Olympic Pairs Figure Skating (sorry I need to vent)

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Originally posted by Ryanamur:
Well, I'll make it short and sweet.

Gold equals seconds, Silver equals first, Bronze equals fourth!

I don't know what the heck happened there but I think the IOC should test their refs for dope more than they test their athletes.

Damn, I don't feel any better. What do you think?

Should the Canadians have beaten the Russian and get the gold? Should the fourth team (second Russian team) should have beaten the Chinese?

I could be wrong but IMO (not so humble today), the final standing should have been:

Sale and Pelletier: 5.9 and 6.0 gold
BEREZHNAYA and SIKHARULIDZE: 5.8 and 5.8 silver
TOTMIANINA and MARININ: 5.8 and 5.7 bronze
SHEN and ZHAO: 5.7 and 5.7 fourth.

What do you think?

[ 02-12-2002: Message edited by: Ryanamur ]

[ 02-12-2002: Message edited by: Ryanamur ]

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Personally I think you should try out for the IOC judges committee...if you are superior in judging ability it should be a snap...and from what I hear you should really make out once you are a judge since the Americans are supposedly paying the judges off to go easy on the Americans [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Garnet FalconDance]

quote:

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Originally posted by Ryanamur:
I personnally found the Russian skating not nearly as artistic or packed of emotion as the Canadian skate.

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But remember, the Russians (and those of that 'school') have always been known for their technique rather than their emotional interpretation. You'd be hard pressed to find many more disciplined in pairs skating, technically speaking.

And while the costumes themselves may not be addressed by the point system, I believe they *do* have an effect on the scoring--the costuming is an integral part of the interpretation of the piece nearly equal to the choreography itself. You can have the most flawless skating...but if the costumes are blah and the choreography slightly ho-hum, then your marks will not accurately represent your due.

[Ryanamur]

Outside opinion: http://www.msnbc.com/news/705183.asp?pne=msn


However you figure, decision wrong
Canadians should have won gold in pairs, but judges blew it

COMMENTARY

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 11 — This, folks is figure skating, ethereal and poetic, beautiful and moving on the outside, but inside, wracked by preconceptions and decisions that are as egregiously unfair as the worst that boxing has ever offered.
IT WAS ALL out there, an ugly, festering sore despoiling a marvelous performance by the Canadian pair of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. They skated a perfect program, filled with energy and life, perfectly mated to their music, so obviously better than that of their opponents that anyone but a figure skating judge could see it.
And that was the rub, because the Russian pair of Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze were the judges’ favorites long before these Olympics started. As such, they were expected to win the gold, not just by fans, but by the judges.
It is a story as old as the sport. As long as they didn’t skate the entire program on their butts, the Russians were going to win.
They lacked luster in the free program on Monday, and Sikharulidze missed a jump and bobbled a couple others. Their program was graceful and fluid, a dreamy, languid and romantic, the way the judges like a pairs program to be. But it was far from their best, far from what the Canadians, who followed them on the ice, put out.
Four judges put the Canadians first; five the Russians. The crowd booed when the scores went up. Pelletier waved his hands dismissively in bemused disgust, saying later, “This is figure skating, people. If I didn’t want this to happen to us, I would have skied.” Sale, who had the wind knocked out of her during the warm-up when she accidentally collided with Sikharulidze and skated the program in pain, fought the battle of her life to keep from bawling on camera.
Even Scott Hamilton, the NBC analyst, former Olympic gold medalist, and one of the biggest fans the sport has, refused to accept the decision as fair. “If you’re upset with anything, put it on the judges,” he said, begging viewers not to blame the Russians, who did, after all, skate as well as they could and were innocent of complicity in their medal.
The Russians didn’t even watch their Canadian rivals skate, so they could legitimately claim ignorance. Anyway, the skaters are never involved in these judging controversies. That’s something that goes on with the national federations. We’ll do this for you; you do that for me. In those games, the Canadians always lose, because the Canadians are honest. And from now on, everyone in the sport will be watching the judging of future events to see who might have done the Russians a favor and what they might get in return.
It’s depressing to have to talk about things like this, but figure skating, like boxing, leaves you no choice. The sport boils with rumors. No one can prove them, but over the years, there are decisions that everyone questions. And the rumors continue.
“We skated absolutely perfect,” said Sale, who beamed when their program was over, knowing that no one could deny her partner had won the gold. Poor, naive young woman.
“It’s a perfect moment for us,” added Pelletier, who kissed the ice when they were done. “It was amazing.”
Said Sikharulidze: “We’re all skating our best and the judges make a mark and that’s it.”
The problem is that the judges sometimes make their marks long before the Games begin. There is no objective judging in the sport, nor can there be, because the judges are utterly involved in the sport, go to the competitions, form opinions of who’s best. When when it comes to the big competition, they already have their favorites, and that’s true whether you want to believe in backroom deals or not. And then they make their expectations reality.
They don’t need much reason to do it. It’s enough for them to say that the Russians may have had a few flubs, but they had a better program and so deserved a higher score. It’s all smoke and mirrors, but there’s no appeal. What’s done is done, even if it’s wrong.
It’s a good thing they don’t decide many sporting events this way. If they did, the Yankees would be reigning World Series champions and the Rams would have won the Super Bowl — on technical merit and artistic presentation. And it’s nothing if not ironic that another sport who comes up with results like this is boxing, the brutal antithesis of the ethereal grace of skating.
Maybe some day skating will fix the judging problems. Don’t wait for it to happen, though. The shame of it in these Olympics is that Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze would be a great story whether they won the gold or not.
She’s 24, blond and petite and just over 5 feet tall. He’s 25, dark and broad-shouldered and nearly a foot taller. She started her career with another skater, Oleg Shliakhov, in another country, Latvia. But they had a stormy relationship and she would later say he beat her and abused her. But she stayed with him, until, in 1996 during a practice session, Shliakhov’s skate accidentally hit her full force in the temple, caving in her skull and putting her in a coma.
She had been planning on leaving him, and after her hospitalization and a long recovery, she moved to her native Russia and teamed with Sikharulidze. They won their first world championship in 1998, two months after winning silver in the Olympics, and repeated the next year. In 2000, she was suspended for taking a banned stimulant — unwittingly in medication, she said — but they came back in 2001 to win the worlds and came here as the favorites.
With them, they brought a 10-Olympiad winning streak in pairs, an unmatched run of domination of a sport by one country. Russian skating has a lot of pride and identity wrapped up in that streak, and apparently, they weren’t going to lose it this year, even if they weren’t the best.
That’s how it happened. Figure skating took something beautiful and made it ugly, staining the sport, staining the Olympics, staining us all.

