I never felt the judges were purposely giving Kwan an extra cushion that she did not deserve though. Even at the 98 Olympics when she was regarded a heavy favorite, she stll narrowly lost the gold with a great if slightly cautious performance when the 2nd best skater at the time-Tara Lipinski, arguably slightly outskated her with the performance of her life and an extremely triple-triple combo and another hard triple-triple sequence at the end. .
But this is the problem. Kwan had competition and the judges did not hesitate to judge what they saw that night because they had alternatives to choose from.
While with Plushenko it was a totally different story. There was no competition at the Olympics, not even for silver and bronze because, excepting Plushenko,all the other skaters did loads of mistakes. So the problem was not with the judges or with Plushenko but with the other skaters who were not able to deliver decent programs! We do not know what would have happened if Lambiel, Joubert or Sandhu had skated clean-ish SP+LP.
There is no Plushenko at least for this season. Were SA and SC any better?
Don't you feel disappointed?
I am sure that Plushenko would have been a diffrent skater if he had been challenged in the past four years (and it is not the judges fault; this is a lame excuse)
I hope he comes back but I also hope that the others will give him a run for his money.
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