Could someone explain to me the 2002 Olympic womens results?

[Raatkirani]

Obviously, Sarah Hughes won the gold that night as she had the cleanest program. But I remember hearing some commentator say that she should "thank Irina Slutskaya for beating Michelle Kwan for this win." Why is that? I understand the old scoring, and from what I can see, Hughes edged out Slutskaya because the Finnish judge tied them, but gave Hughes a slightly higher artistic mark, thereby breaking the tie. The other thing I need to have clarified is that Michelle Kwan had so many 2nd place ordinals, while Irina's were all over the place. How did she end up getting 3rd? Thanks for any clarifications!

[MissIzzy]

The reason Irina had to beat Michelle was because after the short Michelle was in first and Sarah in fourth, which meant for Sarah to win someone else had to beat Michelle in the free skate.
How the ordinals were sorted out has always been a mystery to me, so I can't help you there.

[Meli_Huber]

The result - top 3:
1 HUGHES Sarah USA 3.0 4 1
2 SLUTSKAYA Irina RUS 3.0 2 2
3 KWAN Michelle USA 3.5 1 3

Irina beats Michelle in the Long Problem. Without that the result is different!!!

1 Michelle 2.5 1 2
2 Sarah 3.0 4 1
3 Irina 4.0 2 3

This is the result, if Irina hadn´t beat Michelle in the Long Problem.

[Buttercup]

Ok, I think I can explain how Slutskaya finished ahead of Kwan, which as other posters noted was necessary for Hughes to win the gold. In ordinals, it's not the rankings that matter so much as where each judge ranked skaters compared to one another. Irina's marks were more spread out but six of the nine judges had her ahead of Kwan. According to Wikipedia, here is how those judges placed them in the free skate (Slutskaya is listed first):
Russia, 1-2
Slovakia, 1-2
Denmark, 1-2
BLR, 1-3
Finland, 2-3
USA, 2-3.

Thus Hughes just edged out Slutskaya, who in turn finished ahead of Kwan for a podium of Hughes, Slutskaya, Kwan.

[StickyFumblings]

1 Hughes
5.7 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.8 5.8
5.7 5.7 5.8 5.6 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8
11.4 11.5 11.6 11.4 11.6 11.6 11.5 11.6 11.6
1 4 3 4 1 2 1 1 1

2 Slutskaya
5.7 5.8 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.8
5.6 5.9 5.9 5.8 5.6 5.9 5.7 5.7 5.7
11.3 11.7 11.8 11.6 11.4 11.7 11.5 11.4 11.5
3 1 1 1 4 1 2 3 2

3 Kwan
5.6 5.7 5.8 5.7 5.6 5.6 5.6 5.7 5.6
5.7 5.8 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.8
11.3 11.5 11.7 11.5 11.4 11.5 11.4 11.5 11.4
2 3 2 2 2 3 3 2 3

4 Cohen
5.5 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.6 5.6 5.6 5.6
5.5 5.8 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.8 5.7 5.7 5.7
11.0 11.6 11.5 11.4 11.4 11.4 11.3 11.3 11.3
5 2 4 3 3 4 4 4 4

[museksk8r]

I was really pulling for Michelle Kwan to win the Olympics in '02 and to this day, I still feel she deserved the win in '98. I wanted Irina Slutskaya to win in '02 if Michelle was not able to. With that said, it still shocks me to this day to see Irina's 3 marks of 5.9 in presentation for a LP where she really struggled. There was no MAJOR mistake, but the fact that she had no 3+3, skated through the music rather than to it, skated without her usual speed, and nose-dived her landing on the 3flip, nearly losing it, I feel was not worthy of 5.9 in technical or artistic marks. I so badly wanted Kwan and Slutskaya to have the performances of their lives in SLC and give the judges a clean event between the two top skaters like at '96 Worlds between Kwan and Chen Lu. I hate that it wasn't meant to be. :( In '06, with Kwan sadly out, I was pulling for Shizuka Arakawa, Irina Slutskaya, and Fumie Suguri to make the podium.

