The photo, posted to Scooby’s Instagram page and Medina, in a throaty one that may have been a 9.9 in the scoring booth, but a 10 in our hearts. Photos: Screenshot(L)//ISA(R)
I woke up this morning looking for the next big story at the Paris 2024 Olympics and, lo and behold, the spiciest story of the Games fell right into my lap. The International Surfing Association (ISA) put out a short statement that landed in my inbox informing the press that they’d removed a judge for “a photo circulating on social media in which one of the Olympic surfing judges from Australia is seen socially interacting with an Australian athlete and the team manager.”
The ISA called the judge’s actions “inappropriate.” The statement explained that the judge would be removed from the panel for the rest of the event “to protect the integrity and fairness of the ongoing competition.”
The great thing about the Olympics is the transparency in judging. It’s quite simple to find out who the judge is. There is only one Australian judge on the panel: Ben Lowe. You only have to open up your Instagram to quickly find the photo where Lowe is seen fraternizing with Australian Ethan Ewing and the team manager Bede Durbidge on the boat dock here in Teahupo’o.
This is the type of evidence that Brazilian surf fans get furious about. The Brazilians have a long-standing conspiracy theory that their surfers are underscored compared to the Americans and Australians. Brazilian pro surfer Pedro Scooby posted a video on Instagram speaking about the photo of Lowe. Plus, Brazilian media already had Lowe earmarked for allegedly underscoring its surfers before this incident. This story on ESPN Brazil written in 2021 highlighted Lowe for underscoring Medina at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
But is it true? Does Lowe favor Australians over Brazilians?
Thanks to the transparency of the Olympics we can look through all of the scores that Lowe has given in every heat. On the Olympics site, he is known as “Judge 5.” Notably, Lowe was one of the judges who scored Medina’s iconic ride a 9.8, not awarding Medina the perfect 10 as the French and American judges did. (The Kiwi and Brazilian judges didn’t give Medina a 10 either.)
Lowe is one of seven judges here at the Olympics. Five of those seven judges are assigned to each heat. (Now there are only six.) The high and low scores of each wave are discarded, while the middle three scores are averaged to get the final wave score. I analyzed Lowe’s scores to see if there is any truth to the Brazilian hypothesis that he is biased. In particular, I crunched the numbers to see how the top two wave scores of each Australian and Brazilian surfer compared to the actual score the surfer received.
Here is what I discovered:
Lowe tends to underscore waves. He judged 16 heats that featured Brazilians and/or Australians in the Paris 2024 Olympics before his removal. Of the 36 top-two wave scores of Australians and Brazilians in those heats, his wave score was less than the final score 55 percent of the time. His scoring on average was 0.13 points below the average score. Twenty-two percent of the time he scored above the average and the other 22 percent of the time he hit the score exactly on the mark.
When you look at the breakdown of the scores, he actually underscored his compatriots more than the Brazilians. His Australian scores were on average 0.16 points below the average, while his Brazilian scores were on average 0.11 points below the average.
In conclusion, at least at the 2024 Olympics, the claim that Lowe unfairly scores Brazilians doesn’t hold water. That said, this is a warning to all surfing judges, within and outside of the Olympics.
The surfing world is small and everyone knows everyone. The judges, surfers, coaches, and media are often all friends, having grown up together or worked the same events for many years. I can tell you that Lowe is not the only judge who hangs out with compatriots from his national team. But Lowe had an example made of him. With the scrutiny of the Olympics, perception is important. I suppose the lesson learned is: be careful who you hang out with because everything will find its way onto social media.
