A couple weeks ago in my communication skills class, we started learning about debating. We now have chosen a debate topic, and a partner to be on your team. In this post, I will be talking about mine.
Affirmative
“Judged Sports Should Not Be In The Olympics”
I believe that judged sports should not be in the Olympics for many reasons. Firstly, there is a chance there could be favouritism regardless of how a competitor did. You can never really know if there was any bribery involved, or if maybe a participant and a judge were long lost friends, the possibilities are endless and that could stop the participants from receiving the medal they deserve. An example of the unfair scoring is when U.S. gymnast Aly Raisman completed her routine on the balance beam during the individual finals Tuesday, she hugged her coach and stared at the scoreboard, waiting to see whether she had done enough to medal. When the score finally flashed, a nervous Raisman became disappointed. “Oh, no!” her coach, proclaimed as he spotted the eerily familiar results. She had landed in fourth place – again – and just shy of the medal stand for the second time in the Olympics. What happened next would again thrust the judges, athletes and coaches into a heated debate over Olympic scoring. As Raisman tried to hold back her disappointment, shouts came from the crowd. U.S. national team coordinator Martha Karolyi, her husband, Bela (who is no longer associated with Team USA but is a constant fixture), and vice president of USA women’s gymnastics Kathy Kelly shouted and motioned for Brestyan to file a protest. They believed that the judges hadn’t accurately tabulated her difficulty score, specifically the connections between a few of her elements on the beam. Having a judge causes a lot of unneeded stress. That is why I do not think that judged sports should be in the Olympics. Another example of when judging has gone wrong is when two dedicated Canadian figure skaters went to the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. They had an amazing routine, besides a small slip up at the end that wasn’t big enough for the judges to take points off. They ended up winning a silver medal, but everyone was suspicious because the Russian winners made an obvious technical error, and didn’t do as well as the Canadians. After lots of investigating, people found out that the French judge, “Marie-Reine Le Gougne” had been pressured by the French skating organization to vote for the Russian pair no matter how they did. She felt like the Canadians should have won, but was being bullied into voting for the Russians. If there weren’t judged sports in the Olympics, there wouldn’t be that kind of issue. In conclusion, I do not think judged sports should be in the Olympics for many reasons.
claire pontefract's blog 
I read an interesting article that looked at the question of judged sports in the Olympics. If my memory serves me correctly, the article more or less summed up judged sports in the Olympics as more of a “performance” than a “sport”. This made a lot of sense to me given that, if you need to wait on the judges’ decisions to declare a winner, you are “performing” for the judges and not “practicing a sport” you love with all your heart and soul in order to cross that finish line first, or beat that clock or reach that maximum distance, etc. When I look at it that way, I would have to say that I am on your side of the debate. But, my sweet Claire, in the same breadth, I would quickly have to ask “What is going to happen to skating, gymnastics and other judged sports that truly are great sports if they don’t get to share in the great Olympic platform?” Tough question especially for me as I am a Gemini : I can see the merits and the drawbacks in both excluding and including judged sports in the Olympics. For me, it’s never clearly “black or white”. Typically me and not very helpful, right?ð I am glad you are debating this issue and not me!ð
Again, Claire, a real pleasure reading you! Good luck with the debate!
Deniseð Sent from my iPhone
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Thank you for that comment, if you don’t mind I’d like to use some of that for my debate speech. I do agree, if all the judged sports aren’t in the Olympics what would happen to them? If I were in charge of things, I would make a separate competition for them, that is similar to the Olympics. Thanks for your comment!
That’s a good point Claire. The Judgolympics.