It's a real bummer to me that Michelle and Irina accomplished so much and dominated the sport for so long, yet never won Olympic gold while the likes of Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes did. Life really is not fair. I feel the same about Yu-Na Kim not getting a break from her injuries when the World Championships roll around. Had injuries not jeopardized her health and training time, Kim very likely could be a 2-time World Champ at this point in time as I feel her technique and programs have been better than the other World medalists, Asada, Ando, and Kostner. Oh well................

[moviechick]

I was surprised to see that the Free Skate results were THAT close especially considering Hughes did two 3-3s and was clean, while the others did no 3-3s and weren't really clean. A lot of people have suggested that the Pairs controversy seemed to have had an effect on the Ladies competition--so the judges had to give the Gold medal to the best free skate because average viewers don't understand the whole being in 4th place/controlling your own destiny thing. I don't know if that's really the case, but it would've looked pretty bad for the audience to see Sarah Hughes nail her program yet watch the Gold still go to Kwan who fell. Anyways, this whole competition was strange. If only ONE judge had changed a vote either in the short or the long, the results would've been completely switched.

[mycelticblessing]

A lot of people have suggested that the Pairs controversy seemed to have had an effect on the Ladies competition--so the judges had to give the Gold medal to the best free skate because average viewers don't understand the whole being in 4th place/controlling your own destiny thing. I don't know if that's really the case, but it would've looked pretty bad for the audience to see Sarah Hughes nail her program yet watch the Gold still go to Kwan who fell.

Then again, maybe not. In 2002, probably 99% of the audience was rooting for Kwan to win. It wouldn't be like the pair competition where one team was Russian.

Anyways, this whole competition was strange. If only ONE judge had changed a vote either in the short or the long, the results would've been completely switched.

That's the way it was before COP. The placement thing has always puzzled me too.

[StickyFumblings]

I was surprised to see that the Free Skate results were THAT close especially considering Hughes did two 3-3s and was clean, while the others did no 3-3s and weren't really clean. A lot of people have suggested that the Pairs controversy seemed to have had an effect on the Ladies competition--so the judges had to give the Gold medal to the best free skate because average viewers don't understand the whole being in 4th place/controlling your own destiny thing. I don't know if that's really the case, but it would've looked pretty bad for the audience to see Sarah Hughes nail her program yet watch the Gold still go to Kwan who fell. Anyways, this whole competition was strange. If only ONE judge had changed a vote either in the short or the long, the results would've been completely switched.

Hughes skated 2nd in the penultimate group so her marks couldn't be that high. I haven't watched her skate in a while but IIRC, some of her jumps were cheated. Also, she wasn't supposed to skate that well; Kwan and Slutskaya were supposed to handle the pressure well enough to earn the gold.

[mskater93]

Placements under the ordinal system for one segment were very simple. The skater with the highest majority of 1's wins (if they have a majority of that mark). So, in the case of 02 Olys, Hughes had a majority of five judges of 9 placing her first. If one of those firsts had gone to Irina, she would have won that segment as she had 4 first place ordinals out of 9. If one of those first had gone to Kwan, it would have been totally different because then there would have been no clear cut 1st place majority and it would have gone to a majority of 1st and 2nd place ordinals to determine the winner. Because Hughes had a majority of 1's, change Irina's 1st place ordinals to 2's in your mind and add up the quantity of "2's" for Irina which I believe was 6 versus Kwan's majority of 2's which was 5.

[Sylvia]

BUT... the majority ordinal (accounting) system was not in use at the 2002 Olympics... it was the OBO (One-By-One) accounting system, and one additional second place ordinal being switched around in the free skate (given to Kwan over Slutskaya, for example) would NOT have been enough to change the FS and final results under OBO.

Paging Mathman...

[Mathman]

^ Yup. This confusion between majority-of-ordinals and OBO was cemented by a New York Times article shortly after the event which put U.S. judge Joe Inman on the hot seat.

