Playing devil’s advocate, many of the judging criteria for the sports seem pretty subjective.
For example if diving or gymnastics was purely objective, you wouldn’t need multiple judges (or any). Track and field is a lot more straightforward in most cases.
I would even go as far to say the “criteria” the judges are looking for have some analogous counterparts in poetry.
I think breakdancing was a sport for this Olympics, so poetry doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. Maybe it’s just not “exciting” to modern people?
Gymnastics and diving have had multiple judges for another reason, which is that the nominally objective portions of the judging involved spotting things at the edge of human perception. (That is, I'm discounting the obviously subjective things like "style".) The judging is definitely not just "hey, that looked good, I think I liked that 8.5 worth"; you can tell just by listening to the commentary. Things like "they're attempting an 8.6 point dive" and "that'll be two tenths off". They're often not guessing at the numbers in question, though it may be a tossup whether the human judges see the same thing the commentators did.
There has been some discussion of moving to computer vision analysis for these portions.
While one could easily judge poetry by equally objective metrics, I don't think it's hard to imagine what the result would be once the min-maxers get into the game.
Love! love love love love love poet,
love! hate no! love love love throw it.
.,!.,!.,,..,,,.!!!!.,.,,.,,!!..,.!
rhyme time lime slime mime mime love,
a a a a a a glove
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o love.
There was a scene in the not particularly accurate First Olympics miniseries back in 1984 where the college students looked at books about the ancient Olympics and saw that the athletes competed in the nude so they came out of the building, sheepishly, in the nude and were sent back by their coach to put some clothes on.
For example if diving or gymnastics was purely objective, you wouldn’t need multiple judges (or any). Track and field is a lot more straightforward in most cases.
I would even go as far to say the “criteria” the judges are looking for have some analogous counterparts in poetry.
I think breakdancing was a sport for this Olympics, so poetry doesn’t seem like much of a stretch. Maybe it’s just not “exciting” to modern people?