Joesitz said:
Lois - Your sole reporter who watched the figures is not a convincing argument. You seem to be saying it takes 7 judges to make a decision and only l spectator to affirm their decision. Sorry I can/t buy that.
I sincerely believe there is a conspiracy because nothing can actually be proven, as you say, one way or another. I don't find anything wrong with conspiracies. They exist in politics for sure and whenever there are more of one group of judges who always decide in unison. No way to prove any of this so the conspiracy lingers.
I have nothing to lose in this instance because my feelings for Linda are not all that important to me. But I do feel for any skater who may be the subject of a conspiracy. In Worlds 2002, Irina won her gold finally with 6 slavic judges all voting in her favor. That's the way of life.
Joe, I am certainly not saying that one educated spectator confirms that 7 out of 9 judges were correct, but how many people were saying that the figures judging was not correct--I believe that it's two, Carroll and Fratianne, both of whom certainly are guaranteed to be more biased than the spectator! I'm just saying that, apart from the judges, there *were* a few people who watched figures, and at least one agreed with the majority of the judges.
About conspiracies, you are wrong in part. Sometimes they CAN be proven not to exist, or vice versa. In SLC 2002 and with the toe-tapping judges, they were pretty much proven to exist. In the case of 1980, two specific Carroll conspiracies can be proven *NOT* to be true--men/ladies and Eastern Bloc are NOT true, because, for instance, you cannot have an Eastern Bloc conspiracy handing a victory to Anett when there are only *2* out of 9 judges from the Eastern Bloc, and 5 out of the 7 judges for Anett were Western (so the 7 mixed judges voting for Anett were hardly a regular, cohesive bloc, as Irina's 6 Slavic judges could be), yet Carroll had the nerve to lie about that in an interview, claiming an Eastern Bloc conspiracy cost Linda the gold. Carroll's claim was flat out false. Same for the ladies/men one, also provably false, but I'm not going to re-type all of that. Carroll in a particularly outrageous interview also viciously attacked Carlo Fassi while admitting that he could never figure out *how* Carlo could have rigged the results--uh, earth to Carroll, maybe you could never figure out how it was "done" because Carlo Fassi *didn't* rig them?! Joe, you obviously aren't a believer in "innocent until proven guilty," but you are choosing to take the word of a liar (in some of his claims, with others impossible to prove or disprove) with vague, flailing claims over that of Carlo, who hasn't been proven to have lied about anything here, AFAIK.
One thing that Carroll and Fratianne will never admit in all their whining, bitter interviews is the possibility that Anett actually won fairly, yet every time this subject comes up there are many people who think that Anett did indeed deserve the gold over Linda. There's a desperate grasping-at-any-excuse-no-matter-how-impossible-or-wrong attempt to paint the competition as a landslide win for Linda (in their opinions), when this was clearly not the case. Close and debatable, sure, and you and C/F are entitled to your opinion, of course, but 1980 was never a clear-cut landslide-win situation, it's always been a split-opinion, endless-debate Oksana vs Nancy, Brian vs Brian, Tara vs Michelle competition. The what-if that C/F never seem to be able to consider is, what if Anett actually did deserve the gold and their biases are blinding them to Linda's weaknesses...
Joe, I can't imagine why you would think that C/F should have the definitive words spoken on 1980, when they have lied about 1980 in the past. Personally, I'd love to have Carlo Fassi produce the definitive words spoken, from beyond the grave, but realistically I'm fairly certain that there will never be any definitive final word on the ladies in 1980.
About the weird 3rd hand judge story that Linda has suddenly come up with now about her sister and her dead mother, I share Mathman's skepticism, and then some. For one thing, I just can't see two conspiring judges being stupid enough to talk openly in a public restroom with the skater's mother nearby. In a couple genuine scandals, they've had the common sense to use phones and private rooms. More importantly, the article specifically says that this alleged, unverifiable overheard conversation was before the *long program,* yet, remember, the results had basically been decided several days *earlier* during figures, F/C have claimed that the figures were rigged, but those were already long over, Anett was extremely likely to win unless she did a total zamboni act (which she did not do), and the skater who beat Linda in the long was Denise Biellmann, not Anett--is Linda now trying to imply that there was a conspiracy for Denise to beat her in the long, since Denise was the skater to whom she was 2nd there? I believe everyone posting here who saw the competition agreed that Denise's win in the long was deserved! Lots of unanswered questions, and, conveniently, no possibility of questioning the late Virginia Fratianne about that story.
Regarding the TV documentary, I don't know what they were thinking, but when I watched that show I was wondering if they merely found the 1980 ladies skating as generally uninspired as I did and omitted those years for that reason, since they didn't have a US winner who would require inclusion. But one thing that's often happened for me is that the best or most interesting or thrilling performances IMHO have come from non-medallists who'd be left out of this sort of program regardless (Denise in 1980, Tiffany Chin in '84, Caryn Kadavy and Midori Ito in '88, Nathalie Krieg in '94, etc.).
Lois
