- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
Americans aren't stupid. You are getting out of hand, why can't you have a logical argument on the facts?
The Judging Controversy Thread
- Thread starter Andre Smith
- Start date
Americans aren't stupid. You are getting out of hand, why can't you have a logical argument on the facts?
At least two aren't.
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
Canadians, then. Canadians who watched CBC had to listen to long silence, and then Kurt trying to recover from the shock and failing, and admitting on the air at he's stunned at the results. That may have done the trick for Canadians.
Eh, between Scott and Kurt I'm going to go with the one who didn't think 14 year old Michelle Kwan was "kind of sexy".
I think the problem is not that this specific competition was misjudged but the fact that this happens practically in every Olympics in different disciplines.
The reason, IMO, is that the wide and wild discrepancy in the weight given to TES vs. PCS from one competition to another in ISU events in between Olympics. The results always in complete dissonance with what transpires during Olympic competitions. In some cases, it's like the preceding 4 years never happened. If in the most important competition for athletes TES is more important mark, this should be encouraged for everyone in the years leading without giving them false sense of cushion with PCS boosts that immediately dissapears come Olympic season.
The reason, IMO, is that the wide and wild discrepancy in the weight given to TES vs. PCS from one competition to another in ISU events in between Olympics. The results always in complete dissonance with what transpires during Olympic competitions. In some cases, it's like the preceding 4 years never happened. If in the most important competition for athletes TES is more important mark, this should be encouraged for everyone in the years leading without giving them false sense of cushion with PCS boosts that immediately dissapears come Olympic season.
Eh, between Scott and Kurt I'm going to go with the one who didn't think 14 year old Michelle Kwan was "kind of sexy".
Oh, and Tracy Wilson, then.
Seriously, even dear Scott was quoted on news articles that while he thinks Adelina deserves to win, he doesn't get the score difference.
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2010
No, Americans arent stupid but you sure are. Obviously you cant even detect basic sarcasm.
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
:disapp:
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2010
Well Mao was 5 points below Kim on PCS and she sure as hell deserved higher PCS than Sotnikova so yeah 5+ points more in PCS for either Kim or Kostner (who should have been even higher than Kim in PCS) would be easily justified. As for the TES, Sotnikova was overscored in GOE on over half of her elements, and Kim and Kostner underscored on almost everyone. In both programs, but especialy in the LP.
Lets say the Olympics were in Korea or even Italy, how many points would Sotnikova have been behind Kim and Koster in the LP for the same skates? 10, 12, 15?
- Joined
- May 7, 2008
You need to calm yourself. At this rate, you're making me want to root for this Adelina girl just so your head will explode.
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
So you're saying there is a home advantage. I don't disagree with that. I don't think it's due to corruption but rather the judges being swayed by the audience reaction.
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- Feb 19, 2014
You cannot argue with a person who has stockholm syndrome. Even if Putin kills his/her mother, he/she would sing his praise.
So you don't think it matters that there is a corrupt (proven in past) judge on the panel and that the wife of the Russian Fed's director is on the judge panel? o_o Even if they weren't biased or the such, this should just be a blatant conflict of interest and just lack of control
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2014
:thumbsup:
Over a course of a month or so, Adelina's PCS beats Carolina's? She is just 0.09 behind Yuna? That's just the Free Skate too. She was overscored in PCS for her Short Program as well. You ask any current skater or ex-skater if Adelina suddenly improved her PCS skating that much in the last month that now she is on par with Mao, Costner, and Yuna and lets see what their answer will be. PCS is the most glaring unfair bump that Adelina got but it also shows in the GOE as well:
One of the judges husband is the head of the Russian Federation! Another was a Ukraine judge once suspended for fixing the Nagano Olympics. Hmm...go figure.
What I don't get is this. If Yuna was skating for Russia to win her second gold, would Adelina still have been scored this much higher than Yuna?
If the answer is yes without a doubt, then there's no issue with judging. I don't think it's a clear yes, so I have issues with that.
I get real life is rarely perfect, and of course there's home advantage, but it should not have to sway the judges this much. And yeah, I saw the list of judges. I find it incredulous that a wife of the Russian federation being one of the judges isn't exactly a conflict of interest. How would it look anything but suspicious?
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2010
No more than Joe Inman still being a judge after bashing Plushenko in the run up to Vancouver.
By the way - you cannot expect too many officials or those who live on the business to be courageous in every occasion. I would try to leave public names alone unless they are willing to blow whistle on their own. At least the media picked up on the controversy and I have my moral victors in these games. Let's take the discussion to a productive direction instead of accusing each other.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/s...vas-upset-victory-is-hard-to-figure.html?_r=2
Adelina Sotnikova's upset victory Is Hard to Figure.
SOCHI, Russia — I ran to the first skating insider I could find: Kurt Browning, a four-time world champion who had been commentating for Canadian television. Could he explain what just happened?
“I don’t know, guys,” Browning said, just a few minutes after being oh-so-sure that Kim Yu-na was the winner of the women’s figure skating competition at the Sochi Olympics, and that she easily had beaten Russia’s Adelina Sotnikova.
“I just couldn’t see how Yu-na and Sotnikova were so close in the components,” he said. “I was shocked. What, suddenly, she just became a better skater overnight? I don’t know what happened. I’m still trying to figure it out.”
Browning and two of his colleagues continued to pore over the judging details, looking at sheets of dozens of numbers representing things like base values and GOEs (that would be grades of execution, of course) and each anonymous judge’s scores.
