The machinations of the WSL are a favourite talking point for surfers in the line-up. Often it’s with salt water dripping from their nostrils and an approaching set creating a sense of urgency that surfers say the most honest things. It was during one such gentleman’s hour discussion that a regular at my local adamantly voiced his support for crowd-voted judging.
Rat (the name he goes by) firmly believed that the WSL would be way more watchable if heats were decided on the whim of the armchair critics. Hundreds of thousands of viewers literally dialled in to the webcast with itchy fingers hovering over the numbers palette of their keyboards or phones, relishing the opportunity to drop a score with two decimal places for a John John flip or a Jordy combo. Empowered to influence the destiny of professional surfers with the click of a button. It sure would help to take the edge off Facebook and comment box venting about decisions if you had a say in what went down.
Rat had obviously spent a bit of time thinking about his idea, or maybe he just watched a lot of reality TV, talent shows. He proposed that the result of a heat would be based on a fifty/fifty split between the judges and the general public. He even suggested that the public vote could be mathematically manipulated much like the WSL judging system where the highest and lowest scores for a wave from the five judges are dropped and the middle three are averaged out. Instead you would have an algorithm that dropped the top twenty and lowest twenty % of viewer scores and averaged the 60% in the middle. (Ok there were waves ridden in-between this discussion. Rat actually got what I thought was a 9.5 on the wave of the morning).
My personal view was that having the general public vote in any way influencing the actual score or result was a ridiculous notion. To begin with it doesn’t take too much imagination to think of ways someone might put the fix on (everyone loves betting on surfing) with such a system. Even the time slot or location of an event would dramatically influence the result depending on who was up watching. However, even if the criminal or crowd favourite potentialities of such a framework could be eliminated there are other reasons. The way a wave unfolds on a screen often doesn’t do justice to the way it looks to the naked eye. Yes, the judges use the video replay as a reference but, the power of a turn, the depth of a barrel and just how critical a section is (plus a number of other elements) isn’t always clear on camera.
Also, despite the fact we are all convinced of our infallible ability to judge heats, the panel employed to arbitrate over surfing are specialists. They have trained for years, have discussed and thought long and hard about exactly what excellent competition surfing is, and they have also liaised with the world’s best surfers to reach a consensus about what should and should not be rewarded. You won’t see it revealed in the webcast but the judges do take on board the surfers opinions as individuals and a collective about how the scoring should work. Behind the scenes the judges will tell you that such discussions have influenced the way the criteria is interpreted.
The judges are certainly not beyond reproach or accountability either. Spend enough time at WSL events and you will eventually witness one of the judges being summonsed from the tower to explain a close decision to a still fuming surfer or coach. Don’t fancy being bailed up by a fire-breathing Jeremy Flores after he just lost in a tight heat then don’t become a judge. There’s just too much anonymity and too little on the line for a real, at- home/work judging panel whose decisions have consequences.
All that said the idea of being able to view an audience score for a wave on the broadcast, even though it has no impact on the result, could be a lot of fun. It’s not hard to imagine the delivery. “Judges give John John a 7.8 and it’s not enough. What did the audience think? Oooooh! It’s an 8.2 from the viewers and on their scorecards he’d be through to the next round. Well at least everyone at home still loves you John, c’est la vie. ”
Cast your mind back to Gabriel Medina’s controversial, coconut snatching aerial that all but ended Mick Fanning’s world title chances at Pipeline last year. (He then had to rely on Mason Ho to beat Adriano) The judges gave Gabriel a 6.5 for the monster air rev’, a move many online commenters felt was not befitting the Pipeline setting.
It would have been a very interesting situation in which to see the audience score. What would you have given it? Do you wanna play judge, even if it’s just for fun, or would it turn the sport we love into some horrible version of the X-factor?
