For the first time in twirling history, you will see exactly what every judge saw

Every dancer knows the walk back from the floor. You have given it everything you have, and then you wait for a number.

The number arrives. It tells you nothing about why.

Maybe you dropped a catch and you know it cost you. More often it is subtler than that: two dancers perform what looks like the same routine, and one places higher. Nobody in the hall can tell you which moment made the difference, because the only people who saw it were the panel, and all they hand over is a total.

We have spent this season building the answer to that. It is called Judge Replay, and it arrives at the National Championships in October.

What Judge Replay actually is

You will watch your routine back with every judge's decision pinned to the exact second they made it.

Not a total at the end. Not a summary written afterwards. The panel's actual working: every mark, from every judge, in the order they gave them, including the ones they changed their mind about partway through.

AI tracking cameras follow the floor, so you get the whole routine in full rather than a shaky corner of it filmed from the third row. Alongside the footage runs the timeline of marks. Scrub to any moment and you see what each judge was thinking at that moment.

Watch the moment a judge sees the catch. Watch what it did to your score. Where the panel agreed, you will see it. Where they did not, you will see that too.

Why we are doing this

Judging is the part of any sport that attracts the most suspicion, and almost always unfairly. A judge makes a call in a second and a half, from one angle, on a routine they see once. They are experienced and they are honest. But when the only thing a dancer receives is a number, the reasoning is invisible, and invisible reasoning breeds doubt.

The answer is not to defend the panel harder. It is to show the working.

A dancer who can see exactly where marks were won and lost knows what to practise on Tuesday. A coach can stop guessing. And a parent who wondered whether the result was fair can look at the same evidence the panel saw, and decide for themselves.

“

A dancer who has worked all year for those minutes on the floor deserves to see exactly how they were seen.

— Daniel Ott, Royal Twirling Association

No twirling organisation in the world has done this

We checked, because it is a large claim and we did not want to make it carelessly. The World Baton Twirling Federation, the World Federation of National Baton Twirling Associations, NBTA International, Twirling Unlimited and Ultimate all publish rules and score sheets. Some share tabulation data with technical representatives. None of them gives an athlete a judge-by-judge breakdown of their own routine.

Other sports have moved partway. There are gymnastics products that put deductions onto video. What none of them do is open up the panel itself, and show a dancer where the judges agreed and where they did not.

As far as we can establish, this is the first time it has been done anywhere in twirling.

Filming children: how this works

Most RTA dancers are under 16, so this matters more than any feature.

• Footage is only ever filmed with a guardian's consent, given per routine. No consent, no camera.
• Films are stored privately. There is no public link, and no way for the system to create one.
• Only the dancers in the routine, their guardians, and RTA administrators can watch. A troupe leader sees it only where it has been shared with them.
• Access is through a link that expires. Nothing sits on the open internet.
• Nothing is released before the category has been announced, so a routine cannot be used to work out a result early.

My Twirling: every mark, for as long as you twirl

Judge Replay shows you one routine in depth. My Twirling shows you the whole story.

Which criteria are lifting your scores and which are quietly costing you places. How this season compares to last. Where you were two years ago, and how far that is from where you are standing now.

A dancer who starts with us at six will be able to look back at nineteen and see the whole thing: every event, every mark, every year of getting better. That record has never existed in this sport. Score sheets go in a drawer and the pattern across them is lost, because nobody has ever had time to lay a decade of paper side by side on a kitchen table.

It starts building the moment you next compete.

When it arrives

Judge Replay is in testing now and goes live for the National Championships on 25 October. My Twirling is in your Hub now. It begins with this season's results and builds from there, so the picture sharpens with every event you dance.

Both are the groundwork for something considerably bigger we are building for this sport. We are not ready to say what it is yet. What we will say is that everything landing this season has been built to carry it.