Most Controversial Figure Skating Moment (On and Off Ice)

[Mista Ekko]

Kostner was the winner that day in my eyes, sorry.

I thought she had that short program at least
Honestly for me both recent world champions who gave a great clean competition were worthy of it


Wasn’t there some off ice controversy in ice dance in the early 90s
between two leading Russian teams swap dating each other or something?
Might’ve just been manufactured by US media though

 

[Mista Ekko]

Why did Lipnitskaya skip an award ceremony?

I think they claimed she just thought it was at some other time,
The team did get penalized though,
I think she might’ve been generally not happy competing back then,
And just kinda lost focus of the event

 

[drivingmissdaisy]

While it's understandable to bring up Adelina /Yuna in this thread, please don't hijack the thread. If you wish to discuss it in more detail, you can certainly start a thread for it.

Please do NOT start a thread about the Sochi event at this point everyone has made up their mind and no amount of arguing is going to convince anyone to change it.

 

[anonymoose_au]

I’m not sure why merely bringing up the topic of possible favoritism in judging during Sochi
Is met with such combatant defensiveness and immediate pivoting to the subject of cyber bullying,
Are you guys afraid to discuss it?

Because of the way it's brought up...with an underlying suggestion that if someone believing in the mere possibility of Yuna Kim being beaten is messed up in the head or a Russian bot.

And fine I'll admit my defensiveness over this issue and it's probably because when the Russian pairs event in Salt Lake the immediate declaration from commentators (before the possibility of cheating judges could even be proved) was "cheating!" When Plushy lost in Vancouver, despite questionable SP scoring and an actual EMAIL from a very well-known judge specifically targetting Plushy - crickets. Plushy may have been a sore loser, but that guy Joe Inman suffered no consequences whatsoever for his unprofessional conduct.

It just really makes me angry when people act like every single win by a non-Russian is totally above-board and epitome of fairness and "clean sport'. Other countries are perfectly capable of cheating and dirty tricks too.

 

[Mista Ekko]

Because of the way it's brought up...with an underlying suggestion that if someone believing in the mere possibility of Yuna Kim being beaten is messed up in the head or a Russian bot.

And fine I'll admit my defensiveness over this issue and it's probably because when the Russian pairs event in Salt Lake the immediate declaration from commentators (before the possibility of cheating judges could even be proved) was "cheating!" When Plushy lost in Vancouver, despite questionable SP scoring and an actual EMAIL from a very well-known judge specifically targetting Plushy - crickets. Plushy may have been a sore loser, but that guy Joe Inman suffered no consequences whatsoever for his unprofessional conduct.

It just really makes me angry when people act like every single win by a non-Russian is totally above-board and epitome of fairness and "clean sport'. Other countries are perfectly capable of cheating and dirty tricks too.

I think there are more people here with a broader view than what you describe
Maybe we should remember as far as board members we probably all have
a lot more in common with each other, and we just disagree on specific things,
And yeah Plushenko losing that one was a bummer for me too and as someone
who used to kinda always want Russians to win things so was SLC, But eventually I guess
I managed to see a more well rounded view of those situations,

Especially after going through to Sochi season, And I gotta tell you,
And I don't want us to argue, But I really feel that the judging there was quite offensive,
So just maybe accept that it's not about bigotry, lack of knowledge or seeing a couple people hug,
Imo It wasn't a close event, No one else was winning that one if one of the Russians gave enough,
So I'll just have to be happy for Sotnikova that she got that moment, And whenever the subject
rises say what I actually saw there

 

[alexocfp]

Because of the way it's brought up...with an underlying suggestion that if someone believing in the mere possibility of Yuna Kim being beaten is messed up in the head or a Russian bot.

And fine I'll admit my defensiveness over this issue and it's probably because when the Russian pairs event in Salt Lake the immediate declaration from commentators (before the possibility of cheating judges could even be proved) was "cheating!" When Plushy lost in Vancouver, despite questionable SP scoring and an actual EMAIL from a very well-known judge specifically targetting Plushy - crickets. Plushy may have been a sore loser, but that guy Joe Inman suffered no consequences whatsoever for his unprofessional conduct.

It just really makes me angry when people act like every single win by a non-Russian is totally above-board and epitome of fairness and "clean sport'. Other countries are perfectly capable of cheating and dirty tricks too.

My realization that this isn’t true came in the 1988 Olympics 100m. Ben Johnson was painted as this cheat in the American media bitten later it came out that most everyone in that race tested positive for something.

In that era, it was also painted as the cheating Iron Curtain vs the just, clean Americans.

Andre Agassi flat out said that he failed a test and the ATP covered it up for him.

 

[Alex Fedorov]

There was too much politics around the Sochi Olympics. From all sides, both from the East and from the West. This clearly manifested itself long before the start of the competition, and was generally quite predictable. And this is just one of the many reasons why I have always considered the idea of holding the Olympics in Sochi unsuccessful. I think that if Sotnikova had won in some other country, albeit with the same refereeing, the noise would have been much less.

 

[lariko]

Who won/who didn’t is dime a dozen in like half the major competitions, so for me the biggest thing was that one crucial incident that finally toppled the 6.0 ‘scoring’. It is the biggest thing that happened after the third program (figures) was removed imo. If it was controversial enough to bring change, then it was truly controversial.