- Joined
- Jul 28, 2003
Here is an article by a Russian journalist living in Germany – Artur Werner. The article was commissioned by a Ukrainian magazine, and so concentrates heavily on that country’s skaters. Note: I disagree extremely strongly with some of the things Werner says (especially concerting Belbin), so don’t shoot the messanger!
Original
[size=+2]What the Turin Games trumped[/size]
[size=-1]Artur WERNER[/size]
Wind gusts chase around the emptying Olympic village the foils, papers, empty syringes, and boxes from banned substances. The XX Olympic Games ended almost the same as the previous ones – with tears of joy and sorrow, with gratified sighs and doping scandals. Austrian skiers suspected of banned substance use directed their skis from the Italian Alps to their own long before the final; Russian biathlon skier Olga Pyleva, having given her urine and medal, flew home on the wings of Aeroflot; etc. Soon, the village will ring with the voices of Paralympic Games, so let’s takes this temporary calm to consider what those Olympics gave to one of the most beautiful sport, the figure skating, and what they took away.
In 2002, following the well known judging scandal in pair skating at the XIX Games in Salt Lake City, the International Skating Union president Ottavio Cinquanta was forced to do anything to prevent figure skating and ice dancing from being eliminated from the Olympics. It’s not that the former speed skater so loves that half of his federation, but that most of the ISU budget comes from the television rights paid for by USA, Canada, and other countries. TV studios pay this money to show championships of figure skating and ice dancing, not speed skating or short track. Though the rumors say that Mr. President, as a former speed skater, spends an inordinate amount of this money on “his” sport, unpopular as it is with TV viewers.
Chased into a corner, Cinquanta quickly ordered that a new objective judging system be developed. A lot of money was spent to develop such system, which was used to measure the skaters at the recently concluded Olympic Games in Turin.
However, become “new”, the system did not become a bit more objective. One of its main creators and ideologues, the Moscow mathematician Alexander Lakernik, took as a base the work of the late Stanislav Zhuk; however, he entirely forgot the skater as a live human being as opposed to a machine for doing jumps and footwork. The new judging system is akin to the old joke about the difference between capitalism and socialism – in a capitalist society men exploit men, and in a socialist society the opposite is true. The can never be absolute objectivity in figure skating as long as a “man” is at the head the structure, be it a judge, a technical caller, or a technical specialist. Since their trip to the championships is paid for not by the International Skating Union but by their own countries’ federations (which nominates them to those positions), they under many different pressures – from their Federations, National Olympic Committees, Technical Committee, and the ISU.
It’s impossible to judge the system unambiguously; giving preference to the technical level of the skater, it pushes that same skater to a conscious, albeit necessary, lowering of what used to be called artistry. In other words, it robs the program of originality, and the skater of individuality. We remember Lyudmila Belousova with Oleg Protopopov, Lyudmila Pakhomova with Alexander Gorshkov, Jane Torvill with Christopher Dean, Peggy Fleming and Katarina Witt, John Curry and Toller Cranston, not so much for their gold medal as for their diamond quality programs which stay with us for decades. Today, on the other hand, victory is determined by the number of multi-rotational jumps and largely by the speed of execution; meanwhile, it doesn’t encourage a variety of quadruple jumps since the “worth” of those elements in not proportional to their difficulty, so the judging “accounting” does not reflect reality. A 3-3-3 or 3-3-2 combination can garner more than a combination with a quad jump. In other words, even here there is no clear criterion for figuring out the best skater. Though the overall tendency is for athleticism to push out the aesthetic. If the trend holds, in just a few years robotic jumpers may become the next absolute World and Olympic champions. No live person will jump cleaner than an electronically controlled gadget, lacking emotions or nerves. If this summer at the ISU Congress Cinquanta will be re-elected for the fourth term, he may reform any individuality out of figure skating.
The new system greatly hurts figure skating by making it into figure jumping (copyright O.A. Protopopov). This is clear in judging singles and pairs. Of course, footwork and spins also contribute to the mark, but one needs quads or at least triples to jump onto the Olympus. The generification is especially tangible in ice dance, where harmony can never be calculated algebraically. Dance competition where any step out of line is punished with no warning is at its most talented a military dance group. At its not most talented, it becomes a military exercise of Culture Institute.
