What has Suspect Judging done to YOU??

Well....here goes.

Since the specific opinions about S/P & B/S has come up, I will insert an opinion. Of course, this is just MY opinion. It's about 6.0 v. CoP, so if you're sick of that topic you have fair warning, and don't have to read on LOL!!

While CoP is FAR from perfect (seKret judges and some questions about PCS scores are the big ones IMO), this particular competition highlighted what I think is a HUGE weakness of 6.0 based on how it was used and what everyone came to expect.

The "Rivalries" for the Oly medals are always hyped in advance, and I don't expect that to change under CoP. But under 6.0, I think the public expectation between the "hyped" rivals for gold generally came down to clean skates. There wasn't really consideration for who had the most difficult program executed with great choreography and musical interpretation. Once it was down to the final 2 or 3, the clean skate was EXPECTED to win (by the public and media anyway).

I understand the people who challenge the CoP fact that the "cleanest" skate doesn't necessarily win among the top contenders. Even as a fan of CoP I can understand the point that some excitement can be lost when a less than stellar skate with more difficulty can beat a clean skate from another top contender with less difficulty. But while CoP hides the judges identity (not in favor of that!!) it DOES provide details so at least an outcome such as the original one in SLC (B/S Gold) could potentially be explained.

As it was, evidence turned up of a judging scandal which should NEVER happen. But I do respect those who feel that B/S's program might have been better overall due to more difficult moves, and hence B/S's win might have been justified.

I do NOT offer this opinion to excuse the judging scandal that came to light after the fact. I always bear in mind that the SCANDAL was about a "vote trade." That scandal was in place long before S/P & B/S skated. Had B/S skated clean, we might never have known about the judging abomination. What I'm trying to say is that I think it's two different issues.

Now. If the ISU hides behind score manipulation and just uses CoP to further their interests including cheating, then nothing has been accomplished.

I just like CoP better for the fact that this sort of situation can be more readily explained through more detailed scores. If applied appropriately, the original outcome might have been OK.

DG

Mathman said:

Thanks for that point of view, Saint-Exupery.

We seem to be having at least three different discussions going on at the same time on this thread. I would like to ask everybody's opinion about this: besides Anton's little break on the double Axel, did anyone else think that on both of the throw jumps, Elena's landings were not totally 100% secure?

Mathman

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Yes. I think the problem with the double axel was offset by the slight synch issues S&P had on the SBS jumps. But I do think Berezhnaia's tight landings on the throws were an issue.

Back to te topic of the pressures on the French judge, there have been a lot of news articles in skating magazines lately about the trials and tribulations of the French federation. They have been in and out of bankruptcy for years (mostly in). The government agency that oversees all sports (and gives them their money) has been on the verge of kicking them out several times. When Gailhaguet was elected president he said to more than one person (Ms. Bianchetti, for instance) that he personally hated to have to make these political deals with other federations, but without them France would never win anything. No medals = no money.

Philippe Candeloro, speaking of his two Olympic bronze medals, has said the same thing.

Last year Gailhaguet resigned as president, then he changed his mind and decided to run for re-election. Madam de Gougne denounced his candidacy saying, if this fool is re-elected that will be the end of the French federation because the organization's creditors and government oversight officials would not stand for it. (Some other guy was elected, who I believe come from the business side of the sport.)

So I can see that the judges might feel a lot of pressure, if they are made to feel that the whole existence of French figure skating is riding on them.

Mathman

Don't know why I'm jumping into the SLC pairs fray, but here goes.


I have stated before that I watched B/S with mute on because I hate the Meditation from Thais. It gave me a different perspective than I normally get.

Although speed is hard to tell from the tv, I always wondered if B/S were actually faster in the Olympic FS. They looked slower than normal to me and S/P looked faster than normal. When fans talk about the speed of B/S, are they going by reputation or by what they saw?

Also, Elena had (IMO) a whipped puppy dog look after every element that wasn't perfect, including the landings on the throws. It aggravated me that she seemed to lose fight after a less than perfect moment. Why not hold up a sign for the judges or shout out "we screwed up here"? They were off and on throughout the performance and just never seemed to fight all the way through.

