Not only does this judging sap much of the live and televised excitement, it also effectively prohibits any originality ski jumpers might have. It can force them to conform to a uniform style that can quickly become monotonous. And while judging appears to have always been part of the sport, this subjective component especially jeopardizes the sport's mass entertainment value today: It makes it impossible for spectators, both at the venue and even those watching at home on huge HD TVs, to immediately tell how a jumper fared. It doesn’t help that the disparity between the best and worst jumps—especially when viewed from the camera angle behind the skier—isn’t very discernible to the naked eye. (Thus, the loudest cheers at this Olympics haven’t really been for great jumps, but rather after huge crashes when a skier got up and confirmed his or her survival.)

It doesn’t seem like it has to be this way, though, and many of the sport’s insiders share this sentiment.

Don West, who runs SkiJumpEast.com, wrote to me via email, “Many inside the sport feel that judges are superfluous.” And according to Ueli Forrer, the Chairman of the International Ski Federation Sub-Committee for Officials and Rules, “There have always been, from time to time, discussions about the value of judging.”

However, Forrer added, “We have seen that judging is necessary for the safety of jumping. Last year the World Cup trainers have been asked about this question. They unanimously voted for keeping the system.” It seems, then, that judging is largely in place just to prevent jumpers from attempting dangerous forms. But if that’s the case, would it not be easier to simply ban certain techniques?

While judging may eliminate some of the excitement, it at least seems to be fair. In The Washington Post this week, Dartmouth economist Eric Zitzewitz praised ski jumping judges for their lack of bias compared to that found in figure skating judges. However, as impartial as ski-jump judges may be, they’re still far more biased than a cold, hard, laser calculation of distance.

Additionally, the style points seem largely useless, as good form is significantly correlated with distance anyways. Here are the results of the 60 jumps in the women’s final (two major outliers excluded):

In the women’s final, there was a 0.45 correlation between the style points and wind-adjusted distance points, which shows they have a strong direct relationship. And this measure includes the landing and outrun points. When one only focuses on the flight points, the correlation with distance is surely much higher. According to West, this pattern is common in most competitions.

It’s worth noting, though, that while eliminating style points would not have affected the final standings very much, it would have taken away Vogt’s gold, as her wind-adjusted distance was significantly shorter than that of silver medalist Daniela Iraschko-Stolz. Iraschko-Stolz getting a silver medal in ski jumping is somewhat similar to Usain Bolt getting silver in the 100 meters because his style-points total was lower than a guy who finished behind him.