Petition to investigate judging gets record signings, makes Wall Street Journal headline

Ven · Feb 21, 2014

Petition to investigate judging gets record signings, makes Wall Street Journal headline

An online petition calling for an investigation into the scoring of the women’s figure skating competition at the Winter Olympics attracted more than 1.2 million signatures within about 12 hours of Yuna Kim’s shock silver medal.

Robertson said it is the fastest-growing petition Change.org has ever had.

http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2014/02/21/yuna-kim-petition-gets-record-signings/

So proud to be one of the first to sign it!

Trewyn · Feb 21, 2014

That's insane.

Kevin VDP said in his commentating (I think during ice dance) that if figure skating was involved in another judging scandal, the IOC would kick it out of the Olympics. I really doubt that is what figure skating fans hope to achieve with this.

MalloryArcher · Feb 21, 2014

Have you read most of the comments on the change.org petition? They are 90% from Koreans and they give such illuminating reasons as "because Queen Yuna is the best". Ugh.

I too believe Adelina should have gotten the bronze rather than gold, but this is all kinds of silly.

Ven · Feb 21, 2014

MalloryArcher said:
Have you read most of the comments on the change.org petition? They are 90% from Koreans and they give such illuminating reasons as "because Queen Yuna is the best". Ugh.

I too believe Adelina should have gotten the bronze rather than gold, but this is all kinds of silly.

I'm American and I know many other Americans and Canadians who have signed it.

bekalc · Feb 21, 2014

MalloryArcher said:
Have you read most of the comments on the change.org petition? They are 90% from Koreans and they give such illuminating reasons as "because Queen Yuna is the best". Ugh.

I too believe Adelina should have gotten the bronze rather than gold, but this is all kinds of silly.

This is Korea's Platinum medal tirade. Because these folks are "unbiased judges" Seriously.

jehan215 · Feb 21, 2014

I'm from New Zealand and I signed it….

bebevia · Feb 21, 2014

10% of 1.5 mill. is 150k. That's still something. The non-Korean votes will be the factor.

From the look of it, Koreans' voices don't matter at all or reinforce the petition to affect the ISU. It's a weak FS country, and nationalism partially counts, so I get it. Had it been a 90% American petition for Michelle Kwan, the response wouldn't be as cynical, though.

vegarin · Feb 21, 2014

bekalc said:
This is Korea's Platinum medal tirade. Because these folks are "unbiased judges" Seriously.

This isn't going to do Yuna or Caro any favours, I agree. But you've been insisting that the judges were absolutely fair with scores, as if several judges with Russian ties are not problematic at all. That, I feel like, should be investigated on.

Yuna and Caro lost gold. It's over with. But hopefully no one else could encounter the some kind of fishy situations if ISU actually decides to be clear on what constitutes conflict of interest when selecting judges.

vegarin · Feb 21, 2014

bebevia said:
10% of 1.5 mill. is 150k. That's still something. The non-Korean votes will be the factor.

From the look of it, Koreans' voices don't matter at all or reinforce the petition to affect the ISU. It's a weak FS country, and nationalism partially counts, so I get it. Had it been a 90% American petition for Michelle Kwan, the response wouldn't be as cynical, though.

No kidding. Man, if Yuna was an American skater, this may not have happened. Korean fans need to get a hold of themselves. Acting like hurt fans isn't going to achieve anything, let alone an actual investigation of any sort.

bekalc · Feb 21, 2014

vegarin said:
This isn't going to do Yuna or Caro any favours, I agree. But you've been insisting that the judges were absolutely fair with scores, as if several judges with Russian ties are not problematic at all. That, I feel like, should be investigated on.

Yuna and Caro lost gold. It's over with. But hopefully no one else could encounter the some kind of fishy situations if ISU actually decides to be clear on what constitutes conflict of interest when selecting judges.

Once again, the judges list was announced and drawn long before the competition begin. That's the time to scream foul. Not to scream foul when you don't like the results.:scowl:

vegarin · Feb 21, 2014

bekalc said:
Once again, the judges list was announced and drawn long before the competition begin. That's the time to scream foul. Not to scream foul when you don't like the results.:scowl:

Right, and how many people already knew that the list of judges included the wife of the Russian ice skating federation and someone who was investigated for bribery? C'mon already. How's this okay? :bang:

bebevia · Feb 21, 2014

bekalc said:
Once again, the judges list was announced and drawn long before the competition begin. That's the time to scream foul. Not to scream foul when you don't like the results.:scowl:

Hmm? Of course the judges were selected before the event, silly; not after. However, the FS panel was not posted on the official results page until long after the SP. People didn't bother as much because of an underlying faith they needn't go that far checking. No one noticed that an officially penalized judge got back working and judged this major event before inspection; had we known, this would've been an issue earlier.

bekalc · Feb 21, 2014

vegarin said:
Right, and how many people already knew that the list of judges included the wife of the Russian ice skating federation and someone who was investigated for bribery? C'mon already. How's this okay?

