AIBU to think this was a bit mean

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DD took part in a gymnastics competition at the weekend at her local club where she's a member. She's only 5 and was in a group with 3 other girls the same age as her. DD did really well as did the other girls (considering their age!) but the judges only awarded gold, silver and bronze. So one 5 year old was left with no medal and stood there crying!

AIBU to think they could have awarded two bronze medals? Or am I just being too soft and they need to learn life's harsh lessons?

jumpingthroughhoops you seem to be quite erm how can I put this...annoying. You always seem to want to play devils advocate. Post after post after post. It really is quite tiresome.

A girl who fell on the ice and in my DD case a girl who fell off the flipping vault.
And they still won!

With gymnastics you start with a point score for the equipment ou are using and the difficulty, that is a perfect score. Points are then deducted for mistakes, including falling off.

So if dd has a potential score of 9 and executes perfectly she scores 9 (I know the scores are different) but if the other girl has a starting score of 14, falls and a fall is considered -4 she ends up wiht a score of 10 - better than dd.

There is talk of changing things so that there is a score for the routine and a score for executing it. If you watch the olympics in a couple of weeks, you will see the best in the world falling off beams and bars.

I'm not up on ice skating, but I do remember a few winter olympics ago wheb the scores came up there were a lot of 6 6 5.9 6 then the canadian judge gave a score of 3 - this ensured the canadian couple who had kated earlier won medals.

70isaLimitNotaTarget

I hope you told your daughter that you know she tried really, really hard and that you are proud of her. And maybe the gymnastic fairy thought she was very brave and brought her some stickers in the night.

Yabu I think kids need competition. It pushes them to do well