This is not even the main problem. The possibility of winning simply because of the difficult and most difficult elements forces coaches and athletes to take extreme risks. Few watching Turin could miss the huge increase in falls on the ice, along with ever increasing traumas. As a result of a fall on the quad throw, Chinese skater Zhang Dan pulled a groin muscle and torn knee joints, yet continue to skate with the unthinkable pain in the name of her athletic future. In the next season we’ll see how this abuse on her own body will affect the young lady’s career. Thank G-d the trauma Marie-France Dubreuil suffered as she couldn’t maintain her hold on her partner in the original dance wasn’t too serious. Though the young woman had to walk on crouches through the end of the Games.
In men single skating, the war of nerves, as well as the gold medal and the life-long title of an Olympic champion, was won by Evgeny Plushenko who is finally cured of a mental ailment called “Yagudin”. As to the fairness of the marks of the other contenders, in this race for the second and third places, Lambiel, Buttle, Weir, Joubert, and Lysacek all had a fair shot. Many, especially the Americans, showed skated with much beauty and grace, but the technical aspect just wasn’t there. A certain percentage of skaters in the USA and Canada represent sexual minorities, and perhaps that’s why their graceful skating resembles ballet more so than athletic competition. As a show this is of course beautiful, but could lead to the exclusion from the Olympics of this discipline (following the ice dance) – figure skating must remain a sport of high achievements.
In pair skating, I had incredible sympathy for the most experienced of veterans Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov, who ultimately failed to shed their classical image for the brilliantly expressive program. Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin deserved their “gold”, but it’s still hard to tell what percentage of their health they (especially Tanya) had to pay for this victory. The same could be said about the “silver” Chinese team Zhang and Zhang, where the lady risks temporarily trading in her skates for a wheelchair.
In ladies short program, the “power” skaters led. That’s why Elena Liashenko, whose skate was called the most feminine by TV commentators, was marked significantly lower than Irina Slutskaya or Sasha Cohen who even out-jumped the Russian in the short. In the free skating, meanwhile, politics was most powerful. Cohen was put in second despite falls on two combinations, while Slutskaya was put in third for the fall on the landing of the triple loop. To be fair, Irina’s skating, same as in Salt Lake City, was far from perfect; in a combo, she failed on a flip, had some sloppy landings, showed not-too-graceful spinning, and had noticeably lower speed toward the second half of the program.
As to the Ukrainian skaters, perhaps they should not have hurried into marriage, or at least not married a couple of brothers – Galina Efremenko didn’t skate as well as Galina Maniachenko, and the seventeenth plane of Elena Efremennko-Liashenko was far from the expectations of the skater, her coach, and her country.
As always, most intrigue is expected from the ice dance, and it didn’t fail. If it so happens that in today’s Russia (as it was in Soviet Union) the second anthem has long been the song “That means we only need victory”, one could expect the Russian FS federation leadership to fight for the gold medals for Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov at all cost. Measures were taken to prevent the judges from repeating the errors of Salt Lake City, where the French team Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat got their fairly deserved gold medal, foiling the plans of the federation president Piseev and his wife Alla Shekhovtseva. To begin with, Azerbaijan judge Irina Nechkina, who voted Lobacheva and Averbukh into second place at the previous Olympics, was prevented from being on the panel. The technical specialist also had his clear instructions.
However, Russians aren’t the only ones who love getting congratulatory telegrams from their governments, so long before the Games judging coalitions were being formed, just like in politics. Supposedly, the first block was supposed to have Americans in cahoots with the Canadians, and the Ukrainians with the Poles (as well as all friends of the aforementioned judges) and together get Tanith Belbin and Banjamin Agosto into first place, and Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov into third. Russia and France would be left fighting for the second place. In reality, though, Turin circumstances and coalition partners changed daily. Rumors went that the Russian block offerend the Americans a silver medal, and Ukrainians a bronze if they let Navka and Kostomarov into the “gold”. Which is, by the way, what happened. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to insult the Russian dancers, and remember the sign at the American saloons of early last century – “Don't shoot the piano-player; he's doing the best he can”. Both Tatiana and Roman showed us all they got, but despite all its beauty “Carmen” was way too overused, the elements could and should have been more difficult, and the choreography better. It’s true that in Turin the Russian duo got unprecedented audience support. However, the applause and the screams mainly came from the Russian fans that were bused into “Palavela”. That alone was quite an incentive for Zhulin.
