At the risk of sounding like a poor sport I’d like to suggest that our job as pilots is to fly a flight that appears as flawless and graceful as possible. In that endeavor we constantly make corrections. When making those corrections we attempt to do so in a way that is seamless and not perceptible to the judges. For example, if you’re slightly off heading you don’t just slam the rudder to straighten out but you gently blend in rudder so the judges don’t notice. If your wings are slightly out of level correcting them in a radius helps hide the correction, so the judges don’t notice! Is this dishonest? Should we tell the judges each time we feel we’re off heading? Should the pilot that can correct his heading in an eight-point roll so smoothly that the judges can’t tell be rewarded for accomplishing this feat, or is he being dishonest? Guys, hiding our mistakes is what we do!

But wait Keith! That’s not what we’re talking about! We’re talking about blatantly flying the wrong maneuver!

OK, let’s talk about admitting zeros. I believe this will just cause trouble because:

A) You’ll never get everyone to admit their mistakes; there will always be someone that’s willing to keep quite. Knowing this the other pilots put themselves on an uneven playing field by admitting zeros to the judges.
B) Pilots won’t always remember or possibly realize when they’ve zeroed maneuvers, this means that the more astute pilots that remember/notice their zeros are disadvantaged. (And yes, there are times when pilots roll the wrong way and don’t realize).
C) When on looking competitors see what they "deem" to be a zero in another pilot’s flight, if the flying pilot does not admit (or agree) then there will be bad blood because some in the class will think the pilot is cheating (right or wrong). It’s better that competitors be upset that a judge missed a call than think that the pilot is cheating.
D) Everything we do up there is intended to hide our mistakes, why differ with zeros?

When you’re involved in sports you quickly learn that every competition has good and bad calls. Assuming unbiased judges sometimes bad calls work for you and sometimes against you. This is something you just have to accept and hopefully in the end it will all even out.

Keith B