[Ryanamur]

quote:

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Originally posted by MagiK:


Personally I think you should try out for the IOC judges committee...if you are superior in judging ability it should be a snap...and from what I hear you should really make out once you are a judge since the Americans are supposedly paying the judges off to go easy on the Americans [img]smile.gif[/img]

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[img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img]

Not a chance, after seeing what happened yesterday, I figure that I'm way to ethical and that I have too much integrety to even apply! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Cerek the Barbaric]

No doubt about it, Ryanamur,

The Canadians were robbed - pure and simple.

I'm not an expert on ice skating - but Scott Hamilton is - and he could barely maintain a professional demeanor when the scores went up. Here is a former Olympic champion who thoroughly understands the intricacies and nuances involved in judging an ice skating competition...and his exact words were "I'm embarassed for my sport right now".

We can say what we want...but the experts ALL agree that it was blantant favoritism.

quote:

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Originally posted by Ryanamur:
Outside opinion: http://www.msnbc.com/news/705183.asp?pne=msn


However you figure, decision wrong
Canadians should have won gold in pairs, but judges blew it

COMMENTARY
=.

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This article sounds like every whiney looser who ever complained that they didnt get ahead because the "Boss" had it in for them...that they are way better than the competition...when in fact what is really happening is that the complainer just isn't good enough at playing the game to succeed...Raw talent, Pure strength, Better technical ability...these things can never comapre to the sheer RAW POWER of OFFICE POLITICS!

[Staralfur]

quote:

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Originally posted by MagiK:


This article sounds like every whiney looser who ever complained that they didnt get ahead because the "Boss" had it in for them...that they are way better than the competition...when in fact what is really happening is that the complainer just isn't good enough at playing the game to succeed...Raw talent, Pure strength, Better technical ability...these things can never comapre to the sheer RAW POWER of OFFICE POLITICS!

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Hmmmmm.... 'Bad losers' does spring to mind. I wonder what the headlines would be if the situation had been reversed, something like; 'Canadians clinch gold from Russians with wonderful display of skating' (no plans to be a journalist )


From what I saw the Russians should have been ahead after the short program, but overall I feel the Canadian pair should have taken the gold. However, I know very little about figure skating, (I can just about tell the difference between and toe loop and an axel), and I suspect a lot of people know little more (I'm not targetting anyone here btw). What people will remember are the jumps and throws, none of the not-so-crowd-pleasing moves, which might just be where the Russians won it.


Anyway, what is it about figure skating? There was Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding last time, and now this.

[adam warlock]

did I hear something about CNN giving the people vote about who should have won?

[Ryanamur]

Adam, it's on their sports webpage. The results were quite astonishing.

21709 votes.

92% for Canada
5% for Russia
3% for China

Now, just to make one thing clear. The Russians did skate quite well. The problem is on the judging side.

I also noticed on the CNN site that the ISU started an inquiry on the judging of last nights pairs event. I'm curius to see what will transpire from that... probably nothing

Here's the Reuters article on the subject:

SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) -- The International Skating Union (ISU) announced on Tuesday an inquiry would be launched into Monday's controversial judging of the Olympic figure skating pairs event.

Canadian duo Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were edged out of the gold medal position by Russians Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze to loud boos from the crowd in what many neutral observers saw as a judging scandal.

The ISU made a statement which read: "Following the reaction of the public and the media to the results of the pairs event at the Salt Lake Ice Center last night, and to respect public opinion, the ISU is doing an internal assessment to monitor if the ISU rules and procedures have been respected.

"Any further comment will be given when appropriate."

The ISU made its statement after a routine judges' meeting to look back at Monday's voting.

[ 02-12-2002: Message edited by: Ryanamur ]

Ya know..one part of sports that is most often forgotten is sportsmanship...whining and complainging after the fact is generally considered POOR sportsmanship...if there is a legitimate complaint there are proper ways of addressing the issues...publicly declaiming you were robbed or the judges didn't like you and so forth come under the heading of poor sportsmanship.....just an opposing view.