- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
I for one always loved Rachael. I was really surprised that anyone thought Mirai won the 2010 Nationals, I though Rachael was so much stronger on the jumps, and was a bit annoyed with the commentators when they basically gave it to Mirai. Needless to say, I was happy with the outcome
Mirai out-perkied Rachael (no mean feat!) and the audience loved Mirai's performance. But in the CoP, you live by the UR, you die by the UR. Mirai received two phantom URs and that was the ballgame.
I felt she was royally screwed at the Olympics with those random downgrades on her flips that came out of nowhere. I still believe it was totally political.
I think at the Olympics Rachael was the victim of skate order. In the long program she skated first. The tech panel could not give her high marks because Kim and Asada were yet to skate. It was possible that both of them might have messed up, and then where would we be? So this time it was Rachael's turn for the phantom URs. For the first one, only one of the nine judges gave her negative GOE. Evidently 8 of the 9 did not see anything wrong with the rotation. The second one was more in question. Three judges gave her negative GOE and 6 thought the jump was OK.
As it turned out, the worry was needless. Kim and Asada both put up scores that set the contest out of reach, and so did Rochette for third. So by the time Mirai skated (last) there was no reason to find something to downgrade because the contest was over anyway. Mirai 4th, Rachael 7th.