Most poorly judged competitions

[julieann]

Well, thank goodness the judges know that there is more to skating than just one flawed jump entry. I don't know how anyone could watch a good Lipinski program and not feel some amount of joy and excitement, and that's coming from a Kwaniac.

There are a lot of skaters (male and female) who have had edge problems on the flip or the lutz...should we strip them of their World and Olympic medals? What about that monstrosity Evan Lysacek calls a triple axel? That's more of an eyesore than just about any flutz I've ever seen.

It has nothing to do with not being able to enjoy her skating when it's done correctly but when you are supposed to do a 3 lutz and you cheat the take-off, did you really do a true lutz? No, you did something else. Just like if the skater does two rotations instead of three they don't give them credit for three just because they tried.

No one is suggesting anyone get stripped of a medal obviously they are judged other things; but penalties should be used where appropriate and not ignored just because the rest of a skater's program is exciting.

[Triple Butz]

It has nothing to do with not being able to enjoy her skating when it's done correctly but when you are supposed to do a 3 lutz and you cheat the take-off, did you really do a true lutz? No, you did something else. Just like if the skater does two rotations instead of three they don't give them credit for three just because they tried.

No one is suggesting anyone get stripped of a medal obviously they are judged other things; but penalties should be used where appropriate and not ignored just because the rest of a skater's program is exciting.

Actually, the poster I quoted did say it bothered her that Lipinski won world and olympic titles with a flutz and suggested that that was not right.

Secondly, how do you know whether or not the judges deducted for Lipinski's flutz? Just because it wasn't clearly mapped out, like with CoP, doesn't mean that it was ignored. Christine Brennan and friends made sure that everyone in the skating world knew about Tara's flutz and I'm sure the judges weren't blind to it. They simply thought, as I did, that she had enough technical merit in other places to justify high technical scores, particularly in the long program.

[shady82]

And the poor judging from 2002 was not just about B&S vs S&P either. The generous judging towards T&M and the under-appreciation of I&Z (whom I probably would have had in 3rd place)...

And then the travesty that was the judging of the ladies competition. Suguri, not Hughes, should have been in the final group of ladies. Kwan, Suguri and Cohen should all have been ahead of Slutskaya in the free.

And then the men. Plushenko should have been behind Abt, Li and Weiss after the short, and I really would have Honda ahead of Goebel in the free.

I guess I understand the judging, but just don't accept that certain rival skaters are deemed to be equal and only cleanliness should determine who is ahead (B&S vs S&P, Honda vs Goebel, Kwan vs Slutskaya, Hughes ahead of Butyrskaya and Suguri, etc). On the same vein, I am glad Plushenko was taken out of contention after the short, because Yagudin's free was clearly superior to anything that Plushenko was capable of doing, ever but the judges often saw them as equal.

I love talking about the 2002 Olympics - there are so many different views, largely because we weren't using CoP yet. I thought dance was the most poorly judged - D/V in 5th place was a blatantly obvious scandal. And don't get me started about N/K getting promoted two places (and three for two parts of the competition).

It's interesting to see some new opinions, including many people who now say they prefer P/T to B/S. The Petrova/Tikhonov of 2004-2006 was terrific and medal material - their short programs, in particular, were outstanding. But they clearly weren't competing for medals back in 2002 - though I thought they were the most robbed team in SLC. They skated two completely clean programs with two sets of triples in the freeskate. It's true their artistic impression was pretty flat, but so was T/M's.

Overall, I would still have S/Z 3rd, actually. Their fall was on a quad throw, and Hongbo had a shaky landing, but it was a bad landing and not a mistake in my eyes. P/T 4th, I/Z 5th, and T/M 6th.

[RumbleFish]

Didn't the French judge do a good job of vilifying herself?

French judge denied any wrong doings later and said she was bullied to say what she didn't mean to say. I really don't know whether this is true or not, but I guess I'll never find out.

And do you honestly think Slutskaya should have won?
I am/was a huge Slutskaka fan and was rooting for her all the way. But, Hughes won fair and square.

Slutskaya should have won the SP, and Hughes should have been put 5th or 6th IMO. There is no gurantee that these ladies would have performed their FS the same way under different SP placements and FS starting order, but Slutskaya would've ended up with the gold even if she had placed 2nd in the FS behind Hughes.

[RumbleFish]

Please.....Lepisto's bronze medal in at worlds was a complete joke. She didn't skate well at all there, especially compared to her olympic performance. No senior skater should be rewarded for doing double jumps at a world championship. She was ridiculously overmarked for PCS. She kept popping one jump after another. When she was finished it was obvious she had given a very disappointing performance. The fact that she had 2 disappointing programs and still managed to win a medal, falling out of her 2A in the SP as well, just goes to show what an awful judging system figure skating is using these days.

If you really think Lepisto deserved to win the bronze medal at worlds for those 2 performances than I would venture to say that you really have no interest in figure skating as a sport where execution should mean something.

Lepisto deserved her bronze medal because she did better than her competitors who screwed up even worse than she did, not because she was better than what she did a month ago at the olympics.

[RumbleFish]

So if A/P were the class of the field like you suggest then how come they only won the LP and the gold medal by a 5-4 split over Lobacheva/Averbuch?

I agree with you that the right (and best) team won that night but it never should have been that close. Just another example of the Russians trying to fix all the skating events in SLC.

Remember L/A were only 3rd at Europeans yet at Olympics they missed a gold medal by only 1 judge.

A/P destroyed all their competition at the compulsories and the OD IMO. In fact, I consider their flamenco OD as one of the greatest ice dance programs ever.

