What we all wish for in Taekwondo is fairness. Therefore, the idea of a video referee looks attractive. It would undoubtedly be a good thing to have a higher authority present at Taekwondo events who decides when in doubt. The problem is that there are so many parties involved and quite a lot of cases of doubt; players, coaches, and team-officials understandably are in favor of themselves or their team. This is only human. Who would fight at a high level tournament if he didn´t believe in himself, his player, or his team? If you want to win you must have the will to win.

Self-criticism is fine during training, but not during a match. Players and coaches invariably claim that their hit was a point. This is especially the case towards the end of the day when the most important matches of a tournament take place, the quarter-, semifinals, and finals. Then the parties involved try everything to win, and of course, they would appeal to the video referee in every case in which there is the slightest doubt. The most exciting matches would certainly be interrupted several times, and in the end they might be fairer, but not very exciting anymore. Even today, Taekwondo is still far from being a spectator sport, and the interest of the media is not overwhelming. If we introduce the video referee, we cannot expect any improvement here.

Of course, we could limit the number of appeals a team can make to a certain number of times during a day or during an individual match. But if you believe in the fairness of the video referee method, this means that you limit fairness as well. This is undesirable, especially as the authority of the “real” center referee and the judges would be diminished, as the video referee gained importance. If you limit the number of appeals, you would have just as many unhappy players and coaches as you have now, or even more of them. “I would have won if I could have appealed to the video referee”, would replace the claim “I would have won if I had scored that last point which the judges did not give me.” And a video referee is a human being as well.

How many cameras and how many angles of video footage do we need until a player, who is convinced of himself, believes that he just did not score the point? And how long would it take to have a proper look at everything and to come to a decision?
Of course, we have had some spectacular misjudgments in the recent past. But incidents like in the fight Sarah Stevenson versus Chen Zhong are still not the norm in taekwondo. Should we really take measures to meet these very unusual circumstances, and by doing so, completely change Taekwondo? At the end of the day misjudgments are a part of every sport. What have we gained by using a sledgehammer to crack a nut? We get a rather boring sport with many interruptions in the matches that should be the most exciting. We undermine the position of our referees without really strengthening anything else. Because we cannot have as many appeals to the video referee as we would need to quiet even the slightest doubt. And if we cannot do that, the video referee can never meet the great expectations players, coaches, and officials have. The best thing by far, would be to concentrate not on the video referee, but on the referees and judges as we know them today. We still need better training for referees, a world-wide standard of refereeing, and sensible guidelines for the nomination of our referees. A lot could be gained for referees, players, and coaches, if we focused on better training and standards.