- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
Question:
I've come to just except it as a fact, that skaters from the host nation will be overscored/favored.
But why is that, when the judges aren't all from that country to begin with?
I think a large part of that is that the judges are human and they are influenced by the audience reaction. When a skater nails a program in front of a home crowd, the audience applauds wildly and in a way it can make the program seem better than it actually was. Most of the judges don't represent countries who have skaters at the very top so they are genuinely trying to rank the skaters according to which skated the best, so the audience reaction probably plays a role in that. Skaters can sometimes feed off the energy of the crowd too so that can improve their performance, but I do think the audience reaction plays a much bigger role.