How does the olympic gymnastics tie-break work?

Question

I was just watching the gymnastics and 2 separate gold medals were decided due to the 'tie-break' system. Rings and vault. Both competitors had the EXACT same score but one was awarded gold the other silver. Is it decided on the previous highest qualifying score, highest difficulty or the highest execution? Why not have them go again to see who wins?

Answer 1

head, one guy win

tail, the other guy win.

Answer 2

Gymnastics used to give out duplicate medals at the Olympics. In a bit of irony, Liukin's father got one of his gold medals at the 1988 Olympics after tying teammate Vladimir Artemov on high bar. But the International Olympic Committee told the FIG to stop sharing medals after the Atlanta Games, and a tiebreak system was implemented in 1997.

It's a complicated formula that is based on deductions from the execution mark and involves more math than the SAT. Even Liukin wasn't quite sure how the tie was broken -- and that was after someone explained it to her.

The short answer is that He Kexin had .033 less in deductions when you apply the second tiebreak formula.

For the long answer, grab a pencil and some scratch paper.

He and Liukin both finished with 16.725. They had identical 7.7 start values (the measure of a routine's difficulty) and they each had a 9.025 for execution after the highest and lowest of the six judges' marks were tossed out. The execution mark is based on the perfect 10 scale, and the first tiebreak takes the average of the four deductions that counted. He and Liukin were still tied after that.

For the second tiebreak, the three lowest deductions that counted are averaged. When that was done, He had .933 in deductions and Liukin had .966.

Got that?

Answer 3

Rock, paper, scissors

or

the gymnast with the higher difficulty

Answer 4

Your totally right! In every other sport in the Olympics, if 2 players say tie for the gold, then they both get gold.. it just doesn't make sense.. and no they can't decide that due to the qualify scores. They should just have them both go again but they never do that in the Olympics for some reason.

Answer 5

It goes to whoever has the highest star value A score, if they are both the same and have the same B score, they look at each mark the judges gave and the medal (gold let's say) goes to the one who made the fewer mistakes.

So if 4 judges gave one guy more 1st place marks vs 3 first place marks for he other guy..

I just wish they would award ties! Who cares if there are 2 gold medals!

Answer 6

i have the exact same question! was also wondering that after watching it tonight.

Answer 7

i saw it for the pommel horse too! and i'm equally puzzled.