American team Tanith Belbin/ Benjamin Agosto looked very good. The best young duo of USA and of North America could have very well won at this Games, but the lady made a few small errors that left American dancers in second. If you allow for the possibility of the aforementioned blocs, it begs the question of whether Igor Shpilband asked his student to make those few errors. After all, the coach’s relatives still live in Moscow.
Finally getting that Olympic medal, Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov skated, like always, beautifully and consistently. Though their coach Nikolai Morozov only included in the Odessans’ program the elements that the dancers are very confident in. Morozov chose not to risk. Despite a somewhat boring program and the “Arabian” costumes that absolutely did not go with Peter Gabriel’s music of The Feeling Begins, the most experienced of teams look sovereign on the ice, and fully deserved their bronze medals. Perhaps, had Lena and Ruslan left Linichuk six years ago, the Ukrainian flag could rise above the pedestal back in Salt Lake City, Overall, Elena Grushina has long been considered once of the best lady ice dancers in the world. Dance teams where the lady leads are not a rarity. The most famous include Pakhomova/ Gorshkov, Bestemianova/ Bukin, Fussar-Poli/ Margaglio, Navka/ Kostomarov, Grushina/ Goncharov.
One of the world’s best ice dancing teams, Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas, had no chance to medal from the start, as the Lithuanian judge was taken from the candidates’ list back in Vienna. Here is how smart men explain the concept of judicial independence in ice dance – the marks are totally independent of the quality of skating. So, without your own arbiter, it’s impossible to win even if the luckier opponents will be falling all over the ice from the first second of the program, and won’t get up until the music is over. That’s why Drobiazko and Vanagas, the true winners according to many specialists, ended up in the non-honored seventh place.
Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski showed the most difficult free dance. Yet it was only marked fifth, same as the Original. Albena told me in a telephone conversation that what upset them the most was that in the original dance, where they went from third place to the fifth, almost all judges, as if by command, took off the very maximum of three points for a mistake that should have cost them no more than one or two. Perhaps that’s why in the free dance Staviski became too nervous and slightly over-held the lift, for which the team was again “punished to the fullest extent of the law”. It appeared that during training the judges were made to recite the song “Bulgaria is a good country, but Russia is the best!” Natalia Linichuk, who together with her husband trained the team this season, again lacked taste in choosing costumes, but that is the 1980 Olympic champion’s chronic disease (just remember the screaming costumes of Lobacheva and Averbukh). Clearly, Linichuk and Karponosov erred in not letting their skaters go to the Europeans. Had Denkova and Staviski showed up in Lyon, some loose ends would have been noticed and fixed before Turin. Perhaps at the continent’s championship Natalia Linichuk could even restore some of her long lost connections with the judges, and the Bulgarian team would have been judged for the quality of their skating instead of being punished for the flag of a non-great nation.
Quite famous in world figure skating are Ukrainians who for various reasons are living abroad. Apparently, Ukrainian skating federation does not honor the Russian proverb “Not keeping what we have, cry over what’s lost”; they don’t cry over Julia Obertas, nor Alyona Savchenko (though the latter’s insensitive behavior could soon return her back to Obukhov), nor the Odessan Juniors who’ve moved to Belarus with their coach Tatiana Beliaeva. Tatiana Navka and Vazgen Arzoyan are also from Ukraine. That doesn’t even count the coaches working away from home, such as Lydia Maslukova, Irina Romanova, Igor Yaroshenko, and many others.
Ukraine is giving away what it could very well use herself. Had Galina Zmievskaya and Valentine Nikolaev been working this side of the ocean, surely men’s skating would have risen above the twentieth; ladies’ results are also a far cry from Oksana Baiul’s. I’d like to suggest that the federation learn from its “older brother”, which only gives away athletes from the category “please take those away.”
