Havre wrote: ↑Sun May 22, 2022 10:24 am
There are ways to combine this stuff. One could have both “professional” judges and a one based on votes. One doesn’t exclude the other.
Traditional ski jumping is a good example of how ridiculously poor judging from professionals are. It is basically just a way for the best athletes to get some extra points as those jumping last will always get more points for the same kind of jump vs those jumping earlier.
For me kiting is also just as much about what looks cool as it is about technical skill. A bit like music. Who is the best drummer? He who can play something very technical or he who sounds the best? Can anyone combine the two?
Funnily enough just reading a book about that topic. Robert Pirsig. Highly recommendable.
I think they should just stick to letting the public decide on "rider of the day" or whatever. It has no bearing on the competition, but allows the fans to feel like they're contributing. Judges, like refs or athletes have off days. They miss things, interpret poorly, variably score, etc. You just hope they're professionals, watch some replays, and learn from mistakes. To be honest, I don't know how the big air judges do it. I can't keep up and I primarily only do/watch big air riding. BAKL seems to be on the right track with a score matrix (I don't know much about it, so it may not work at all) and single riders to limit mistakes.
I agree, kiting for the layperson is all about style. I much prefer watching fluid simple tricks like darkslide variations or big and slow back roll board offs. I loved Jamie's video in the title post and personally find these stylish videos more enjoyable to watch than Toby's technical tricks. However, I don't think for a second that JO is 1/10th the oldschool rider that Toby is. Toby would annihilate JO in any skill based Airstyle competition.
I made this argument a few years ago on this forum that all sports eventually become too technical for the layperson to watch. In kiting, freestyle was long on this road, but now airstyle is in this category as well. It's about cramming more tricks into the time in the air rather than what's enjoyable to watch - which is completely fair as skill level and technicality rise. Big air kiting wasn't super technical until the last couple years or so. Now it's becoming harder for the average person to enjoy because it's about how many rolls the person did, or when the board came off, or what part of the board did he grab, what angle was the kite, how far did he travel, etc. It's hard to understand because almost all of that happens in about two seconds from 200m away. The average person understands: "Fuuuuucccckkkk! That was huuuggeeee!!!"