

I'm not sure there is even a tech issue here is there? The tech seems to be perfectly capable of making this call accurately. The ball is clearly visible before the skier approaches in the 1st frame, then 2nd frame it is partially covered, and frame 3 its gone. The skier is pretty clearly inside the ball. At best he ran it over and sank it which still is a miss.

[Horton]

@ScottScott my guess is they called it live as 4 1/2 & it was not till somebody looked carefully at the webcast that they saw the discrepancy. A guess.

[ScottScott]

I missed that this video is from the webcast, not officials video the judges could review. If the officials video they could replay didn't show that clearly then it was definitely lacking, and needs to be updated.

[Jody_Seal]

The score is what ever the previous bouy was , zero, 2 or 4.

[LeonL]

In defense of the system as it now stands (and perhaps forever in the future) there will always be a vantage point that provides a different perspective. It's just not feasible to have every possible angle viewed. Fortunately the podium was not impacted due to first round scores precluding a tie. But in answer to the thread question....the score is 4.

[auskier]

As someone who has been involved in the crunch of a number of similar incidents, I cringe when things like this happen. I have no doubt the officials involved made the best call they could with what they had in front of them. I would love to know how we 'fix' these situations but there is no simple, or single answer. As @bishop8950 said, video from this perspective is not allowed to be used to make a judging call.

 

Now.. What I am about to say is in NO WAY advocating for a reversal in the trend in making the sport safer for skiers. I like many of you have been injured by hitting balls and anything that helps prevent people being hurt should be encouraged. However, in my opinion a contributing factor (NOT THE ONLY ONE) to questionable judging calls like this occurring, is a result of the improved safety in turn balls - partially water filled, bubble buoys, low air pressure etc.

In times past centre punching a turn ball like the example above would have likely spat you out the front as the ball would be much harder to deform and displace. It was probably also larger and sat higher in the water. Hitting a ball like this would cause a much clearer displacement of the ski, disruption of the spray, cause the skier to fall etc etc. Now with most balls you can safely hit them all day without consequence. Therefore the ability for a judge to determine whether or not a buoy was correctly skied around is more difficult than it has ever been. It has significantly reduced the margin of error to just a few inches which needs to be determined in less than .01 of a second, without as many telltale signs to make the right call live from the boat. Additionally, if shore judges are in the middle of the course they may be 150-200m away from 1 ball for example. Using the recommended 20cm diameter minimum buoy there is a 10cm margin to determine the difference between a ball being rounded, and a ball being ridden over and centre hit. Not to mention a ball that will probably deform and sink under water easily. This leaves the judges having to determining a 10cm difference from quite a distance away.

Another factor is the video review and video from the boat. The skier is the only constant in the moving video frame. The ball comes in and out of frame while the skier is the primary focus point. This means the buoy is part of the background and suffers from interlace issues as it rapidly moves through the frame. Someone stationary on the bank with a camera, looking at a stationary turn ball will always have greater clarity than a boat camera to determine displacement or ski position in relation to the buoy.

[klindy]

First of all the completion at this tournament in all divisions was phenomenal. Lots of good athletes, great competition and even several PB’s. The site was setup perfectly and with some of the best equipment available. Officials are some of the best in the business and have tons of experience.

 

As @bishop8950 points out this isn’t an official view but nevertheless, a high quality, multiple camera angle FREE webcast is critical to getting some exposure to the sport and to allow family/friends to enjoy the competition without being onsite. While we all strive for doing the best we can and focus on putting the right athlete on the right spot on the podium errors do sometimes happen.

 

Now a little background... I was an appointed judge at this tournament. Slalom towers are at the center of the lake on both sides. In this configuration the boat video was not necessary BUT we installed and used it anyway. We had a separate judge watching the boat video and the end course video (2 different people). However, since boat video was not required, it was used to resolve any conflict of EVERY score where 2 judges called something and a third called another. In this case all three judges made the same call and, in real time on the video there was no reason to question the call.

 

The frame by frame clip above is clear what the call should be. Subsequent review on the boat video shows the same thing. It’s one of those scenarios where, even with extra technology in place to do the best possible for deserving athletes, it didn’t give us the right answer.

 

Fortunately, even with extremely close competition, the results would be identical to where they ended up. Again, the skiers were fantastic! Sportsmanship all weekend the best I’ve seen. Great to point these things out and look for answers to improve our sport.

 

 

[The_MS]

Awesome explanation @klindy

[Horton]

thanks @klindy