Skaters retiring due to impression that judges have "dropped" them?

[julieann]

Tanja Szewczenko? I forget the year and competition but I remember seeing an SP that theoretically might have been described as clean that got really low scores. The Eurosport commentator said something to the effect that she'd been dismissed and told to leave by the marks.

He brought up the issue of her landing technique (which involved disguised two footed landings a lot) and the suggestion was that the judges were sick of it.

There is also a huge score difference between a "clean" skater that gets all level ones and a skater who gets all level fours who has a fall.

If a world champions has a bad skate and falls to 4th it doesn't mean the judges have dumped them for another skater it means they had a bad skate and need to do better next time. They can be world champ again, it has happened before.

[gkelly]

Interpreting 6.0 scores was kind of like reading omens. There was no direct connection between the numbers and the judges' thought processes, and no official way for judges to convey their thought processes to the skaters or other observers. Even when they were allowed to talk to skaters about their skating, they weren't allowed to compare to other skaters.

So people tried to figure out what message the judges were trying to send. But the process was mostly guesswork. Who knows when they got it right and when they were making up reasons the judges never thought of in the first place.

And of course different judges may have come up with the same numbers or same rankings through completely different processes and may have been sending completely different "messages."

With IJS, we can see a lot more clearly why skaters scored the way they did technically,. We might disagree with the rules or the values in the Scale of Values or with specific calls by the tech panel or specific GOEs by some judges. But we don't have to guess how much each element was worth -- it's all spelled out in detail on the protocols.

The PCS are still pretty vague and often require the same kind of guesswork, but at least there is some separation into different aspects of the whole program instead of lumping, say, musical interpretation and carriage into the same number.

[SamuraiK]

Moniotte&Lavanchy are the only ones I can remember being vocal about their dropping. NOt surprising though, they went from 4th to 11th in a very infamous and obvious way. They were still going to retire after Nagano though so I dont think they really count for the topic question.

[blue_idealist]

I would say Belbin and Agosto (dropped a bit in favour of Davis and White, although it wasn't an extreme case). I think that was a case in which the dropping might have been deserved though as Davis and White improved a lot, and Belbin and Agosto of course never gave that as a reason for retiring.

Oh, and Inoue and Baldwin after 2010. That one was obvious.

[caseyedwards]

"get it" when he won the Olympic silver medal, after a 3.5 year absence?

Your Plushy hatred is lacking in logic, as hatred usually is.

BTW if Plushy loves to compete for the sake of competing, he should, regardless of what haters think.

I read it like he was the only one in Vancouver to do a quad triple and triple axel and basically do everything and being a previous gold medalist he went down to silver.

[nubka]

Wish Plushie would finally "get" it and leave for good!

No way! The world can not yet be deprived of Plushy Power...

[Carmen Ovsiannikov]

I agree that B&A were dropped a bit in favor of D&W but not IMO because they were passed by a better team. IMO while V&M were clearly (to me) the rightfull winners of the gold, I felt that B&A was more than good enough to fight it out with D&W to decide the gold and silver (despite my love for DomShabs they should not have been on the podium).

I can't argue with those who still judge events according to whose programs touched them more but just looking at the Olympic champions from 2010 it seems that having the most creative attention grabbing program means nothing these days. It seems more about technical prowess and supposedly who performs better on the day. Icedance has followed the same pattern as the singles with programs looking like a display of elements.

Anyway (I may soon regret engaging in B&A conversation) I do feel as if B&A were feeling out which way the wind was blowing all season and I do feel (though I could be wrong; as was mentioned previously none of the skaters will ever admit to this) that if things had gone differently and they had earned at least a bronze they would have done one or two more seasons. Watching Tanith and Ben skate during the Disson shows, I feel that they are only beginning to peak as skaters.

I have a "love/hate" relationship with L&T. Judging from their 99/00 season I do get the feeling that even if they had shown up with amazing difficult programs the judges just decided that they didn't like them. I felt they were sort of an American version of DelShoes in that the judges wouldn't even reward the team even when they .

OTOH, I can only speculate when it comes to L&T because although they got sympathy from the commentators and fans for being cast as the poor put upon American team, L&T rarely stepped up to the plate. When they had good competitive programs those programs were often mired with mistakes. And the final two seasons they competed, it looked as if L&T happened to wander into a competition so decided to entertain the crowd with an exhibition. In their case I think both the judges and how team L&T were handed that was the issue.

I know that F&S retired because of injury but I also think their low scores in the FD at Europeans also might have played a part. It does seem as if Federica and Massimo have reassed having looked at the current field and have decided to try again. I am happy to have them back as F&S are one of only a few "old school" teams who can mix creativity with technical skill. This past season was the first time since I've been following icedance heavy duty where I was bored by almost every SD and FD. I can count on one hand and have a couple of fingers left over how many dances really caught and held my attention.

[aliceanne]

Sometimes I watch a skater and think if they hadn't won their last competition they never would have won this time. But then I look at skaters like Paul Wiley, Rudy Galindo, Shizuka Arakawa, and Miki Ando who were considered past their prime (and probably advised by many people to quit) and yet they were able to come back strong and the judges were willing to give them the medals. So it can't be all politics, performance does matter.