Original
[size=+2]What the Turin Games trumped[/size]
[size=-1]Artur WERNER[/size]
Wind gusts chase around the emptying Olympic village the foils, papers, empty syringes, and boxes from banned substances. The XX Olympic Games ended almost the same as the previous ones – with tears of joy and sorrow, with gratified sighs and doping scandals. Austrian skiers suspected of banned substance use directed their skis from the Italian Alps to their own long before the final; Russian biathlon skier Olga Pyleva, having given her urine and medal, flew home on the wings of Aeroflot; etc. Soon, the village will ring with the voices of Paralympic Games, so let’s takes this temporary calm to consider what those Olympics gave to one of the most beautiful sport, the figure skating, and what they took away.
In 2002, following the well known judging scandal in pair skating at the XIX Games in Salt Lake City, the International Skating Union president Ottavio Cinquanta was forced to do anything to prevent figure skating and ice dancing from being eliminated from the Olympics. It’s not that the former speed skater so loves that half of his federation, but that most of the ISU budget comes from the television rights paid for by USA, Canada, and other countries. TV studios pay this money to show championships of figure skating and ice dancing, not speed skating or short track. Though the rumors say that Mr. President, as a former speed skater, spends an inordinate amount of this money on “his” sport, unpopular as it is with TV viewers.
Chased into a corner, Cinquanta quickly ordered that a new objective judging system be developed. A lot of money was spent to develop such system, which was used to measure the skaters at the recently concluded Olympic Games in Turin.
However, become “new”, the system did not become a bit more objective. One of its main creators and ideologues, the Moscow mathematician Alexander Lakernik, took as a base the work of the late Stanislav Zhuk; however, he entirely forgot the skater as a live human being as opposed to a machine for doing jumps and footwork. The new judging system is akin to the old joke about the difference between capitalism and socialism – in a capitalist society men exploit men, and in a socialist society the opposite is true. The can never be absolute objectivity in figure skating as long as a “man” is at the head the structure, be it a judge, a technical caller, or a technical specialist. Since their trip to the championships is paid for not by the International Skating Union but by their own countries’ federations (which nominates them to those positions), they under many different pressures – from their Federations, National Olympic Committees, Technical Committee, and the ISU.
[FONT="arial, helvetica, geneva, sans-serif"][size=+1]Give us the system![/size][/font]
It’s impossible to judge the system unambiguously; giving preference to the technical level of the skater, it pushes that same skater to a conscious, albeit necessary, lowering of what used to be called artistry. In other words, it robs the program of originality, and the skater of individuality. We remember Lyudmila Belousova with Oleg Protopopov, Lyudmila Pakhomova with Alexander Gorshkov, Jane Torvill with Christopher Dean, Peggy Fleming and Katarina Witt, John Curry and Toller Cranston, not so much for their gold medal as for their diamond quality programs which stay with us for decades. Today, on the other hand, victory is determined by the number of multi-rotational jumps and largely by the speed of execution; meanwhile, it doesn’t encourage a variety of quadruple jumps since the “worth” of those elements in not proportional to their difficulty, so the judging “accounting” does not reflect reality. A 3-3-3 or 3-3-2 combination can garner more than a combination with a quad jump. In other words, even here there is no clear criterion for figuring out the best skater. Though the overall tendency is for athleticism to push out the aesthetic. If the trend holds, in just a few years robotic jumpers may become the next absolute World and Olympic champions. No live person will jump cleaner than an electronically controlled gadget, lacking emotions or nerves. If this summer at the ISU Congress Cinquanta will be re-elected for the fourth term, he may reform any individuality out of figure skating.
The new system greatly hurts figure skating by making it into figure jumping (copyright O.A. Protopopov). This is clear in judging singles and pairs. Of course, footwork and spins also contribute to the mark, but one needs quads or at least triples to jump onto the Olympus. The generification is especially tangible in ice dance, where harmony can never be calculated algebraically. Dance competition where any step out of line is punished with no warning is at its most talented a military dance group. At its not most talented, it becomes a military exercise of Culture Institute.
This is not even the main problem. The possibility of winning simply because of the difficult and most difficult elements forces coaches and athletes to take extreme risks. Few watching Turin could miss the huge increase in falls on the ice, along with ever increasing traumas. As a result of a fall on the quad throw, Chinese skater Zhang Dan pulled a groin muscle and torn knee joints, yet continue to skate with the unthinkable pain in the name of her athletic future. In the next season we’ll see how this abuse on her own body will affect the young lady’s career. Thank G-d the trauma Marie-France Dubreuil suffered as she couldn’t maintain her hold on her partner in the original dance wasn’t too serious. Though the young woman had to walk on crouches through the end of the Games.