Although S/B's choreography was more complex, I had a lot of issues with their appearance of speed, the lack of fight (off and on) and the overall shakiness of their elements.

In other words, I was completely shocked when they got the nod for the win. But that's just my humble perspective.

hockeyfan228 said:

Yes. I think the problem with the double axel was offset by the slight synch issues S&P had on the SBS jumps. But I do think Berezhnaia's tight landings on the throws were an issue.

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Which in turn could've been offset by Sale landing slightly forward on one of their (smaller) throws. They're pretty much equal in terms of slight mistakes.

Although speed is hard to tell from the tv, I always wondered if B/S were actually faster in the Olympic FS. They looked slower than normal to me and S/P looked faster than normal.

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I know people who were there that said that they were as fast as they usually are. One of the reasons why they might looks slower is that they have to do less (and slower) crossovers to get max speed. It's like Volchkova. I never thought she was particularly fast because she looked SLOW on TV, but then I saw her live and she barely had to move on the ice and she was flying.

Jimena said:

Which in turn could've been offset by Sale landing slightly forward on one of their (smaller) throws. They're pretty much equal in terms of slight mistakes.

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I disagree with this offset. In CoP terms, Berezhnaia's tight landings -- both -- would not have offset a lean forward on one in points. And from the CBC camera angles, S/P's throws looked not only far -- possibly not as far as B/S -- but also high, which was one of their strengths. I also thought that the B/S's opening, before the elements, was wobbly, and that while they flew when they're at top speed, they were awkward when they slowed down to do elements like the pairs spin. "Speed" was never the criteria for the pre score. "Changes of speed" was. In my opinion, S/P mastered the changes in speed and there weren't breaks when they slowed down and transitioned into elements like the pairs spin or the nested Inas, while B/S looked awkward in some of them, which is my major gripe with the program. It looked under-rehearsed, which isn't surprising, given injury before and her sunburn at SLC, which affected training, and they hadn't been using Meditation all year.

B/S had more complex choreography, although S/P's program was less front-loaded, which increases the difficulty, and they had harder lifts as well.

There is a school of judging, and from reading Biachetti's book, it sounds like she's one of them, that when technique is relatively close, a gut-grabbing emotional performance should win definitively. S/P's performance fell flat with some people -- I believe "cheap" was the word bandied about -- just like Bauil's did with me. Hence Lipinski, Bauil, Hughes, and S/P "definitely" should have won. I don't think it was a rout. I think it was close, but that S/P should have won that one, that night.

But, on the whole, commentators tend to go with emotional content, and under 6.0, who knew what was being rated and what was being ignored; there was only what was palpable and telegenic. Under CoP, they have a running stream of scores and levels, so they can note the relative difficulty. I think it was a real strength to have Susie Wynn, and ice dancer, there to point out edges, flow, why footwork is difficult, and transitions; very few former singles' commentators even mention these. So that when the results come up at the end, they make some sense to the viewer, i.e., more difficulty = more points/difficulty in spins and footwork makes up for lack of quad, etc. I'm sure most casual viewers think the backflip is the hardest "jump" in skating, because no one's told them differently.

hockeyfan228 said:

In CoP terms, Berezhnaia's tight landings -- both -- would not have offset a lean forward on one in points.

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Maybe. But B&S's throws are faster and go farther than S&Ps, plus Elena holds her landing edge, while Jamie does not. It's all about what you want to compare, and if you take into consideration the qualities of the throw (flow, height, length, speed and edge on landing) then you might come up as more or less equal values, IMO, when comparing B&S's two iffy landings vs. S&P's one. At least that's the way I see it. And I'm not talking COP here.

hockeyfan228 said:

I also thought that the B/S's opening, before the elements, was wobbly, and that while they flew when they're at top speed, they were awkward when they slowed down to do elements like the pairs spin.

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I disagree with this. The non-elements part of their choreo never seemed awkward (to me, of course). They weren't at their best, for sure, but they weren't that "off" for me.

hockeyfan228 said:

Hence Lipinski, Bauil, Hughes, and S/P "definitely" should have won.

