Mathman said:About bloc judging, it wasn't the Olympics that opened my eyes so much as the Worlds that followed. Before the skating even began, Dick Button said on TV, "Looking at the panel of judges, Irina will win 6 to 3."
You know what this also tells me; it tells me that North Americans win when the judging panel is set up along their lines as well. I don't believe that only Eastern Europeans conspire together and not the innocent North Americans. I've seen competitions where the Canadian judge will flat out favor its skaters (much like the Russians). We saw how the panel voted in SLC pairs as well. As much as Eastern Europeans vote in blocs, so do North American (and whatever Asian countries they can get to side with them).
Often you see the panel split with "eastern" voting one way and then the other half voting the other way, and often times the skaters are ranked the same along each side (in terms of western ranks skaters similarly and eastern rank skaters similarly). So only western judges can rank skaters properly and eastern judges can't? Or perhaps culturally eastern judges value different things in skating than western judges?