We at Elevien believe that each judge in the world should be able to judge any type of competition from the comfort of their home as simple as playing a video game on their phone, because simplifying and clarifying the judging process with digital solutions will help transform and popularise gymnastics. During the finals of the European Gymnastics Championship 2023 in Antalya, Turkey, we witnessed a huge step forward in this direction.
Andrew Tombs (Vice President of FIG MAG Technical Committee and Executive Director of Sport, British Gymnastics), Tom Thingvold (Vice President of the European Gymnastics Federation) and Nikolaos Provias (Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee Member, European Gymnastics Federation) used Elevien app to test our real-time judging feature on a high-scale competition.
The video below showing Andrew, Tom and Nikolaos using Elevien for real-time scoring on Parallel and Horizontal Bars at the European Gymnastics Championship, best showcases how this innovative feature works:
With this feature, we’re solving one of the main pain points in the current judging process — it is often very manual and slow. In most cases, judges write down each deduction on paper. Then they need to sum up the deductions and enter the final scores in an Excel sheet or a scoring system, and repeat the same process for each gymnast’s routine.
There have been different attempts to improve this process in the past, but none of the tested solutions worked properly nor were reliable. With Elevien, for the first time in history, there is an opportunity to revolutionise the gymnastics world.
“Easy to use and intuitive”
“Great to be involved in a first test of Elevien real-time judging with European Gymnastics MTC led by Mario Vukoja. Really easy to use and intuitive.”
– said Andrew Tombs, Vice President, FIG MAG Technical Committee and Executive Director, Sport, British Gymnastics.
After the testing, Tom agreed with Andrew and said that “it was extremely promising”.
As Andrew mentioned, Mario Vukoja (Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee President, European Gymnastics and Vice President of the Croatian Gymnastics Federation) led this testing initiative at the European Gymnastics Championship 2023. Mario has been with Elevien since its early beginnings and is one of the co-founders and ambassadors of our startup.
Arturs Mickevics (Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee President, FIG) and Dmitrii Andreev (Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Technical Committee Member, FIG) are also driving forces behind the idea to “include the audience in the judging and improve the gymnastics viewing experience”. Supporting Elevien is a part of that mission.
Tailor-made design based on judges’ feedback
The live-scoring feature has been part of the Elevien app from the very start, however, as we continuously tested it during various competitions and carefully listened to the feedback of our users, we recently updated it by making it simpler and easier to use.
Previously, when judges were scoring in real-time in Elevien, it was a bit challenging to simultaneously enter the deductions and watch the routine. With this fresh new design, it is now possible to be fully focused on the gymnasts’ routines and at the same time enter the deductions, without even looking at the phone while doing it.
Among many other gains of Elevien, here are just a few benefits that this specific feature brings to gymnastics competitions.
Shorter duration of competitions
- Digital, real-time scoring speeds up judging, as it eliminates the need for retyping the scores from paper into an Excel file or any other system. The current most time-consuming step – scoring and calculating deductions manually on paper, with Elevien is completely skipped, shortening the duration of judging, ergo the whole competition.
Transparency and a better understanding of judging
- At the moment, most of the fans, or even gymnasts, don’t fully understand the rules of judging gymnastics routines. In the near future, we will build this feature up further: on the videos of the individual routines (that are already available in Elevien), the judges’ deductions will appear on the exact parts of the routine where they were made. This will enable greater transparency and a better understanding of the judging process and help bring the sport closer to the fans.
More learning opportunities for gymnasts and coaches
- With a real-time scoring system complemented with videos, gymnasts and their coaches can deeply analyse their performances, learn and improve their skills faster, by simply rewatching the videos of the routines and having insights into each specific deduction made by judges, as never seen before.
Elevien team dedication
Getting recognition from prominent and experienced persons in European and global gymnastics community is something we have been working hard for, and we couldn’t have made it this far if we didn’t have an amazing, dedicated team behind Elevien.
The new version of this feature was designed and developed quickly and we successfully launched it in time for testing at the European Gymnastics Championship. Shoutout to the whole team, that will continue to develop and improve this feature.
Version 1 is currently available only on iOS as a Beta, feel free to check out how it works! If you were added as an E judge to a competition, tap the “Judge” button and then tap on the stopwatch icon in the upper right corner to turn it on or off.
We encourage you to try it out and share your feedback with us at [email protected] so we can keep on perfecting it!
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You can get Elevien application right now for iPhone or Android devices, it’s completely free.
