BronzeisGolden said:
Let me see:
1. Michelle Kwan & Sarah Hughes, 2002 GPF 2nd LP - I thought both Michelle and Sarah skated far better than Irina that night. I know Michelle had the fall, but Irina was sloppy and only landed four clean triple jumps. I was sort of shocked when her marks popped up....they were quite high for technical merit and not deservedly so, IMHO. But, I like Irina, so I wasn't extremely peeved!
4. Elvis Stojko, 1994 Olympics LP - There aren't too many that agree with me on this one. But, I always enjoyed that particular LP of Elvis's and felt, overall, he was the best. I've never been a big Urmanov fan, though. He had a nice quality on the ice, but I was always left feeling sort of cold after his performances.
7. Woetzl & Steuer, 1998 Olympics LP - Sorry, I am probably very alone on this one, but I thought they deserved the silver medal. B&S were sublime and wonderful, etc....but they made some big mistakes. W&S had small mistakes, but I felt overall they were slightly better...but that is just me of course!
8. Maria Butirskaya, 1998 Worlds LP - I thought Maria deserved the silver medal in Minneapolis. Irina was unpolished and extremely sloppy...and her much touted set of 3/3s weren't that clean or spectacular.
9. Ina & Zimmerman, 2002 Olympics LP - I would have had them at least in 4th over the uninspiring T&M.
I would agree with most of this:
1- Irina for some reason always seems to get held up at the GPF; she could go out to center ice and sit in a lawn chair for 4 1/2 minutes and still win the freeskate. She's won 3 of them, and IMO she only deserved 1 of them.
4 - This is one of those "style preference" situations; most North Americans find Stojko dynamic and Urmanov out-and-out boring; most Europeans may feel quite the oppisite. In this case, I too fall into the "North American" category, which, germanice, explains where this "Elvis should've won in Lillehammer" comes from. IMO, Urmanov was dull, ridicolously costumed, and why would you insert some sort of "weird wacky knees" sequence into what is supposed to be an "ultra-classical" program??
7- No, you're not alone. Jelena falls on Anton's head, they go down in a heap, and apparently this was considered to be QUITE artistic, based on the marks given, plus they made some other errors too. As far as I'm concerned, HUGE errors, especially those that should not be made once one gets out of the Junior level, deserve HUGE deductions, and from ANY PAIR NOT COACHED BY TAMARA MOSKVINA in that competition, IMO they would have been taken. I was so irritated by the marks this pulled in that I almost turned the TV off before the competition was over.
8- ITA, and I'd take it one step further. Butrskaja should have won not only the silver in 98, but the bronze in 96 and 97. Gusmeroli in 97 was merely "meh" and Slutskaya in her early days was mostly coasting by on pure personality, because there was really nothing about her skating that was all that spectacular.
9- I feel the same way. And once I found out that T/M ended up ahead of I/Z, I kind of had a feeling the way the rest of the competition was going to go. And turned out I was right. I considered this kind of a foreshadowing of the whole Sale/Pelletier-Bereznaja/Sikharulidze thing.
Some additional "we wuz robbed"s:
Blumberg & Seibert, Sarajevo, definitely. One judge takes it upon herself to decide which music has the proper tempo and which does not, which would have been one thing had she applied the same rules to Torvill & Dean. 20 years later and I still want to throw rotten vegetables at that woman.
Krylova & Ovsiannakov, 97 Worlds. "Masquerade Waltz" was one of the most brilliant free dances of the late 90s and should have pulled 6s. Gritshuk & Platov, for them, were quite good, too, but they made a couple of errors and should have been 2nd to K/O.
Anissina & Peizerat, 99 Worlds. However, I guess it all came out in the wash because 2 years later, Krylova & Ovsiannakov should have been 2nd to Anissina & Peizerat. Not only was K/O's free dance a really bad imitation of the Duchesnay's Jungle classic, it was also unbeleivably simple in composition and footwork and from a pure difficulty level it was not even top 10 stuff, tho they sold it well. A/P were much more difficult and interesting.
Michael Weiss, 98 Nationals. Weiss, back when he was still dyamic and interesting, loses out to Eldredge on one of his less enthralling nights because the US judges still operate under the impression that if we send someone to the Olympics without giving them a National title, the Olympic judges won't give them a gold medal. This despite the fact that Eldredge had already won his World title the year he lost the Nationals. If Weiss had won as he'd deserved to, Eldredge may have done better at Nagano because he always put on his best performances when he was PO'ed over previous results.
Brasseur & Eisler, Shishkova & Naumov, Eltsova & Bushkov, Meno & Sand, Kovarikova & Novotny, Rahkamo & Kokko, Lillehammer. Who CARES how many years (especially in the case of R/K) you've been putting the time in and working your way up to get your way into Olympic medal contention? Let's bring the pros back and place them ahead of you. You want an Olympic medal, surely you can wait around another 4 years..... :sheesh: :sheesh:
Drobiazko & Vanagas, 01 Worlds. The uproar in Vancouver was over Shae-Lynn and Vic not winning the bronze. IMO the couple that got truly ripped off was Drobiazko & Vanagas, who should have been on the podium over Lobacheva & Averbukh.
Punsalan & Swallow, 92 Nationals. I thought the unwritten rule was supposed to be, you send the best team possible to the Olympics, so therefore manipulating results at Olympic year Nationals is permissible to get the best team. So why didn't they hold up Punsalan & Swallow in 92? Defending National champs, an impressive 11th in their first Worlds, and yes they made a mistake in their free dance but SO WHAT? Mistakes have never been overlooked before? And they send Mayer & Breen instead?? What a waste of an Olympic berth. And to make things worse, this set a trend for leaving Punsalan & Swallow, arguably our best dance couple, at home for several seasons so once they finally got to go to Worlds again, they pretty much had to start moving through the ranks all over again. I've always felt that if they'd been sent to Albertville, their career would have turned out much differently.
Goldenskate 
, I just stopped at a certain point and rolled my eyes, because to me it seemed to turn out into another "duuh-poor-Northamerican-skater-X-wuz-robbed-by-dull-Russian/Soviet-skater-Y-only-because-of-eville-eastern-bloc-judging!"-issue! 