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Hmm. I'm a very emotional person, but I don't think the performance with the emotional oompf, if you will, should be placed first. An emotional skate depends on too many things that had nothing to do with the actual performance: preference, where the competition takes place, whether the audience connects to the music, whether the skater is subtle or in your face presentation-wise... The one competition where emotion was more important to me was the 94 pairs event, where I would've had M&D in first place. However, I understand the end result. And obviously the judges were not swayed by emotion because they voted 7-2 for G&G.

Of the ones you mention, I would've picked Lipinski and Hughes. After years of debating mostly with myself, I think that I would've had Kerrigan in first in 94 (though it pains me to say so 'cause she was never a favorite of mine and Baiul was). And do people really think that Michelle and Tara had basically the same technical content? Because I chose Tara mostly due to what I though was her higher technical content...

Jimena said:

Maybe. But B&S's throws are faster and go farther than S&Ps, plus Elena holds her landing edge, while Jamie does not. It's all about what you want to compare, and if you take into consideration the qualities of the throw (flow, height, length, speed and edge on landing) then you might come up as more or less equal values, IMO, when comparing B&S's two iffy landings vs. S&P's one. At least that's the way I see it. And I'm not talking COP here.

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I would say that on the whole B/S's throws are faster and go farther than S/P's, and that in general Berezhnaia holds her landing edges better than Sale, but not on that night, because Berezhnaia had two tight landings. S/P had greater height on the throws, if not quite the same distance; they made a different arc. I only mentioned CoP because the criteria are laid out very well for throws; I know CoP wasn't used in SLC.

Jimena said:

I disagree with this. The non-elements part of their choreo never seemed awkward (to me, of course). They weren't at their best, for sure, but they weren't that "off" for me.

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I'll agree to disagree

Jimena said:

Hmm. I'm a very emotional person, but I don't think the performance with the emotional oompf, if you will, should be placed first. An emotional skate depends on too many things that had nothing to do with the actual performance: preference, where the competition takes place, whether the audience connects to the music, whether the skater is subtle or in your face presentation-wise... The one competition where emotion was more important to me was the 94 pairs event, where I would've had M&D in first place. However, I understand the end result. And obviously the judges were not swayed by emotion because they voted 7-2 for G&G.

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I agree that emotion shouldn't be the overriding factor. But under 6.0, it often was.

Jimena said:

Of the ones you mention, I would've picked Lipinski and Hughes. After years of debating mostly with myself, I think that I would've had Kerrigan in first in 94 (though it pains me to say so 'cause she was never a favorite of mine and Baiul was). And do people really think that Michelle and Tara had basically the same technical content? Because I chose Tara mostly due to what I though was her higher technical content...

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Regarding Lipinski, I don't think that higher technical content is just a matter of difficulty, although in 6.0 it was a matter of ticking off the jumps or counting the hardest combinations and ignoring the rest (like Kostner's and Ando's FS's in Dortmund.). I think it is a matter of difficulty plus execution. Unlike most people, I wouldn't have lowered Lipinski's presentation scores, because maturity isn't a criteria, and she had age-appropriate content and a lot of choreography which she executed well. I would have lowered her technical scores, because of her execution: bad take-off technique and little power in her jumps. (I think Meissner's technique is great, but her jumps are very small. Her 3/2/2 at Nationals barely left the ice.) IMO Kwan looked like Sebestyen by comparison, and she had far better technique in all phases of almost every jump.

hockeyfan228 said:

Unlike most people, I wouldn't have lowered Lipinski's presentation scores, because maturity isn't a criteria, and she had age-appropriate content and a lot of choreography which she executed well.

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And, ladies and gentlemen, we agree on something! Woo hoo! Go us! :agree:

I thought her presentation was fine. She was a musical skater and interpreted her program well.

Jimena said:

And, ladies and gentlemen, we agree on something! Woo hoo! Go us! :agree:
.

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Where's that FSU "handshake" icon when you need it