Why did the judges, take away the ability to earn a "perfect 10" in gymnastics?

Question

I was watching the olympics last night, and I heard that twice. What does that mean, and why would they do that? I mean if I was a gymnast, I would be discourage if now, no matter what i did, how hard I worked, or how perfect my routine was I could NOT earn a 10. I just don't see someone working really hard to just earn a 9.7

Answer 1

It is still technically possible to ear a perfect 10, but the new standards are so unreasonably high that it is far less likely than in the past.  Basically, a gymnast today would have to perfetly perform, without even the slightest error, an insanely difficult routine to get a 10.  While in the past, just managing the same routine without falling on your face would get you the same score.

Answer 2

The excecution is still out of 10, and they take deductions from that. A gymnast decides what they want their difficulty to be, the lower it is the less deductions, but it's more of a risk. So it's a combination of those two numbers that gives the final score. So the 9.7 would only be for excecution and the predetermined difficulty is added to that.

Answer 3

they changed the scoring system. theres a difficulty score and a execution score. on the execution score you can still get a 10, but your final score is the difficulty score plus and execution score. a good score is about 16. confuzing rite?

Answer 4

you can not get a perfect 10 anymore because it is not marked out of 10 anymore. there is an a score and a b score, which are for execution and difficulty. the A score is awarded for how difficult the routine was. this is usually between 4.5 and 7 and the B score is the execution score and is marked out of 10 and then every thing wrong with this routine is taken away from 10. the 2 scores are then added up and then that is the gymnasts score. a typical score is between 14 and 16.

hope this helps