Under the majority-of-ordinals system (used, for instance, at U.S. nationals), if one judge (Inman) had switched his vote to Kwan for second and Slutskaya for third, then Michelle would have won. This would have given Michelle a 5-4 majority of first and second place ordinals combined, and Michelle would have been second in the free and the gold medalist overall (as Meli Huber posts above, #3).

But under one-by-one scoring, which was used in international ISU championships at the time, the analysis by Buttercup (post 4) is correct. Two judges would have had to have changed their minds between Kawn and Slutskaya for Michelle to have pulled it out.

The short program was another story, because only Kwan and Slutskaya were in the running for first. In the case of only two skaters, the two systems are the same -- majority of first place otrdinals wins, nothing else matters. Irina fans who think that their skater was robbed point to the SP, where indeed, a single change of vote would have made Irina the SP winner (as mskater points out).

BTW, people who analyze voting systems have actually proved mathematically that no system can possible work perfectly in the case of three or more candidates. For instance, "Condorcet's paradox," where A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A, can be avoided only by awkward distortions elsewhere in the system.

The CoP was supposed to speak to this problem (but then Lysacek and Weir exactly tied at U.S. nationals, so there you go.)

[Joesitz]

I
It's a real bummer to me that Michelle and Irina accomplished so much and dominated the sport for so long, yet never won Olympic gold while the likes of Tara Lipinski and Sarah Hughes did. Life really is not fair. I feel the same about Yu-Na Kim not getting a break from her injuries when the World Championships roll around. Had injuries not jeopardized her health and training time, Kim very likely could be a 2-time World Champ at this point in time as I feel her technique and programs have been better than the other World medalists, Asada, Ando, and Kostner. Oh well................

The way I saw that competition, was:

Hughes skated her LP by the numbers (nothing inspiring) but clean.
irina skated her LP too carefully, and without any flare whatsoever.
Kwan skated her LP without any feeling for the music.

The Technical aspects were obvious: Hughes no mistakes; Irina sloppy jump landings; Kwan fell and it cost her.

At the time, I was a Kwaniac and I think had she stayed with Carroll, she would have won.

No point lamenting any of this. It's kind of an expectation in Ladies skating, the best skater did not win but the one who was the best that night did. I believe the best skaters of their era were Summers, Bielman, Kerrigan, Kwan but no trophies. Only Mao holds both the best skater and the deserved medal.

Joe

[marc2000]

Though i totally understand Sarah winning the long program despite her somewhat awkward skating and cheated jumps, she did deliver better than anyone else on that night. I do, however, disagree with Irina beating Michelle in the long program. Irina made mistakes and had no 3-3 combos. Without the high techical content her program fell flat and should have been judged below Kwan giving Kwan the gold overall.

With the pairs controversy, i think the ISU wanted a winner they could hang their hat on and say that she delivered a clean program with 3-3. I rewatched this event recently and still dont' agree with the final outcome.

In fact, if the skating order had been different, I wonder if Sasha would have made the podium.

[hockeyfan228]

Hughes had 2 3/3's, which made here even more of a clear-cut winner than Kwan or Slutskaya under OBO, since levels spins and spirals were up to the individual judges to determine, and the average bear watching TV couldn't tell, except possibly for Kwan's COE spiral. Given the canyon of marks that the judges left for the final four, it was everyone else's to win.

Hughes skated 20th in the free skate, or 2nd in the last group. Suguri was most hurt by her placement after the SP, as her FS, skated first in the pentultimate group, held up through her entire group and Sebestyen and Butyrskaya in the last group. Only Hughes, Slutskaya, Kwan, and Cohen scored higher in the FS than Suguri. Sissy Krick was the only judges to give Suguri an ordinal over one in the top four (Cohen). From 6th through about 16th, it was all ordinal goulash.

Hughes skated 5th in the SP, which was a random draw.