Ian Crane would probably welcome an avenue for score changes in pro surfing. Photo: YouTube
We’ve all watched judges hand out scores that make us grimace, even if we’ll never all agree which scores were horse shit and which were fair. Plenty of pixels have been devoted to parsing rage-inducing scores, so we don’t need to rehash all that.
(However, if you feel like getting heated over something that affects your own life in no way whatsoever, tour a few of the most hated recent scores:
John John’s 3.37 in dismal conditions this year at J-Bay, which kicked Jordy Smith to the curb. Gabriel Medina’s much-hated 8.3 against Tanner Gudauskas at Trestles this year. And Kelly Slater’s miraculous botched-air recovery at Trestles in 2015, for which the judges doled out a measly 4.17.)
To the WSL’s credit, they’ve communicated to The Inertia the “extensive mechanisms that are in place to ensure non-biased, expert officiating takes place at the highest levels of competition. Officiating that is enhanced through regular dialogue with the world’s best surfers.”
Which is great. But here’s one question that seems to get overlooked every time the judging panel drops a steaming, controversial turd in the score box: Should there be a way to change scores if they seem patently inaccurate?
While Article 131 in the WSL Rule Book allows surfers the right to lodge a protest with the Head Judge, the only recourse the rulebook clarifies of said protest is the following: “The WSL Head Judge will talk to the Surfer at the end of the day for 30 minutes maximum, following the Judge’s discussion of the protest.”
What happens in those thirty minutes is anyone’s guess, and because said 30-minute-max discussion transpires at the conclusion of the contest day, it’s hard to imagine that it could reverse an outcome from a call that conceivably happened two rounds earlier.
Under the current rules, as far as we’re aware, there is no way to change scores after they’re locked in. The surfers in the heat and all of us observers are stuck with the average of three scores after the highest and lowest are dropped. In other words, surfers are scored on speed, power, flow, and whether a given judge had a satisfying bowel movement that day. Or on the surfer’s nationality (nationality bias is a huge problem in many sports). Or how recently a surfer has flipped the judge’s panel the bird, a la Kolohe Andino, Ian Crane and an esteemed list of other bird-flippers through the ages.
Granted, the WSL’s judging staff is highly trained and is tasked to eliminate all bias, but it is not debatable that they are people. And even the most earnest professionals are subject to the inconsistencies of said humanity and the inherent subjectivity of sports not based on objective measurements. In other words, the only way to “kill a person” is to literally kill a person. And no one wants that.
So at the moment, besides blasting Instagram with rage, pro surfing has only one other avenue to alter a score: A little-known clause whereby surfers storm the judges tower and…we don’t really know what happens in there out of the camera’s eye. Whatever yelling, intimidation or crying does go down isn’t very effective. In fact, according to Surfer mag, “Storming the tower hasn’t changed the result since Pipe in 1981, when, under the threat of a large-scale North Shore riot, the judges corrected their scores and advanced Buttons through to a seven-man Pipe final.”
Other judged sports are a bit more lenient about score changes. In the Freeride World Tour, judges “are allowed to change scores if obvious mistakes happened,” according to the rule book. Being that this takes place in a variable natural environment, it bears a lot of similarity to the WSL’s World Championship Tour. At least it bears a lot more similarity to surfing than snowboarding on a halfpipe or other terrain that remains the same for every competition.
It’s worth noting that Olympic gymnastics has a bizarre system that does allow score changes. Competitors can file an appeal to judges after a questionable score has been made. This allows the panel to take a second look and gives them the power to change the score. Yes, that would pose a logistical problem given that surfers are generally bobbing in the ocean when their waves are scored. And weirdly, filing an appeal costs gymnasts $300, which is returned to them if the score is changed. Surfers are unlikely to have cash on them in the lineup. Venmo, maybe?
Like surfing, Olympic snowboarding, doesn’t allow scores to be changed after they’re set. But the head judge can question why a judge is considering giving a score and suggest changes before it’s locked in. And like with surfing, snowboarders are encouraged to talk to the judges to find out why they’re scoring the way they are. Street League Skateboarding uses essentially the same five-judge scoring system, and scores can’t be changed, either.
If you think scoring in pro surfing is questionable, be glad you’re not a rabid fan of Olympic figure skating, gymnastics or every other judged Olympic sport. When surfing appears in the its first Olympics in Tokyo in four years, it’ll be in good company of sports with Byzantine, subjective scoring systems that are rife for questionable calls.
Every judged sport eventually comes under fire for controversial judging calls. Which is probably because judging based on subjective opinion is totally flawed. But what else are you gonna do with surfing? Like democracy and capitalism, it’s the worst system out there except for everything else.
But would instating score changes make judging in pro surfing slightly less aggravating? Should we ask Ian Crane?
Correction Appended: An earlier version of this article failed to mention Article 131 in the WSL Rule Book, which enables a surfer the right to protest a decision to the Head Judge.
