For Emma: "War and Pairs"

heyang · Jun 26, 2005

OMG, those days were heated! I believe most of us came to the conclusion that it could have gone either way and/or that we respected each other's rights to their personal opinions.

I do remember watching and being surprised that B&S won, but not particularly appalled by it. Scott's comments bothered me more. My then boyfriend was disgusted by the media hoopla and called S&P cry babies. He's always been athletic and musical, but doesn't believe skating is a sport. He thought B&S's program was much more complex and the snowball tossing was a huge turnoff for him. To this day, I send him updates on S&P just to get a reaction out of him.

If I recall correctly, I think S&P didn't make any blatant comments. The media and their federation did it all, as well as the French judge.

Thanks for re-posting RGirl. I must admit that I don't think I was able to read your post all the way through the 1st time :rofl:

, but am glad I got a 2nd chance!

ildah · Jun 28, 2005

It's not that I'm not enjoying the comments being written. They are quite informative and entertaining and nobody is being unreasonable. Good discussion!

HOWEVER: (hmm...) Whenever discussion on the SLC issue comes up, I'm always amazed that a lot of people think that the furor was caused by people thinking or assuming that S&P had it "in the bag", and then being shocked and stunned and outraged at the result. If this were the true basis for the scandal, it would have put the results of the Pairs LP in the same company of dozens of questionable Olympic results over the decades, with the losers being tearful and disappointed but having to "suck it up". End of story.

The SLC scandal happened because EVERYBODY in SLC (judges, coaches, press etc), had heard the buzz in the week leading up to the Pairs event, that there was a "fix" being arranged. The audience and the millions of viewers were the only ones who didn't have a clue about this "fix". Everybody in the know, knew. S&P only needed to make one small error in their program, and it would have let the judge in question (French) off the hook. But they didn't.

One of my dear friends, a Romanian gymnastic judge who disagreed with S&P being awarded the gold, admitted to me a year later when the Mafia story came out of Italy, that some of the coaches in the gymnastics community had told her that indeed the Russian mob angle was true, and that even they admitted there had been an attempt to buy the Russian and French medals in figure skating and ice dance, through an exchange of favours.

I felt so bad for Elena and Anton during the whole scandal week - I thought they looked so vulnerable and hurt and I hurt for them, but ......it was a small, unethical element from their own country that put them in this awkward and painful situation. The only part the USA media played in the whole affair was in refusing to let this be swept under the rug. It would have been in Europe. (boy, I just made a gross generalization!)

The "fix" aside, I think that B&S are superior but slightly inconsistant skaters, and on that particular night S&P stole the hearts of the audience.

Mathman · Jun 28, 2005

Thanks for that insight, Ildah. I don't suppose we will ever know the whole story. A friend of mine who is an elite coach and choeographer told me after the event that, as you say, "everyone in the know was in the know." But she couldn't say anything because that would be the end of her career in skating if she did. (As indeed, it was the end for the whistle-blowers in the affair.)

Mathman

Joesitz (RIP) · Jun 29, 2005

Yes, we will never know the whole story because Speedy put an end to it by permiting two gold medals to be issued. He did not want the public to know who was the counterpart to LeG.

In the long run, maybe Speedy was right. If we disregard LeG's marks and we should if you believe in fair play, then the 4-4 decision was a tie.

It doesn't surprise me that the fans of either of the teams if they were the 9th judge would put their favorite as the winner for all sorts of reasons. Over and out.

Joe

antmanb · Jun 29, 2005

Joesitz said:
Yes, we will never know the whole story because Speedy put an end to it by permiting two gold medals to be issued. He did not want the public to know who was the counterpart to LeG.

In the long run, maybe Speedy was right. If we disregard LeG's marks and we should if you believe in fair play, then the 4-4 decision was a tie.

Joe

To be fair under the old rules in the event of a tie in the LP the SP is the tie breaker - if you do disregard LeGougne's marks and there is a tie in the LP then the SP is the tie breaker - so B&S would have ended up with gold and S&P with the silver.

Ant

Mathman · Jun 29, 2005

antmanb said:
To be fair under the old rules in the event of a tie in the LP the SP is the tie breaker...

