Yulia Lipnitskaya: Olympic Thread

I'm seeing a theme here. Internet radar has detected suspicious activity.:scratch:

A skater I don't like gets inflated marks: This is a travesty, and totally proves the judges are corrupt. This so called sport is dead!

A skater I like gets inflated marks: This is totally understandable given the overall quality of my skater. See? The Almighty Judges agree!


Never gets old.

If YuNa goes clean, and skates confidently with speed, and does same layout she always does, will the judges choose her over a perfect Julia? Who will be judging the ladies events? names and countries-is this known? Who is the technical caller? Do we have anyone who knows this? Also, can you list Yuna's sp and LP technical layout, best scores to date this year, and compare this info with Julia?

I feel Julia will be scored over everyone again as in team event-with exception of YuNa. Whoever is deciding this event will have to respect the current Wc and OGM. If YuNa brings it like she did at worlds, and Julia skates her consistent best as she has been doing, what do you thik the score breakdown will be?

I saw what Grace Gold did and she is not wooden. She is a stunning skater and looks like a mature ice princess. I still cannot belive Julia was 12 points over her in the team event LP. It is shocking, and no one feels it was deserved. many feel her win was deserved. I recall being amazed Yuna won by 20 points in Vancouver-huge overscoring. Win certainly deserved.

I think it will be very close this time because Julia is 15 and not a WC nor the OGM. But I think Yuna looks weak this year. If WC 2013 Yuna shows up and sells every minute and is perfect technically, I still think they might allow Julia to win. Can someone who knows break down both programs, for each skater and what each has scored this year. Thanks so much. I can see that those with superior PCS are not going to win because Julia now gets PCS like Chan even. YuNa, Caro, Mao, Ashley, Gracie, who all create magic are up against what is looking more and more like fixed judging. I hate to say this, but it happens all the time in FS and CoP did not change it. Anonymous judging ensures it will continue. When names and scores are locked in a swiss vault, fairness is not possible.

I do not have the ability to do such comparison with so many numbers due to (personal info-brain injury). Please , no trollish person say I can't memorize all the stats. It takes courage and humility to say that on a board where people were calling each other morons today for differing opinions.

I am concerned that the scoring has been unfair in two team events so far, in Rusia's favor of course. And I feel the WC Germans were help up in the LP. Aliona is of Ukraine, and it is normal to hold up WC's, esp of their caliber, well known to judges for years.

I guess I'd like some preparation. I honestly feel that regardless of what happens on ice unless it is glaring like the fall Jeremy took, that the ladies event for gold is between YuNa or maybe mao and Julia. But I don't think the judges will underscore YuNa unless the decision to give Julia the gold if she is clean like in team event. I must say, the scoring, when obviously wrong, is very upsetting for me. I watch no other sport, and I truly feel both Grace and Ashley have superior presentation to Julia. I think her music weaves a spell. I know of few pieces of music as moving and emotional as Schindler's list. I have watched her skates with music off, and she could be skating to anything. Her flexibility is not used in a beautiful way, as in Sasha Cohen's programs. She is almost contortionistic. I must say he speed up on the ending I spin is quite remarkable. But if you watch Lucindah Ruh, you see incredible spins, but also a beautiful woman with lovely choreography.

I do not hate Julia, and I have grown to like her and the program more as season progressed. Some felt her music choice was manipulative. I do not see her presentation as special, and I would ask people to watch what paul Wylie did with that music as a pro. At first I thought it impossible she could interpret this music at her age, stage of life. I still feel it was genius to take the little girl and use this music, the outfit. She expresses (frowns) at beginning and end. Then it is watching a great little girl tick off the boxes. her jumps are consistent, her spins are amazing. But what caro does in her SP would be extraordinary with the easiest of jumps. her LP is amazing when she is on. Julia did a nice LP. She is like tara to me. I understand why tara beat Kwan, the jumps and the presentation was very mature for her age. Still, Lyra was so amazing. Today, Kwan might win because Lyra was so joyous, fre, perfectly skated. iconic music and truly from her heart. Peggy Fleming said it was the most beautiful LP she had seen in her life. I know many people who were not Kwan ubers were so moved by Lyra, it was tough to accept tara winning, despite the fact Tara was the superior technical skater, and had the skates of her life. Her presentation was very mature I must admit. But MK would have won under CoP where PCS often makes the difference. Look at Chans wins. Would anyone say Tara was superior to Kwan in PCS at that point in time?

So I am really wondering if someone could extrapolate this info from other threads and explain what we are going to likely see for scores based on what we saw the judges give Julia in team event. I personally am shocked to see this little dervish getting PCS comparable or better than YuNa, Caro, mao and more. I guess I want to be prepared. Thank you to anyone-Mathman? Blades, Ziggy? many more who will break this down for us who are challenged or simply not CoP students with much memory for numbers.