Yes they were on the list of judges.

She has been a judge for 20 some years...Figure skating is such a small sport tha guess what judges are often coaches, federation officials etc. The Russian judge was always going to be supporting Adelina. The Korean judge Kim. That's the sport. Nobody's found fault with her judging in terms of corruption.

usethis2 · Feb 21, 2014

I tend to feel others' concerns, but I think it's better to let it out in the open. Otherwise, things are bound to repeat.

Ven · Feb 21, 2014

Before the Russian girls finished 1-2 at Nationals to essentially make the Olympic team, they scored consistently low 60s in PCS. Then they make the Olympic team, and they get to almost 70 in one competition as Euros and Sotnikova almost 75 at the next competition at Olympics.

Gracie goes from struggling to break 120, makes the Olympic team, now very next competition she's falling on her butt and scoring 136.

Yeah, none of that sounds fishy at all.

vegarin · Feb 21, 2014

bekalc said:
Yes they were on the list of judges.

She has been a judge for 20 some years...Figure skating is such a small sport tha guess what judges are often coaches, federation officials etc. The Russian judge was always going to be supporting Adelina. The Korean judge Kim. That's the sport. Nobody's found fault with her judging in terms of corruption.

Let me ask you this question that I've asked you before. I'm genuinely curious because you've never answered it. You don't have to answer, but I'm going to ask one final time and stop.

If Yuna, or Caro or Mao were skating for Russia -- or Yuna was a Russian skater defending her Olympic gold, do you think even then the scores for Adelina and Julia and Yuna would have been exactly the same? That Adelina would still be deemed to have skated much better than Yuna? You don't think Caro would've scored higher at all? That Mao wouldn't have been dinged on the jumps?

bekalc · Feb 21, 2014

vegarin said:
Let me ask you this question that I've asked you before. I'm genuinely curious because you've never answered it. You don't have to answer, but I'm going to ask one final time and stop.

If Yuna, or Caro or Mao were skating for Russia -- or Yuna was a Russian skater defending her Olympic gold, do you think even then the scores for Adelina and Julia and Yuna would have been exactly the same? That Adelina would still be deemed to have skated much better than Yuna? You don't think Caro would've scored higher at all? That Mao wouldn't have been dinged on the jumps?

I think there's home crowd scoring yes. Look at Asada at the GPF. I think that as long as Sotnikova was Russian, she was going to get huge scores, so I'm not sure how much it would change the overall results if Kim also got some inflation. Kim's scores are extremely high already how much more to inflate? So I think Russian Kim, Russian Kostner, Russian Sot, all would have inflated marks. The favored one doesn't always win at home-see Sarah Hughes.

For Sotnikova to have lost due to PCS, she would have had to have had the lowest PCS in the final group. Lower than Yu-lia's lower than Golds. In no way was this fair. Sotnikova won this on the technical mark. She "jumped" her way to that title.

vegarin · Feb 21, 2014

bekalc said:
I think there's home crowd scoring yes. Look at Asada at the GPF. I think that as long as Sotnikova was Russian, she was going to get huge scores, and a Russian winning is a Russian winning either. I'm not sure how much more they could inflate Kim's scores in order for her to come on top.

Okay. Let see if this applies in 2018 and if that would be just as acceptable as it is in Russia.

bekalc · Feb 21, 2014

vegarin said:
Okay. Let see if this applies in 2018 and if that would be just as acceptable as it is in Russia.

It doesn't sound like Kim wants to come back....Sotnikova may show up though. She'll only be 21. Or, one of the many other young Russians.

vegarin · Feb 21, 2014

bekalc said:
For Sotnikova to have lost due to PCS, she would have had to have had the lowest PCS in the final group. Lower than Yu-lia's lower than Golds. In no way was this fair. Sotnikova won this on the technical mark. She "jumped" her way to that title.

For god's sake. Are you hearing yourself? So it's so completely wrong to be unfair to Adelina but it's okay to be unfair to Yuna? Yuna didn't have to win against Adelina, but PCS should've been at least slightly more proportional. Yuna had 0.08 higher than Adelina in PCS. Adelina even got the same points as her in Choreo. Even you have to admit that Adelina didn't have much of a choreo to speak of, yes?

I don't necessarily think Yuna was "robbed" of anything, but clearly, they were going to give it to one of the two Russians if they skated clean no matter how others skated, and Yuna was scaled back accordingly. So was Caro. No way around it, and it was just way too obvious how they went about it. How's that not problematic?

Petition to investigate judging gets record signings, makes Wall Street Journal headline

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