How the games are played

Gliding scores tasks relative to the field: points depend on what the other competitors achieved in the same air on the same day, because a fixed standard would measure the weather.

Parachuting accuracy measures the distance from the centre of a target to the first point of contact, electronically, to the centimetre.

Aerobatics is judged by a panel against a declared sequence, with deductions for deviation from the figure's geometry.

Drone racing is elapsed time.

One federation running a relative-scoring sport, a measured sport, a judged sport and a timed sport is a broader spread than any other body on this site attempts.

In the ranking round, arrows are added up, and that number means exactly what it says. In a recurve match they are not. Each set of three arrows is won, drawn or lost, worth two points, one or none, and the match goes to the first archer to six set points.

The consequence is the most argued fact in the sport: an archer can shoot more total points than their opponent across a match and lose it. A cumulative score and a set score are different quantities, and every match result before 2011 is recorded in the first while every result since is recorded in the second.

The mixed team event, added in 2021, still uses cumulative scoring — so the sport runs both systems at the same Games.

Sprints up to 400 m require fully automatic timing to one hundredth of a second for a record, a requirement introduced in 1977 that ended the hand-timed era. Distances are measured to the nearest centimetre below the mark in throws, and horizontal jumps to the nearest centimetre from the take-off line.

Wind assistance above 2.0 m/s invalidates a record in sprints and horizontal jumps, which is the plainest statement in any rulebook here that the point of the rules is comparability rather than fairness on the day.

A point is scored on every rally, by whichever side wins it, regardless of who served. A game goes to 21, but a side must lead by two — and if the score reaches 29-all, the next point wins at 30, which is the only hard ceiling in the system.

The side that wins a rally serves next. Serving is therefore a consequence of scoring rather than a precondition for it, which is the exact reversal made in 2006.

One run per runner reaching home. Baseball's real scoring, though, is its statistics: no sport on this site records itself as thoroughly or is as widely understood through its numbers.

Which is why its rule changes are unusually consequential. The 1969 mound and strike zone changes were made explicitly to raise scoring. The designated hitter removed the weakest batter from one league's lineup for forty-nine years. The 2023 package moved the numbers again on purpose.

Three points from beyond the arc, two from inside it, one for a free throw. Basketball is the only sport on this site where the same action scores differently depending on where it is performed, and that has been true only since 1979 — before which every field goal was worth two.

The consequence is that the sport's entire statistical record is severed at that line, and severed differently in each competition, because FIBA adopted the arc in 1984 at a different distance and moved it again in 2010.

A point on every rally, to whoever wins it. Simple, and unchanged — pelota never made the service-scoring conversion that this site records in five other net sports between 1999 and 2006, because it never had service scoring to convert.

What sits alongside the score is the betting. In a Basque fronton, corredores work the crowd during play, calling odds aloud as the match swings and settling bets by throwing slit balls containing tickets into the stands. The wagering is audible from the court and is part of what the sport sounds like.

Carom counts points, one per successful carom, with matches to a target.

Pool counts racks or games won.

Snooker counts points within a frame — reds one, colours two to seven — and frames within a match. Its bounded maximum, 147, is one of very few perfect scores on this site that a competitor can actually reach, and it is reached rarely enough to remain a genuine achievement. Bowling's 300 is the direct comparison, and the reason snooker's number still means what it meant is that nothing changed the equipment underneath it.