Why are some diving scores crossed out at the Olympics?
SCORING quirks can often leave viewers baffled as they watch along to Olympic sports they might not be familiar with.
As Tom Daley and Noah Williams won silver in the synchronised diving at the Paris 2024 games, fans noticed some of the scores seen on screen were crossed out.
Why are some diving scores crossed out at the Olympics?
After completing a jump, a panel of judges give divers a score out of ten.
There are seven experts giving their verdict on an individual dive, and eleven in the synchronised events.
They’re on the lookout for flawless execution, and in the events where two athletes dive side-by-side, they also want to see how well in sync the pair are.
The scores for the individual event are based on:
- The approach and starting position of the divers
- Their take off from the board
- The passage through the air
- The divers’ entry into the water
In the synchronised event, they’re based on slightly different criteria:
- The starting position and approach of both divers
- The similarity of height in the divers’ take-off
- The coordination in the timing of the two divers’ movements during flight
- The similarity of the divers’ angles when they enter the water
- The divers’ comparative distance from the board
- How coordinated the timing of their entry into the water is
But whilst the divers are looking for the highest possible score to be in with a chance of bagging a gold medal, it’s not actually made up of a total of all the judges’ verdicts.
In individual events, the two highest and the two lowest judges’ scores are not taken into account, and show as crossed out.
This means it’s just the scores from the middle three scoring judges that counts.
It’s done this way so one of the experts on their own can’t influence the overall score by giving points that are much higher or lower than all the other judges.
It’s a similar reason for the synchronised events, however the way it’s worked out is slightly more complicated.
Each diver has three of the experts score them out of ten – with just the middle score being used.
The other five judges focus on how well in sync both divers are, with only the middle three scores counting here.
So out of the eleven judges, only five of their scores count, with the rest showing as crossed out.
