How judging and scores work
Every result on this site comes from a published scorecard. This explains what the numbers on it mean, and what they do not.
The columns on a scorecard
- Prejudging
- The score assigned during the prejudging round, where competitors are compared directly in mandatory poses. On most scorecards this is where placings are effectively settled - the finals confirm them rather than overturn them.
- Finals
- The score assigned to the evening show. Some events weight it equally with prejudging, some use it only as a tie-break, and some publish it without letting it alter the placing at all.
- Total
- The combined figure, where an event publishes one. A lower total is better: these are summed placings from individual judges, not points earned.
- Place
- The final placing in that division. This is the authoritative field - where a score and a placing appear to disagree on our pages, the placing is what the event published.
Why lower scores win
Judges rank rather than rate. Each judge places every competitor, those placings are summed, and the lowest total wins: a competitor placed first by seven judges scores seven.
This is why a scorecard looks inverted if you are expecting points, and why totals are not comparable between divisions with different competitor counts.
What varies between events
Score formats, the number of rounds, how many judges' scores are dropped, and tie rules all vary by organization, by event, and sometimes by division within a single event.
A total of 25 at one show is not the same achievement as a total of 25 at another. Read each result against its own event's scorecard, which every contest page links to.
Where an event published no scores at all - common before the 2000s, and still normal at smaller shows - our pages show placings only. That is an absence in the source, not a gap in our data.
Divisions are separate competitions
A contest is not one competition. Men's Open, 212, Classic Physique, Men's Physique and the women's divisions are judged independently against different criteria, and each has its own winner.
Masters divisions are restricted by age and judged separately again. A single "champion" of a multi-division show is a media convention, not a result.
Where several athletes appear at first place within one of our divisions, the event recorded weight classes we did not capture, and each of those athletes won a different class. Those divisions are marked as such on the page.
Where these results come from
Results come from published scorecards, with the source recorded per contest. Some are read directly from a federation's own results; most of the pre-2011 record comes from MuscleMemory, a long-running archive transcribed by hand.
We do not estimate a placing or infer one from a photograph. Where a competitor's identity is uncertain (a near-match against a name we already hold), the row is held for review rather than guessed at.