[FONT="arial, helvetica, geneva, sans-serif"][size=+1]One must jump to the medal[/size][/font]
In men single skating, the war of nerves, as well as the gold medal and the life-long title of an Olympic champion, was won by Evgeny Plushenko who is finally cured of a mental ailment called “Yagudin”. As to the fairness of the marks of the other contenders, in this race for the second and third places, Lambiel, Buttle, Weir, Joubert, and Lysacek all had a fair shot. Many, especially the Americans, showed skated with much beauty and grace, but the technical aspect just wasn’t there. A certain percentage of skaters in the USA and Canada represent sexual minorities, and perhaps that’s why their graceful skating resembles ballet more so than athletic competition. As a show this is of course beautiful, but could lead to the exclusion from the Olympics of this discipline (following the ice dance) – figure skating must remain a sport of high achievements.
In pair skating, I had incredible sympathy for the most experienced of veterans Maria Petrova and Alexei Tikhonov, who ultimately failed to shed their classical image for the brilliantly expressive program. Tatiana Totmianina and Maxim Marinin deserved their “gold”, but it’s still hard to tell what percentage of their health they (especially Tanya) had to pay for this victory. The same could be said about the “silver” Chinese team Zhang and Zhang, where the lady risks temporarily trading in her skates for a wheelchair.
In ladies short program, the “power” skaters led. That’s why Elena Liashenko, whose skate was called the most feminine by TV commentators, was marked significantly lower than Irina Slutskaya or Sasha Cohen who even out-jumped the Russian in the short. In the free skating, meanwhile, politics was most powerful. Cohen was put in second despite falls on two combinations, while Slutskaya was put in third for the fall on the landing of the triple loop. To be fair, Irina’s skating, same as in Salt Lake City, was far from perfect; in a combo, she failed on a flip, had some sloppy landings, showed not-too-graceful spinning, and had noticeably lower speed toward the second half of the program.
As to the Ukrainian skaters, perhaps they should not have hurried into marriage, or at least not married a couple of brothers – Galina Efremenko didn’t skate as well as Galina Maniachenko, and the seventeenth plane of Elena Efremennko-Liashenko was far from the expectations of the skater, her coach, and her country.
[FONT="arial, helvetica, geneva, sans-serif"][size=+1]Dances on the ice and politics outside [/size][/font]
As always, most intrigue is expected from the ice dance, and it didn’t fail. If it so happens that in today’s Russia (as it was in Soviet Union) the second anthem has long been the song “That means we only need victory”, one could expect the Russian FS federation leadership to fight for the gold medals for Tatiana Navka and Roman Kostomarov at all cost. Measures were taken to prevent the judges from repeating the errors of Salt Lake City, where the French team Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat got their fairly deserved gold medal, foiling the plans of the federation president Piseev and his wife Alla Shekhovtseva. To begin with, Azerbaijan judge Irina Nechkina, who voted Lobacheva and Averbukh into second place at the previous Olympics, was prevented from being on the panel. The technical specialist also had his clear instructions.
However, Russians aren’t the only ones who love getting congratulatory telegrams from their governments, so long before the Games judging coalitions were being formed, just like in politics. Supposedly, the first block was supposed to have Americans in cahoots with the Canadians, and the Ukrainians with the Poles (as well as all friends of the aforementioned judges) and together get Tanith Belbin and Banjamin Agosto into first place, and Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov into third. Russia and France would be left fighting for the second place. In reality, though, Turin circumstances and coalition partners changed daily. Rumors went that the Russian block offerend the Americans a silver medal, and Ukrainians a bronze if they let Navka and Kostomarov into the “gold”. Which is, by the way, what happened. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to insult the Russian dancers, and remember the sign at the American saloons of early last century – “Don't shoot the piano-player; he's doing the best he can”. Both Tatiana and Roman showed us all they got, but despite all its beauty “Carmen” was way too overused, the elements could and should have been more difficult, and the choreography better. It’s true that in Turin the Russian duo got unprecedented audience support. However, the applause and the screams mainly came from the Russian fans that were bused into “Palavela”. That alone was quite an incentive for Zhulin.