Are you sure of this? How can there be a tie in the LP, under the rules? The "old rules" certainly had elaborate tie-breaking protocols. If one of the judges was unable to complete his/her responsibilities, the scores of the substitute judge were to be used.

This was Mrs. Jamila Portova (Czech Republic). I'm not sure of this, but I believe that Mrs. Portova said afterwards that she had scored it for Sale and Pelletier. (?)

Mathman

janetb · Jun 29, 2005

Your right Mathman

attyfan · Jun 29, 2005

So, if we disregard the French vote, it was a 4/4 split -- a tie. Then, under two different methods for breaking the tie, one favors B & S and the other favors S & P -- another tie. Just out of curiosity, has any of the CoP mavens attempted to score the pairs event to see if that works out to be a tie, also?

emma · Jun 29, 2005

ildah said:
It's not that I'm not enjoying the comments being written. They are quite informative and entertaining and nobody is being unreasonable. Good discussion!

HOWEVER: (hmm...) Whenever discussion on the SLC issue comes up, I'm always amazed that a lot of people think that the furor was caused by people thinking or assuming that S&P had it "in the bag", and then being shocked and stunned and outraged at the result. If this were the true basis for the scandal, it would have put the results of the Pairs LP in the same company of dozens of questionable Olympic results over the decades, with the losers being tearful and disappointed but having to "suck it up". End of story.

The SLC scandal happened because EVERYBODY in SLC (judges, coaches, press etc), had heard the buzz in the week leading up to the Pairs event, that there was a "fix" being arranged. The audience and the millions of viewers were the only ones who didn't have a clue about this "fix". Everybody in the know, knew. S&P only needed to make one small error in their program, and it would have let the judge in question (French) off the hook. But they didn't.

One of my dear friends, a Romanian gymnastic judge who disagreed with S&P being awarded the gold, admitted to me a year later when the Mafia story came out of Italy, that some of the coaches in the gymnastics community had told her that indeed the Russian mob angle was true, and that even they admitted there had been an attempt to buy the Russian and French medals in figure skating and ice dance, through an exchange of favours.

I felt so bad for Elena and Anton during the whole scandal week - I thought they looked so vulnerable and hurt and I hurt for them, but ......it was a small, unethical element from their own country that put them in this awkward and painful situation. The only part the USA media played in the whole affair was in refusing to let this be swept under the rug. It would have been in Europe. (boy, I just made a gross generalization!)

The "fix" aside, I think that B&S are superior but slightly inconsistant skaters, and on that particular night S&P stole the hearts of the audience.

I didn't know this and it is interesting....I wonder if some of the tv commentating makes more sense (to those who were irked by Hamliton in particular) knowing that this fix had been the buzz for the whole week...thanks for sharing.

FrenchLady · Jun 29, 2005

attyfan said:
So, if we disregard the French vote, it was a 4/4 split -- a tie. Then, under two different methods for breaking the tie, one favors B & S and the other favors S & P -- another tie.

Yep. I think the ISU was lucky. They had some justification for the "political" solution to the whole mess. And they were able to avoid a throughout investigation by the CAS.

gkelly · Jun 29, 2005

attyfan said:
Just out of curiosity, has any of the CoP mavens attempted to score the pairs event to see if that works out to be a tie, also?

There's no way to tell for sure. Even if you agree on which year's version of the COP rules to apply and there are no questionable areas about which level various elements would have been so that the technical base marks are clear, much of the scores would still come from judges GOEs and component scores, which would depend on each judge's opinion of each of the elements and general performance and therefore vary depending which particular CoP mavens you had scoring the event.

The chances of an absolute tie are very slim. The chances that the scores would be very close and that which team came out ahead would change depending on which rules and which judges you used would be much higher.

Would you call it a tie if the base marks for the two top teams over both programs turned out to be identical (unlikely, but theoretically possible to determine)?
Then you could guess whether the GOEs (probably higher for S/P in the LP) and component scores (probably higher for B/S) might cancel each other out.

For Emma: "War and Pairs"

heyang

ildah

Mathman

Joesitz (RIP)

antmanb

Mathman

janetb

attyfan

Custom Title

emma

FrenchLady

gkelly

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