This was a sad and difficult situation to watch. It seemed especially unfortunate that it seemed to accentuate the inevitable impact that politics and or a home crowd can have on influencing the very human aspects of judging an event.
The performances from both were compelling and seemed to represent outstanding efforts. KNOWING that she would not have the audience's natural support, it is impressive to see what a competitor Suriya was. What I think is really underappreciated in the VIDEOS/by camera, however are some of the subtle qualities that made Yuka so evidently outstanding to the judges rinkside.... he incredible speed (look at especially the straight line footwork at the END of the program)... and the purity of her edges (only if the audience is not there could one appreciate the 'quiet' of her pure edges. Sergei Grinkov often exclaimed how Yuka was his favorite ladies skater... and this coming from someone who was such a master (think of how big a guy he was) of the beautiful flowing edge and speed. Also - I think it can't be underappreciated how immensely difficult it must have been for Yuka to skate before her own home crowd. All in all... I have no problem accepting Yuka as the winner of that event, or in believing that the 'best skater did win' My sadness is for Surya and for the sport that night.
The next day at the exhibition, it took a courageous young lady to put a smile on her face, I believe apologize to the audience, and for an audience to warmly receive her in spite of the sad display she put on during the medal ceremony (which surely HAD to put a dent in the joy for Yuka).
Wow, thank you very much for your very thoughtful post! It was really wonderful to read.
I agree that it was a really difficult decision and I am glad that we now have the COP. Despite all the weaknesses and a lot of room to improve, it is nicer because it gives us clearer explanations of which specific factors contribute to the outcome (although I know it's so confusing for casual fans who are not very familiar with FS).
I agree about what you say about the quality of skating skills of Yuka. Yuka is very smooth. I especially love her edge jumps like salcow and loop.
Another factor that might have contributed to the outcome was that Bonaly didn't deliver the performance quite cleanly. Although I don’t have the video, it seemed that she had some problems in her jumps at that night. On the other hand, Yuka was clean despite that she doubled her toe loop and that the level of her jump contents was much lower than Bonaly. I feel that delivering a clean performance might have affected more strongly at that time that it does now. Under the COP, Carolina managed to place the second despite the unclean landings because of the higher base values of her jumps at this previous Worlds. So if they had been in the current system, Bonaly still might have had better base values than Yuka's if she really managed to have fully rotated her difficult jumps.
I agree that it was sad for Bonaly. It seems that she had had cumulative resentment from other events.
I wonder if racism was partly an issue. It’s a bit difficult to determine so because Bonaly was atypical in many ways. It is understandable that her skating skills were not appreciated by judges.
Machiko Yamada, Midori’s coach, often used to say that the typically appreciated figure skater would be a blond, fair Western woman who has long legs and arms and have elegant presentations etc and that Midori had some physical disadvantages because she was short and not very skinny etc. On the other hand, I think it is fair to say that Midori was not very artistic in her presentations regardless of her physical characteristics. She seems to love jumps more than anything. So it was a bit hard to completely attribute her relatively low second marks to her physical characteristics or racism. She became so much better in her presentation later in her ama career and after turning to pro.
BTW, Machiko Yamada also sometimes said that she was happy to have Mao and Mai as her students because they have pretty faces, beautiful body lines, and skate elegantly etc. She could be pretty straightforward!
Back to the topic, I personally feel that Bonaly might have been somewhat underrated in this event and others. But I personally think it is difficult to determine the single factor that contributed to these. Perhaps many factors were going on.