American team Tanith Belbin/ Benjamin Agosto looked very good. The best young duo of USA and of North America could have very well won at this Games, but the lady made a few small errors that left American dancers in second. If you allow for the possibility of the aforementioned blocs, it begs the question of whether Igor Shpilband asked his student to make those few errors. After all, the coach’s relatives still live in Moscow.
Finally getting that Olympic medal, Elena Grushina and Ruslan Goncharov skated, like always, beautifully and consistently. Though their coach Nikolai Morozov only included in the Odessans’ program the elements that the dancers are very confident in. Morozov chose not to risk. Despite a somewhat boring program and the “Arabian” costumes that absolutely did not go with Peter Gabriel’s music of The Feeling Begins, the most experienced of teams look sovereign on the ice, and fully deserved their bronze medals. Perhaps, had Lena and Ruslan left Linichuk six years ago, the Ukrainian flag could rise above the pedestal back in Salt Lake City, Overall, Elena Grushina has long been considered once of the best lady ice dancers in the world. Dance teams where the lady leads are not a rarity. The most famous include Pakhomova/ Gorshkov, Bestemianova/ Bukin, Fussar-Poli/ Margaglio, Navka/ Kostomarov, Grushina/ Goncharov.
One of the world’s best ice dancing teams, Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas, had no chance to medal from the start, as the Lithuanian judge was taken from the candidates’ list back in Vienna. Here is how smart men explain the concept of judicial independence in ice dance – the marks are totally independent of the quality of skating. So, without your own arbiter, it’s impossible to win even if the luckier opponents will be falling all over the ice from the first second of the program, and won’t get up until the music is over. That’s why Drobiazko and Vanagas, the true winners according to many specialists, ended up in the non-honored seventh place.
Albena Denkova and Maxim Staviski showed the most difficult free dance. Yet it was only marked fifth, same as the Original. Albena told me in a telephone conversation that what upset them the most was that in the original dance, where they went from third place to the fifth, almost all judges, as if by command, took off the very maximum of three points for a mistake that should have cost them no more than one or two. Perhaps that’s why in the free dance Staviski became too nervous and slightly over-held the lift, for which the team was again “punished to the fullest extent of the law”. It appeared that during training the judges were made to recite the song “Bulgaria is a good country, but Russia is the best!” Natalia Linichuk, who together with her husband trained the team this season, again lacked taste in choosing costumes, but that is the 1980 Olympic champion’s chronic disease (just remember the screaming costumes of Lobacheva and Averbukh). Clearly, Linichuk and Karponosov erred in not letting their skaters go to the Europeans. Had Denkova and Staviski showed up in Lyon, some loose ends would have been noticed and fixed before Turin. Perhaps at the continent’s championship Natalia Linichuk could even restore some of her long lost connections with the judges, and the Bulgarian team would have been judged for the quality of their skating instead of being punished for the flag of a non-great nation.
[FONT="arial, helvetica, geneva, sans-serif"][size=+1]Our people abroad[/size][/font]
Quite famous in world figure skating are Ukrainians who for various reasons are living abroad. Apparently, Ukrainian skating federation does not honor the Russian proverb “Not keeping what we have, cry over what’s lost”; they don’t cry over Julia Obertas, nor Alyona Savchenko (though the latter’s insensitive behavior could soon return her back to Obukhov), nor the Odessan Juniors who’ve moved to Belarus with their coach Tatiana Beliaeva. Tatiana Navka and Vazgen Arzoyan are also from Ukraine. That doesn’t even count the coaches working away from home, such as Lydia Maslukova, Irina Romanova, Igor Yaroshenko, and many others.
Ukraine is giving away what it could very well use herself. Had Galina Zmievskaya and Valentine Nikolaev been working this side of the ocean, surely men’s skating would have risen above the twentieth; ladies’ results are also a far cry from Oksana Baiul’s. I’d like to suggest that the federation learn from its “older brother”, which only gives away athletes from the category “please take those away.”
Okay, that's going to be an e-mail sig line some day.