I do want to prepare myself -I think Julia could take Gold, after seeing the team event. Frank carroll spoke out on the overscoring and I am glad. Plush did well, but was overscored. The Russian pairs were really wonderful, but the Canadian team belonged on that podium. Does anyone else feel the bronze was a gift to the usually great S/S? I feel the ice dance was predictable and I think marlie pulled away from everyone this past year. Their difficulty in their programs seems obvious. I personally enjoy the Shibs programs and chock and bates even more than Voir. Not Nationalism. I do not think that Voir who were so amazing in Vancouver with the only truly memorable for ages skate in Ice dance in that Oly, are skating like they once did. I think Chock and Bates programs were amazing. I don't know how they decide in ice dance but marlie technically are amazing plus beautiful. They truly won their golds, and I think their programs superior. But the overscoring of Plush and Julia were too much.

If 2013 yuna shows up and she is beaten by a clean Julia, I will feel cheating is going on. Are others distressed by the overscoring? My worry wort nature and true desire for fairness gnaws at me when I watched judged events. And I am certainly critical of YuNa-she has flaws that bug me. I prefer to watch caro or mao, in terms of presentation, lines, musicality. But Julia with her current skating should not be getting these monster presentation scores. It comes down to Russia's darling, very talented, technically amazing Julia and the OGM Yuna Kim. I know no one else can hope for gold unless these top two implode. I do not think Mao can win unless she lands triple axels.

I hope I get a real detailed response to understand what I am likely to see from the two most consistent jumpers in ladies. I really felt Vancouver was crazy scoring as well. YuNa was clear winner but that spread was too much as I have said before. And I had not watched that quad.

I just wish I could get a measured breakdown of the two without emotion/nationalism/vitriol/politics etc. Dare I ask mathman to do this comparison of thee two skaters? One will get gold, the other silver. I'd bet money. Thank you to anyone who could do this analysis in a complete and hopefully unbiased manner. I can give my opinions and have, but like many here, I cannot back it up with numbers from the last year.

Isabel_O'Reilly said:

I am not denying her PCS is about 4 points too high for some people to take (personally I think her style of skating deserves the highest PCS but anyway since everyone, other than the judges, who by the way are from countries like CAN, JPN, GER, USA etc disagree) I'm willing to go with a lower #, but anyway that's besides the point. She would have won even if you decrease her PCS by over 7 points. She would have won.

Besides, it's not me, you, or Frank Carroll or anyone else for that matter who get to decide the PCS that a skater receives on the night in question. Do you really think these judges from countries who would have every reason to try to mark her down are really just deciding to give her these extra points? Only one judge is even from Russia. No one has been able to satisfactorily explain this to me: why they think the judges aren't allowed to judge what they see. That's the point.

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Judges don't have to be from the same country as a skater to favor him/her unfairly. The thing is, the most common judging scandal isn't so much national bias among judges, as trading favors between judges/federations. This is the I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine type of collusion. Russia can easily get the judges of other countries to favor Russian skaters if they can trade favors with said countries' federations. Example: the Russians can say to the US, if you tell your judges how good our pairs team are, we'll make sure our judges are aware of how much better D/W are compared to V/M. And it doesn't even have to be skating favors, Russia with all its money can easily tell neighboring Eastern European governments: tell your skating judges how great Yulia and Adelina are and we'll open up trade/leave you alone/make more oil/gas available, etc. Not saying that this is actually what is happening now behind the scenes, but people who are dismissing the claims of biased judging simply because there is only ONE Russian judge in the panel are sorely overlooking the bigger picture. Russia doesn't even need ANY Russian judge on the panel to rig the results at all.

Yes if a person deserves to win an event they need the most points to win. You can't give Julia lower scores that would cause her to lose! If a judge feels she was getting all the PCS categories to their max you need to reflect that in her score. You can't be a judge and be like "Wow JUlia was great! But she's 15 and not mao or yuna or Carolina and only they deserve 8 or 9 so I can't give that!" What? How does scoring work if its like that?

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So, the judges felt that Julia deserved to win so they gave her the scores so she can win?

...Um, okay.

