I disagree. There's nothing wrong with Kostner's flexibility (and the positions she hits are all great) and Pogorilaya's flexibility seems good to me. And I never had a problem with Kim's flexibility.
Yes it is because precisely we are fans, we became knowledgeable about the sport, its history of political incentivised judging to know when something funny is going on: who is overmarked, who's undermarked, which event has a history of being overmarked, undermarked etc.
I watch the sport for the skaters, not the judges. Given judges are human, human errors are not inconceivable, and other than 'deliberately cheating', 'subconscious preferencing', and 'national duties' - judges can also be influenced peer pressure, professional pressure, political pressure, cognitive latency, brain freeze, crowd influence, tano pressure, and KGB pressure.
As for 'cheating', are we talking about 'theory' or 'legality' or 'reality'?
Yes it is not cheating if I own the technical panel and decide to change the rules whenever I want however I want, and have final say on all rule changes to advise my countrymen to start training juniors for a particular style, elements 2 years ahead of time that can gather easy points, while neglect to tell everyone else. So when I finally make such rule changes with no provision period - such as 10% half way bonus, and tano +3 goes, increase on 3T, 'others' are at a disadvantage since they will need 1 or 2 years to wake up to adapt to it, train for it, choreograph for it, fully getting used to it.
Yes it is not cheating, if I decide to undermine my countrymen's greatest competitor by exploiting their weakness through rule changes, and minimise their scoring opportunities, and bridging scoring gap by reducing the scoring for difficult triples, raise score for easiest triple and advice my countrymen to train consistency on the easiest triples with tons of transition for transition's sake while making GOE qualities a thing of the past.
Yes it is not cheating, if I decide to make my country most competitive by 'legally' instill judging panels consist of 100% European judges 'randomly' at the most critical events consecutively like the world championships to mostly benefit my countrymen where they can inflate their score the highest through 'personal preference', 'cultural preferences', 'nationality preferences', ' national duties'.
Yes, it is not cheating, when I am the 'law' and I make the calls, and decide to put my strictest technical caller at many of my country's biggest rival nation's competition while at my own country the most lenient and generous callers.
Yes it is not cheating, when I decide no one can challenge my decisions by writing it into the rule book, all judging are final, all judges are not accountable, anonymous, and can not be challenged.
Yes, it is not cheating, when I decide to advise and influence when I please at my own free will to disclose favourable advice and 'privileged' information; that can really help 'scoring' for who I want when I want, while handicapping others.
Yes, it is not cheating, when I do it and nobody can find out or challenge me.
Taking 'performance enhancement' advice is not cheating, it is only cheating if you are found out and then somebody made it illegal.
Yes it is because precisely we are fans, we became knowledgeable about the sport, its history of political incentivised judging to know when something funny is going on: who is overmarked, who's undermarked, which event has a history of being overmarked, undermarked etc.
I watch the sport for the skaters, not the judges. Given judges are human, human errors are not inconceivable, and other than 'deliberately cheating', 'subconscious preferencing', and 'national duties' - judges can also be influenced peer pressure, professional pressure, political pressure, cognitive latency, brain freeze, crowd influence, tano pressure, and KGB pressure.
As for 'cheating', are we talking about 'theory' or 'legality' or 'reality'?
Yes it is not cheating if I own the technical panel and decide to change the rules whenever I want however I want, and have final say on all rule changes to advise my countrymen to start training juniors for a particular style, elements 2 years ahead of time that can gather easy points, while neglect to tell everyone else. So when I finally make such rule changes with no provision period - such as 10% half way bonus, and tano +3 goes, increase on 3T, 'others' are at a disadvantage since they will need 1 or 2 years to wake up to adapt to it, train for it, choreograph for it, fully getting used to it.
Yes it is not cheating, if I decide to undermine my countrymen's greatest competitor by exploiting their weakness through rule changes, and minimise their scoring opportunities, and bridging scoring gap by reducing the scoring for difficult triples, raise score for easiest triple and advice my countrymen to train consistency on the easiest triples with tons of transition for transition's sake while making GOE qualities a thing of the past.
Yes it is not cheating, if I decide to make my country most competitive by 'legally' instill judging panels consist of 100% European judges 'randomly' at the most critical events consecutively like the world championships to mostly benefit my countrymen where they can inflate their score the highest through 'personal preference', 'cultural preferences', 'nationality preferences', ' national duties'.
Yes, it is not cheating, when I am the 'law' and I make the calls, and decide to put my strictest technical caller at many of my country's biggest rival nation's competition while at my own country the most lenient and generous callers.
Yes it is not cheating, when I decide no one can challenge my decisions by writing it into the rule book, all judging are final, all judges are not accountable, anonymous, and can not be challenged.
Yes, it is not cheating, when I decide to advise and influence when I please at my own free will to disclose favourable advice and 'privileged' information; that can really help 'scoring' for who I want when I want, while handicapping others.
Yes, it is not cheating, when I do it and nobody can find out or challenge me.
Taking/Prescribing 'performance enhancement' advice is not cheating, it is only cheating if you are found out and then somebody made it illegal.
This all russophobia is simply disgusting: everything does Russia is always seen as cheating from the US perspective. Now you can't even do tano jumps because it is seen as cheating...
Watch out for US pressure at Worlds.
) by various things. I still believe that the crowd in the arena has the most influence. Judges are fans as well and they can get carried away.
Regarding the of the judging panels - it's not the fault of the European countries that the rest of the Worlds doesn't seem to have enough judges. European judges are needed at 4CC. So, because the judges are randomly selected it doesn't astound me that most of the judges at Worlds or Olympics are from European countries, it's only natural. The U.S. and Canada agreed to that selection process, so this might be the best solution.
I also don't like rule changes shortly before the next Olympics, rule changes should happen right after the Olympics, so that everyone has enough time to prepare.
And I think that U.S. skaters will do very well at Worlds in Boston. They'll thrive because of the supportive audience and they'll get very high PCS because of it.
We'll see afterwards wether we agree with the results or not.
We all shouldn't forget that Russia wanted to end anonymous judging. The judges are only humans, they can be influenced easily (not only European judges
I don't think that it was a "fake gesture" by the Russian fed. It's true that quite a couple of votes were missing for the 2/3 majority (about 8 if I remember correctly), but well above 50% voted for the change. But all southeast Asian nations were against it, so this can be considered to be a block vote. The result is nothing you can hold against the Russian fed, it's hard to imagine that they influenced other nations to vote for keeping it when they voted to get rid of it themselves. I was really disapointed with Finland, Sweden, Germany and Austria (I'm pretty sure I remember them correctly, I was offended by their vote.).
Mao can break the score, Evgenia this year. That's about it. What will happen in future years - who knows? And if we are discussing the upcoming Worlds, then Satoko, Mao, Lena, Ashley, Gracie, Zhenia all have equal or almost equal chances to podium. Personally, I would understand Mao, Gracie, Zhenia, Lena getting the 1 place. Satoko, even if she IS great and musical to watch, will be the unpleasant winner to me:gaah:
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