[RobinA]

Shishkova-Naumov come to mind. They were still a good pair but the judges were just marking them low when they turned pro.

I NEVER thought these two got the points they deserved. And the other Russian pair of that era, whose name escapes me (Bushkov?) and whom I did not like at all, were always winning with slop.

[RobinA]

Sometimes I watch a skater and think if they hadn't won their last competition they never would have won this time. But then I look at skaters like Paul Wiley, Rudy Galindo, Shizuka Arakawa, and Miki Ando who were considered past their prime (and probably advised by many people to quit) and yet they were able to come back strong and the judges were willing to give them the medals. So it can't be all politics, performance does matter.

Wylie wasn't past his prime, he had lutz problems.

[judgejudy27]

Wylie, Galindo, and Shizuka were always huge threats if they put it together. They just had awful consistency problems. The judges didnt dump them, Wylie was held up to even make it out of the U.S often including for the 92 Oympics, so they were clearly waiting on him after all those years. And Ando mainly capatilized on the worst year of ladies skating in decades.

[luenatic]

Oh, and Inoue and Baldwin after 2010. That one was obvious.

Obvious? What was obvious? The lack of SBS triple jumps?

[blue_idealist]

Obvious? What was obvious? The lack of SBS triple jumps?

I'm not saying they didn't deserve to be dumped, maybe they did, but regardless, they were dumped and it was obvious that they were dumped.

[snoopysnake]

I NEVER thought these two got the points they deserved. And the other Russian pair of that era, whose name escapes me (Bushkov?) and whom I did not like at all, were always winning with slop.

That was Eltsova and Bushkov.

Bourne and Kraatz seemed to fall out of favor with the judges after a seemingly meteoric rise up the ice dance ladder of their time. They finally did win Worlds, but they might have not broken up so soon thereafter if they'd not had so many frustrations competitively.

[blue_idealist]

That was Eltsova and Bushkov.

Bourne and Kraatz seemed to fall out of favor with the judges after a seemingly meteoric rise up the ice dance ladder of their time. They finally did win Worlds, but they might have not broken up so soon thereafter if they'd not had so many frustrations competitively.

Yeah, it seemed they were totally dumped for Anissina and Peizerat, Fusar-Poli and Margaglio, and Lobacheva and Averbukh (although they did win Worlds over L & A once). Although I think they deserved to lose to A & P often, I think in general they DIDN'T deserve to lose to the other two teams I mentioned.

[pollyanna]

I always wondered what happened with Sophie Moniotte & Pascal Lavanchy. They won World silver and bronze, and then nuttin'.

[judgejudy27]

I think Moniotte & Lavanchy lost their position in the World when they missed a full season with injury. Younger teams like Krylova & Ovsiannikov, Bourne & Kraatz, and Anissina & Peizerat improved alot from 95 to 97 and Krylova & Ovsiannikov especialy were already a far better than Moniotte & Lavanchy by the time they returned. These teams always had more long range potential in the first place, the main reason M&L were ahead of them for a bit is they were newer and still developing. Moniotte & Lavanchy were a very good team and I always enjoyed them, but they were the kind of team that was probably destined to have their best success in the post Olympic period anyway. Many of the usually second tier skaters have their greatest success after alot of the top people retire after the Olympics and before the next generation of top skaters mature enough to reach the top.

The only time I thought M&L were majorly dumped was in 98 when the French were putting all their support behind Anissina & Peizerat, but they were injured most of that season too and very rusty for Europeans and the Olympics.

[shady82]

Chait/Sakhnovsky were very obviously dumped. In the 2002/2003 season they were dropped quite a ways behind several teams, even though I thought their long program was very strong. They probably should have fallen behind Denkova/Staviski, but behind Navka/Kostomarov and the Ukranians I'm not so sure. They got further dumped in the 2003/2004 season. In the Olympic season, they were getting fairly decent marks until the Olympics/Worlds, where their marks were approaching the level of Domnina/Shabalin's.

Dumping seems to be more of an ice dancing phenomenon. Other teams I saw dumped were Nowak/Kolasinski and Gudina/Beletski. Scott/Dulebohn were also visibly dumped post-2002, but their skills had gotten worse so I wasn't surprised.

[DBZ]

Yoshie Onda comes to my mind.

I remember she performed two clean skates at Japanese Nationals one year and was still placed behind skaters who had made mistakes, leaving her off the world team.

I think she announced her retirement not long after, and I wouldn't be surprised if that had contributed to her decision to do so. It must be incredibly frustrating and demoralizing to feel your best isn't good enough no matter what.

[Aussie Willy]

I don't think skaters get dumped but agree with the comments that there are younger competitors who end up overtaking them. Or they have given the judges reason to place them lower.

Moniotte and Lavanchy were just not the same after the injury and their Riverdance FD in 98 really was not a very good FD. Pretty much everyone else in the top 10 at the Olympics that year were so much better (except for the Ukraines were very questionable).

I also don't think B&K had anything to complain about. Their OD at 98 Olympics was lazy and sloppy and just trying to be crowd pleasing. And even though I really liked their Riverdance FD, it just wasn't performed very well (they were much better at the following Worlds). Then they had injuries which really took them out of the running. But they did persist. As much as I didn't really think much of their FD when they won Worlds, they really skated it very well and I could see why it won.