Or...How Scoring System Helped Derail Women's Bodybuilding
By Polyglot



Scoring a qualitative sport is fraught with difficulty and is rife with
opportunities for corruption.  Consider professional boxing.

Almost all boxing matches are scored on a "10-point must system".  What
this means is that the winner of a round automatically gets 10 points.
However, it also means in this case that the loser of the round
automatically gets 9 points.  If the loser of a round gets knocked down
by a blow and is able to continue, he usually gets 8 points.  If he gets
knocked down twice, he may receive 7 points.

What boxing has done is to try to put some distance between the winner
of a round and the loser if the winner clearly dominates.  As well, the
judges often have punch statistics available to them.  Regardless, as
some high-profile matches held in recent months have clearly
demonstrated, it is still possible to corrupt this system to obtain
peculiar results.

The primary aspect of this system I find irritating is that it doesn't
use 10 points.  I've never heard of a boxer getting 6, 5, 4, etc. points
for a round.  This is only a "3-point must system".  Boxing, though,
does have one redeeming quality with respect to scoring.  If your
opponent is unable to continue, the scoring becomes irrelevant.

When I first became interested in bodybuilding, I actually became a
"tallyer", the person who adds up the scores.  This gave me a great
position to take photographs and the work was easy.  In those days,
three rounds were scored and each round was worth 20 points.  The winner
of a round was supposed to receive 20 points and the loser, something
less.  Some judges thought that only Arnold should receive 20 points and
consequently only gave the winner in the round at hand 15 or so points.
I pointed out that such judges were just lessening the impact they would
have on the final placings as the other judges were scoring out of 20,
but I was talking to self-appointed experts who were not adept at
thinking.

Somewhere along the way, the judging changed from points (where the
athlete with the largest point total won) to placings (where the athlete
with the lowest total won).  This was a step backwards.  Under a
placings system, the difference between first and second is simply one
"point".  Under a point system, first place may receive 20 points and
second, just 17 for example.  I complained about this change and was
told that a points system was "too complicated for the judges".

When women first began to compete, most had much less muscle than the
average fitness competitor manifests today.  The judges didn't know how
to judge them.  I often heard them complain to each other that they
couldn't score the contestants as most felt that the difference in
muscle between the competitors was so slight that the difference in
sexual attractiveness was more important.  Thus, we had many contests in
which the prettiest woman won.  This is the time when some work should
have been done to rationalize the scoring system.  (In the early days
some women were so adamant about being judged exactly like the men were
that they wanted to be topless.  Apparently, there was a show in the
mid-west where a woman and her top parted company in her quest for what
she considered fair judging.)

Here's the way it should be.

Firstly, judging should be performed on criteria, not rounds.

Secondly, ranking of competitors should occur, followed by scores for
each rank.  For example, first place automatically 100 points, then look
at the last placing person for the criterion under consideration and
score them relative to the first place person - 17 points, for example.
Then fill in the rest by alternating.

The politicization of the judges should cease.  Recall when truly
muscular women started to show up in major televised contests.  I was
told that the television people objected to such women and asked the
bodybuilding officials to tone down the muscle.  In those days, each
year brought about a new attempt to reign in the competitors via the
judging.  They were looking for a "total package" (and anyone too
muscular didn't have it).  They were told to score down those with "too
much muscle", whatever that was.  At the same time, many women (and I
suspect, many judges) felt that they should be judged exactly like the
men were.  Eventually, with the emergence of women's fitness contests,
the sport's administrators gave up, apparently began scoring the
competitors exactly like they scored the men, and let women's
bodybuilding develop according to such rules.

I believe that if they had had a proper scoring system in place, the
administrators could have controlled the sport in a fair manner.
Firstly, judge by criteria.  I suggest that the number of criteria
should be small - for example, muscularity (perhaps muscle size,
hardness, symmetry) and presentation (grooming, posing).  The criteria
should be independent.  That is, it should be possible to score 100 in
one criterion and 0 in another.  We don't want the judges scoring the
same thing over and over - which is what they are doing now.  For
example, a competitor can have lots of muscle, but not be hard; she
could have lots of muscle, be hard, but not be symmetric.  She could
have her hair, makeup and skin color perfect, but pose abysmally.  From
the judges' perspective, both men and women should be scored exactly the
same.  Such a scoring system would completely remove the politics from
the judging.  No more "total package" bullshit.

(When I've explained such a proposal to others, I often get the cynical
response that the sport's administrators don't want an unbiased scoring
system.  They want one they can manipulate.  I find it difficult to
credit the administrators with that much subtly.)

I've left something out.  The judges have scored.  How do we derive the
final placings?  It's not by addition.  It is at this point that the
sport's administrators should make their case and set clear, completely
open rules.  The criteria should be weighted and, I suggest, the weights
should be different for men and women.  For example, I outlined 5
criteria (muscle size, muscle hardness, muscle symmetry, grooming,
performance).  Suppose the judges scored each out of 100 with men and
women scored exactly the same way.  The scores are taken away and the
final placings are determined by applying weights to the scores.  For
example, for women the administrators might apply weightings of 20% to
each criterion and for men it might be 30%, 30%, 20%, 10% and 10%.

With such clearly delineated scoring, there can be no hidden agendas,
the judges are de-politicized, and the sport can go in the direction
that the administrators want.  Additionally, if the NPC/IFBB were
democratic, the members could actually vote on the weightings they
wanted to have applied to their sport.