Krislite said:

Judges don't have to be from the same country as a skater to favor him/her unfairly. The thing is, the most common judging scandal isn't so much national bias among judges, as trading favors between judges/federations. This is the I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine type of collusion. Russia can easily get the judges of other countries to favor Russian skaters if they can trade favors with said countries' federations. Example: the Russians can say to the US, if you tell your judges how good our pairs team are, we'll make sure our judges are aware of how much better D/W are compared to V/M. And it doesn't even have to be skating favors, Russia with all its money can easily tell neighboring Eastern European governments: tell your skating judges how great Yulia and Adelina are and we'll open up trade/leave you alone/make more oil/gas available, etc. Not saying that this is actually what is happening now behind the scenes, but people who are dismissing the claims of biased judging simply because there is only ONE Russian judge in the panel are sorely overlooking the bigger picture. Russia doesn't even need ANY Russian judge on the panel to rig the results at all.

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you really think Russian government trades oil for stupid medals? Then China can buy all judges and Obama can threaten to send them a pair of rockets. why not?

Antilopa said:

you really think Russian government trades oil for stupid medals? Then China can buy all judges and Obama can threaten to send them a pair of rockets. why not?

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Good lord, I said very clearly I don't think that's actually what is happening. I'm just arguing against folks dismissing biased judging simply because "there's only one Russian judge". We KNOW that in the past judges and federations have traded favors like this. And yes, believe me, the Russians and Putin in particular care very strongly about those gold medals. The US not so much. At most only NBC and some corporate sponsors, and the few US fans who still watch winter sports.

Did anyone notice that the protocols at Euro Ladies had one judge dinging the crap out of Yulia(I've officially changed to a Y)and showering Adelina. I have a Russian friend who skated in Russia for many years, he (and now me) believe that was the Russian judge dinging Yulia. I contend to this day Yulia was better at Russian Nats and should have won but the fed held her back in place of Adelina. I also say Yulia won Euro's in spite of this by going crazy TES bonkers. So yeah I believe in politicking but Yulia is just skating so strong its getting hard to deny her for some judges. I think that Euros win is a factor on her scores going up. Not unlike many champions in the past. I don't like it but reputation seems to infect PCS first.

In terms of FC...I'd say criticizing the judges is actually a disservice to his skater. Yeah he has pull but so does an international win in your skaters bag. We all know this stuff effects PCS right. Id say only Yuna could go unaffected by such comments but if you know Yuna...youd know she'd never do that. Can a judge feel offended on behalf of the ISU and be less generous by half a point here or a full point there. What if two or three are put off by it. Id defend my job and co-workers! That can add up when both SP and FS are totaled. Just saying.

Antilopa said:

you really think Russian government trades oil for stupid medals? Then China can buy all judges and Obama can threaten to send them a pair of rockets. why not?

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Oh, he/she just took an extreme example.

From what Kristile said, 'The thing is, the most common judging scandal isn't so much national bias among judges, as trading favors between judges/federations' is exactly what I'm thinking.

vegarin said:

So, the judges felt that Julia deserved to win so they gave her the scores so she can win?

...Um, okay.

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Yes but also it was lots of judges views that she was deserving of the marks and that kostner didn't deserve the highest marks just because she's kostner. Or one 10 and lots of 9s were inappropriate just because the beneficiary would be Julia. People are saying that Julia doesn't deserve the great marks but are not making their point understandable at all. Why can't Julia get a 9.50 or 10? She totally fulfills pcs bullet points and its up to the judges to give those marks.

vegarin said:

So, the judges felt that Julia deserved to win so they gave her the scores so she can win?

...Um, okay.

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That's kind of how it works, so I agree here!

gmyers said:

Yes but also it was lots of judges views that she was deserving of the marks and that kostner didn't deserve the highest marks just because she's kostner. Or one 10 and lots of 9s were inappropriate just because the beneficiary would be Julia. People are saying that Julia doesn't deserve the great marks but are not making their point understandable at all. Why can't Julia get a 9.50 or 10? She totally fulfills pcs bullet points and its up to the judges to give those marks.

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If you read some threads about this, I'm sure you can find a lot of reasonable analysises from various posters. Oh, of course unless you are biased. And if you really think she totally fulfills bullet points for SS, TR, CR, you don't need to read any analysis.

Krislite said:

Good lord, I said very clearly I don't think that's actually what is happening. I'm just arguing against folks dismissing biased judging simply because "there's only one Russian judge". We KNOW that in the past judges and federations have traded favors like this. And yes, believe me, the Russians and Putin in particular care very strongly about those gold medals. The US not so much. At most only NBC and some corporate sponsors, and the few US fans who still watch winter sports.

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Absolutely agree with this and your earlier posts. Russia has never cared about rules, corruption goes back centuries, and eccentric all-powerful dictators can manage whatever they want while in power.
i’m also not saying anyone has been bought, but let’s not be too naive about possibilities...

