When is a tie not a tie?

First of all, let me be kind and issue a spoiler alert. I'm fairly certain the event I'm about to discuss will be broadcast on NBC in primetime tonight. So, if you haven't heard the results of the women's uneven bar final, and don't want to, please don't continue reading. (But come back after you've watched!)

Who would have thought that gymnastics scoring could get anymore convoluted? Certainly not me, that's for sure. After a series of judging controversies in Athen in 2004, the powers that be scrapped the 10 point system that had been the standard in gymnastics for decades, and implemented the current code of points, which takes 2 scores the A score (for the difficulty of the attempted elements, and I believe theoretically unlimited) and the B score (for execution, which is still graded on a 10 point scale. So, there is no longer a "perfect" score, although a gymnast could still get perfect marks for execution.

As we've learned in these Games, that change has really accomplished... nothing. Well, it's accomplished nothing that it set out to do anyhow. There are still head scratching scores, gymnasts still don't always get the right start values, and there's still inconsistencies from judge to judge and panel to panel. On top of that, the new system has thrown the all-around competition out of balance, because some apparatus have become higher scoring than others, which was not what the FIG was going for. And, as we learned early this morning US time, they've put in a convoluted tie-breaking procedure that relegated all-around champion Nastia Liukin to a silver on the uneven bars, where in any previous Olympic competition, she would have tied for the gold.

That's right, Liukin received the exact same score (16.725) as gold medalist He Kexin, but settled for silver.

I've read through the tie-breaking procedures, and while I finally think I understand the mechanics, the rationale for them escapes me. But that's really not the point. The point is that once again, gymnastics is getting a negative spotlight for their scoring and judging system, and taking (at least in this case), a very unnecessary black eye. Why, all of a sudden, is a tie a bad thing? If you've gone through all these complicated procedures to determine that two routines deserve the exact same score, why do you have to go back and nit-pick to distinguish?

I've tended to lean to the idea in the past that competitions that are judged should not be considered sports, and especially not Olympic sports. Gymnastics is one of the few things that keeps me from going fully over to that camp, because I watch how amazingly athletic both the men and women are, and I can't bring myself to say that they don't belong on an Olympic stage. I have no such difficulty with say, figure skaters.

The fact of the matter is, however, that it doesn't need to be this way with gymnastics. Given the nature of the events, it wouldn't be that hard to take virtually all the subjectivity out of the judging and really just render it as score keeping. And, from what I understand, the new system is moving in that direction. And I hope so, because if jokes like this continue, I may just have to put it up alongside the likes of figure skating, and I'd really hate to do that.