mzheng said:
But was it all about jump under 6.0? Who landed most jumps, 3/3 got big prop in marks included the 2nd mark? Even under COP, jumps earned much more points than spins or any other elements.
No, it depended on the skater. When the judges wanted to award presentation over technical, they raised the second mark, even when the jumps weren't as strong or weren't as difficult. Cases in point: Cohen's last two short programs, where in Dortmund, she had an obvious flutz and not the same jump content as Kostner nor the same jump quality as Sebestyen, who also had very strong spins, and in Moscow, where she had a flutz (properly deducted), several bobbles, and was not as completely "on" as she was in Dortmund.
mzheng said:
And further more, there were other ladies in the same competetion, especially the top ladies. If you were talking about judging, placement, etc., then you can't just isolate Kwan alone, she was not competing to herself in these competetions.
Fine, then I'll go over the top skaters in detail, acknowledging that "robbed" and "was robbed" are actually what the judges do, and to attribute them to skaters is a figure of speech.
Since being robbed means that the skaters ahead of Kwan actually skated worse and to rob means the skaters below Kwan actually skated better,
2004 Dortmund:
a. In the qualis, she was robbed by no one -- Arakawa was dominant and Ando was loose in the QR, while Kwan didn't have her feet under her, which affected the depth of her edges and overall control. (Kwan said the ice was too hard, which was a general complaint in that quali group.) Kwan robbed Poykio, Volchkova, and possibly Kostner, who had superior speed and flow. (Slutskaya also robbed Kostner and Volchkova, but she didn't place higher than Kwan.)
b. In the SP, she was robbed of one spot by Arakawa (2 underrotated jumps), but robbed Kostner and Sebestyen.
c. In the LP, she robbed four first place ordinals from the vastly superior Arakawa.
Kostner and Ando robbed a bunch of skaters in their LP (Sebestyen, Poykio, Rochette, Suguri among them), but not Kwan. Kostner would not have been seeded had she placed correctly in the LP; Suguri would have. Overall, I think that Kwan should have come in 4th last year (5/5/2) under Arakawa (1/6/1), Cohen (1/3/3), and Sebestyen (3/2/4).
2005 Moscow
a. In the qualis, she may have robbed Liashenko, but the groups for the SP wouldn't have changed and the point difference after factoring (25%) still would have been less than one point.
b. In the SP, she robbed Arakawa and Sokolova bigtime in PCS.
Spartacus was fine -- not as good as at Nationals, but fine -- while the line and flow in
Madama Butterfly was terrific and Sokolova was amazing in
Don Quixote, and she also had the best 3Lz of the competition. (ES was horribly overrated in PCS in the quali/LP; it was a terribly choreographed program, and ES doesn't do tragedy.) She was robbed by Slutskaya for a couple of points, as were Cohen and Kostner, as the deduction for the travel on the combo spin wasn't big enough (according to the documentation), she received +GOE on another spin in which she had significant travels, and she received +GOE on the 3F, before which there was a significant break before the jump. Not that I think this was right; however, the SP scores would have been very close, and Slutskaya still would have had a lead going into the LP.
I don't think she was robbed by Cohen, because Cohen's spins were much better than Kwan's and two were harder, and that made up for the small bobbles. (SC received the deduction on the flutz, getting a 0 for the element, the max allowed for a flawed element.) It also had a "grabbing" quality that
Spartacus, for all its strengths, didn't have. I agree with those who think
Spartacus should have been Kwan's LP. It flowed and built like a LP.
c. In the LP, she couldn't hold a candle to Slutskaya or to Cohen, despite Slutskaya's 0 points on the third 3Lo or Cohen's mistakes. Arguably, she robbed Kostner in the LP -- CK actually had exceptional choreography in her program and skated to music that moved, not to a deliberate musical depiction of a factory -- but luckily the outcome was correct. She also robbed Suguri in PCS -- another skater with choreography -- although, overall, it wouldn't have made up for Suguri's SP deficit.
For all the talk about her coming in 3rd in the SP and LP, Kwan was .40 away from 4th in the SP, and .69 away from 4th in the LP, not exactly showing dominance over Kostner in either program. While I could say that likewise, Kostner didn't show dominance over Kwan, any benefit of the doubt likely went to Kwan, when it wasn't a decision between Kwan and either Slutskaya or Cohen.
I think Kwan's 4th place in Moscow was deserved, because she skated consistently, unlike Arakawa, Suguri, or Ando.
Kostner is likely few peoples first pick for gold, but she has to be seen as a dark horse threat after this years Worlds, and with the home crowd, the triple/triple/double she can do, with another year of maturing, with her carefree attitude and confidence, she might just sneak in and take it all away from those veteran stars. The last few Olympics have been won by teen sensations. Who is the more likely champion if it is to come to that, Kostner, Phaneuf, or Ando? After this years Worlds I think most would have the same answer to that.