Incidentally, while the Olympics is going on, the only independent cable station called “Rain” is being closed down in Russia. Those who dared make a protest by walking outside and opening umbrellas were
quickly taken away by police. If you know anything about the history of this nation, nothing is surprising. And medals do matter very much for nationalistic rulers with strange obsessions.

Given all that, I think Julia is very talented. I remember spotting her as a rising star back when 2 or 3 youtube videos of hers existed.

People are saying that Julia doesn't deserve the great marks but are not making their point understandable at all. Why can't Julia get a 9.50 or 10? She totally fulfills pcs bullet points and its up to the judges to give those marks.

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Okay, if you're saying that PCS are not relative scores, then I can see it. So that would mean that, for example, Julia getting better SS points in PCS over Caro does not have to indicate that when I look at their edge techniques next to each other, I (or most people) should usually find Julia's techniques to be better than Caro's therefore deserving of the higher SS. PCS, in this case, would mean that the judges looked at Julia's performance and just gave her the scores they thought she should get at the moment, not relative to any other skaters' skills. Is that right, or am I totally confused?

Not that I know anything about the intricate nature of how to judge and score FS performances outside what I've learned from here and there, but. But, okay, even if PCS isn't relativistic to what other skaters are capable of (a big if that doesn't make sense to me, to be honest), I would still find it weird that Julia's own PCS scores jumped significantly during just four months. I don't think Julia improved quite that much? I mean, she's been always pretty consistent with what she puts out there. I find it hard to buy that the judges felt that now she suddenly deserves 9.5 and 10 when she didn't mere four months ago, unless there was some sort of policy or category changes among the judges.

...and this way leads to conspiracy theories. So, okay, whatever. At this point I really don't care. I just want to see my favourite skaters skate well and see them be happy with the results, no more no less.

vegarin said:

...and this way leads to conspiracy theories. So, okay, whatever. At this point I really don't care. I just want to see my favourite skaters skate well and see them be happy with the results, no more no less.

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Good skates bring good results and loyal fans!

I haven't read the entire thread, but my thoughts:

1. I've seen Lipnitskaia live and in top form. She's very talented and her programs suit her well.

2. She's overmarked on PCS for what she is currently doing. She's not in the same league as Kostner and Kim at this point in her development as a skater.

3. Frank Carroll needs to focus on coaching his skaters and not sniping to the media about their competitors, especially when said competitors are very young. This is not the first time.

4. I have no objection to Carroll complaining about the judging system in general, and providing entertaining quotes like the one about spitting nickels as a level feature

vegarin said:

Okay, if you're saying that PCS are not relative scores, then I can see it. So that would mean that, for example, Julia getting better SS points in PCS over Caro does not have to indicate that when I look at their edge techniques next to each other, I (or most people) should usually find Julia's techniques to be better than Caro's therefore deserving of the higher SS. PCS, in this case, would mean that the judges looked at Julia's performance and just gave her the scores they thought she should get at the moment, not relative to any other skaters' skills. Is that right, or am I totally confused?

Not that I know anything about the intricate nature of how to judge and score FS performances outside what I've learned from here and there, but. But, okay, even if PCS isn't relativistic to what other skaters are capable of (a big if that doesn't make sense to me, to be honest), I would still find it weird that Julia's own PCS scores jumped significantly during just four months. I don't think Julia improved quite that much? I mean, she's been always pretty consistent with what she puts out there. I find it hard to buy that the judges felt that now she suddenly deserves 9.5 and 10 when she didn't mere four months ago, unless there was some sort of policy or category changes among the judges.

...and this way leads to conspiracy theories. So, okay, whatever. At this point I really don't care. I just want to see my favourite skaters skate well and see them be happy with the results, no more no less.

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Yes the first paragraph is exactly right.

Mao88 said:

And vice versa

Your ignorance also extends to the fact that you have not read what I said - a clean Mao and Kim will beat a clean Julia L

Kostners PCS marks have always been inflated, and a clean Kostner can no longer beat a clean Julia L

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And what about responding to my question first? Do you REALLY think that Julia Lipnitskaya should get the same PCS as Mao, Carolina and Yu-Na??

gmyers said:

Yes the first paragraph is exactly right.

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So in your view, that's how the judging was always like -- they would give out SS, TR, CR, whatever, completely independent of what the numbers seem to represent (higher the score, better your skills are comparably than those who receive lower scores), so it's perfectly fine that while Julia's PCS numbers indicate that objectively her skills should look better next to those who receive lower scores, that may not be the case. That's tantamount to saying she doesn't need to possess a clearly better SS to deserve a higher score. Therefore, this is completely acceptable. That's about right?

It feels like some sort of bullying when a coach put down his skater's direct competiter like this. This is not the first time for him.