I stepped back for a moment and realized that the whole situation could not be more ridiculous.
If Browning, a former Olympic figure skater who remains involved with the sport, couldn’t pinpoint why Sotnikova had just pulled off a major upset of the 2010 Olympic champion, how could fans and television viewers be expected to understand what happened?
And that is the enduring problem with figure skating. It’s why the sport has dropped in participation and why it’s popular among mainstream fans only every four years. Its scoring system is too convoluted and opaque. Its history, which includes the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics judging scandal, shows that it can be corrupted.
One of the judges for Thursday’s women’s competition is married to the general director of the Russian figure skating federation. Another, from Ukraine, was at the center of a voting scandal in ice dancing at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.
The skaters, their coaches and the public are not allowed to know how these or any of the other seven judges voted. The sport’s international governing body chooses to keep the individual votes a secret.
So the conspiracy theories were immediate and fierce.
Sotnikova’s performance was excellent and electric, but many observers seemed to think Kim deserved another gold medal. Some people were just plain confused, and they can’t be blamed.
“Yu-na Kim outskated her, but it’s not just a skating competition anymore — it’s math,” Browning said, explaining that Sotnikova racked up little points here and there to move ahead of Kim.
The governing body, with its judging ranks tarnished by questionable officials and its scoring system favoring math whizzes over artists, is killing its own sport. But the athletes suffer the most.
Ashley Wagner of the United States finished seventh. She said she believed the poor judging tainted the final outcome. In the long program Thursday, she was ranked behind fifth-place Yulia Lipnitskaya, the 15-year-old Russian who was a favorite to win the gold until she stumbled in her short program.
In her long program, Lipnitskaya fell on one of her triple jumps. Wagner stayed on her feet, and later blamed the judges for their irregular, inexplicable scoring.
“It’s confusing and we need to make it clear for people,” Wagner said of the judging system, which has been in place for about a decade. “I’m speechless. This sport needs to be held accountable if it wants more people to believe in it.”
It’s easy to feel sorry for both Kim and Sotnikova. Kim is one of the best skaters in history — appearing graceful and effortless on the ice — and has said this would be the last competition of her skating career. Sotnikova skated with a flair and charisma that rallied the raucous Russian crowd around her. At one point, as she glided across the rink, she raised her hands to egg on the fans, who responded with a roar.
Adelina Sotnikova's upset victory Is Hard to Figure.
SOCHI, Russia — I ran to the first skating insider I could find: Kurt Browning, a four-time world champion who had been commentating for Canadian television. Could he explain what just happened?
“I don’t know, guys,” Browning said, just a few minutes after being oh-so-sure that Kim Yu-na was the winner of the women’s figure skating competition at the Sochi Olympics, and that she easily had beaten Russia’s Adelina Sotnikova.
“I just couldn’t see how Yu-na and Sotnikova were so close in the components,” he said. “I was shocked. What, suddenly, she just became a better skater overnight? I don’t know what happened. I’m still trying to figure it out.”
Browning and two of his colleagues continued to pore over the judging details, looking at sheets of dozens of numbers representing things like base values and GOEs (that would be grades of execution, of course) and each anonymous judge’s scores.
I stepped back for a moment and realized that the whole situation could not be more ridiculous.
If Browning, a former Olympic figure skater who remains involved with the sport, couldn’t pinpoint why Sotnikova had just pulled off a major upset of the 2010 Olympic champion, how could fans and television viewers be expected to understand what happened?
And that is the enduring problem with figure skating. It’s why the sport has dropped in participation and why it’s popular among mainstream fans only every four years. Its scoring system is too convoluted and opaque. Its history, which includes the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics judging scandal, shows that it can be corrupted.
One of the judges for Thursday’s women’s competition is married to the general director of the Russian figure skating federation. Another, from Ukraine, was at the center of a voting scandal in ice dancing at the 1998 Nagano Olympics.
The skaters, their coaches and the public are not allowed to know how these or any of the other seven judges voted. The sport’s international governing body chooses to keep the individual votes a secret.
So the conspiracy theories were immediate and fierce.
Sotnikova’s performance was excellent and electric, but many observers seemed to think Kim deserved another gold medal. Some people were just plain confused, and they can’t be blamed.
“Yu-na Kim outskated her, but it’s not just a skating competition anymore — it’s math,” Browning said, explaining that Sotnikova racked up little points here and there to move ahead of Kim.
The governing body, with its judging ranks tarnished by questionable officials and its scoring system favoring math whizzes over artists, is killing its own sport. But the athletes suffer the most.
Ashley Wagner of the United States finished seventh. She said she believed the poor judging tainted the final outcome. In the long program Thursday, she was ranked behind fifth-place Yulia Lipnitskaya, the 15-year-old Russian who was a favorite to win the gold until she stumbled in her short program.
In her long program, Lipnitskaya fell on one of her triple jumps. Wagner stayed on her feet, and later blamed the judges for their irregular, inexplicable scoring.
“It’s confusing and we need to make it clear for people,” Wagner said of the judging system, which has been in place for about a decade. “I’m speechless. This sport needs to be held accountable if it wants more people to believe in it.”
It’s easy to feel sorry for both Kim and Sotnikova. Kim is one of the best skaters in history — appearing graceful and effortless on the ice — and has said this would be the last competition of her skating career. Sotnikova skated with a flair and charisma that rallied the raucous Russian crowd around her. At one point, as she glided across the rink, she raised her hands to egg on the fans, who responded with a roar.
