For every scored performance in the final, we have all six individual judge ratings. Here's what the data shows about consensus, bias, and what actually drives the score.
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The worst qualifier goes first. The best goes last. Same order, every round. Round 1 was carnage — six consecutive wipeouts before a single clean landing. By Round 3, four riders had crashed out entirely, and the gold medalist didn't even bother to drop in.
Ruka Hirano's Round 1 and Round 2 runs each received identical scores from all six judges: 90 across the board. The runs even featured different trick sequences — R2 included a triple cork upgrade over R1 — yet all six judges independently landed on the same number both times. The next-tightest agreement among all other runs was a 1-point spread.
Perfect consensus either means the performance was so unambiguous that all judges independently converged — or it suggests anchoring, where early scores influence later ones. We can't distinguish which from this data, but we can say it's statistically remarkable.
Judges agree remarkably well on clean runs. But when a rider crashes mid-run, consensus breaks down. The question becomes: how much credit for what they showed?
And some judges are consistently more generous or strict than others — across every run, not just wipeouts.
The hypothesis: after watching multiple riders crash in a row, judges feel relief when someone finally lands — and unconsciously score them higher. We tracked the number of consecutive crashes immediately before each clean run.
Olympic halfpipe judging is more consistent than you'd expect. Six independent judges land within 2 points of each other on clean runs, and the trimmed mean effectively neutralizes individual tendencies.
The biggest source of disagreement isn't bias — it's ambiguity. Wipeouts force judges to estimate what could have been, and that's where scores diverge. As for contrast bias from watching crashes? The data from this competition says no.
Based on individual judge scores from 24 scored performances across 3 rounds.
All data from the official Olympics.com results.