Their Liberta FD had a different twist, however. I absolutely loved the dance and it's theme, but did wonder how it would be taken by the mass, especially American casual fans. I remember Tom Hammonds saying something like "How dare the [evil] french turn Dr. Martin Luther King's historic speech into a [cheesy] ice dance routine."

A/P took a risk in that program, and it almost cost them the gold, but their skills were good enough to get themselves out of the hole.

[escaflowne9282]

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And I feel exactly about B/S as you do about S/P - I never saw how superior they were or how brilliant their choreography was. People go on and on about the complexity of their programs, particularly their Olympic LP, and I think that complexity is somewhat of an illusion. Moskvina is a master at creating interesting and beautiful shapes with her skaters' bodies and movements, but that doesn't mean the program is more difficult.

You honestly don't see how doing connecting steps/transitions and continuous movement is more difficult than entering all your elements from crossovers or standing in place and miming a death scene? Compared to what B&S, S&Z, and even I&Z were doing in terms of choreography , I found Love Story to be very lacking. I really can't fault a judge for not preferring it on the night, particularly in the case of the Polish and Chinese judges who made a point of giving the higher tech marks to S&P while giving the Presentation(and placement) to B&S.

I thought the two were fairly even depending upon what one prefers. At times, I found S&P to be very "put on" in terms of presentation. They skated with a great connection and bravura and were a lot fo fun to watch, but were lacking in some of the more basic tennets of presentation (line , carriage, posture extention etc.).IMHO,they really needed to take advantage of the benefit that having more complexity gave them.

Re: Lori Nichol and Love Story. For some reason I remember this backwards. IIRC it was Nichol who went to the judges and reminded them that there was no penalty for repeating a program. She even made a comment about how the Nutcracker doesn't have only one Christmas.

This, after B&S were so roundly criticized for using Chaplin as being too theatrical, and there was a rumor that Sally Stapleford had said that if they reused it for SLC, they would/should not be champions. So they showed up with Meditation.

S&Z were also in a similar boat , they were largely villified for their lack of transitions and 'paint by numbers' choreography. They commissioned new programs which were extremely complex and really went to a lot of trouble to reinvent their presentation in order to adhere to what the Western judges wanted.

Meanwhile, S&P are reusing an old even more theatrical program with less skating content than the other two ?

[julieann]

Actually, the poster I quoted did say it bothered her that Lipinski won world and olympic titles with a flutz and suggested that that was not right.

Secondly, how do you know whether or not the judges deducted for Lipinski's flutz? Just because it wasn't clearly mapped out, like with CoP, doesn't mean that it was ignored. Christine Brennan and friends made sure that everyone in the skating world knew about Tara's flutz and I'm sure the judges weren't blind to it. They simply thought, as I did, that she had enough technical merit in other places to justify high technical scores, particularly in the long program.

If TL (or any skater) won any title because judges overlooked a skater taking off of the wrong edge, and didn't take a deduction (or any other deduction), then yes it wasn't right if they won, back then or now.

Do I know if TL or anyone was given deduction for taking off on the wrong edge? No; does anyone? At least with the COP, you can see if it was taken or not and it should be for any skater.

Any skater can have multiple deductions and still win a competition, no lucid person would debate that.

[julieann]

You honestly don't see how doing connecting steps/transitions and continuous movement is more difficult than entering all your elements from crossovers or standing in place and miming a death scene? Compared to what B&S, S&Z, and even I&Z were doing in terms of choreography , I found Love Story to be very lacking. I really can't fault a judge for not preferring it on the night, particularly in the case of the Polish and Chinese judges who made a point of giving the higher tech marks to S&P while giving the Presentation(and placement) to B&S.

I agree, S/P look amazing for what they did, I just don't think they did as much as B/S in terms if difficulty.

[Marco]

2002 pairs was largely similar to 1994 pairs. Logic dictates that the cleaner program between 2 apparently equal pairs wins, and the public responds to the more passionate pair. But the purists are willing to overlook the minor mistake of the significant better pair.

BTW, did that final "stand on his thigh / besti squat" thing I&Z did at the end of their free attract / deserve a deduction?

[RumbleFish]

2002 pairs was largely similar to 1994 pairs. Logic dictates that the cleaner program between 2 apparently equal pairs wins, and the public responds to the more passionate pair. But the purists are willing to overlook the minor mistake of the significant better pair.

This This
They have been pulling the exact same thing in the ladies trying to pin Asada against Kim for years.

Since Asada became a mess after Vancouver, they brought Ando into the role.

[pat c]

Re: Lori Nichol and Love Story. For some reason I remember this backwards. IIRC it was Nichol who went to the judges and reminded them that there was no penalty for repeating a program. She even made a comment about how the Nutcracker doesn't have only one Christmas.

This, after B&S were so roundly criticized for using Chaplin as being too theatrical, and there was a rumor that Sally Stapleford had said that if they reused it for SLC, they would/should not be champions. So they showed up with Meditation.

S&Z were also in a similar boat , they were largely villified for their lack of transitions and 'paint by numbers' choreography. They commissioned new programs which were extremely complex and really went to a lot of trouble to reinvent their presentation in order to adhere to what the Western judges wanted.

Meanwhile, S&P are reusing an old even more theatrical program with less skating content than the other two ?

I remember at the GPF in Kitchener right before the olympics, CTV interviewed a lot of the skaters and one of the questions asked was what should S&P use for their oly lp. I still remember Gwendal Peizerat saying Love Story, what else would you use?

And really, we beat using Love Story to death when Carmen and ilk have been used ad nauseum? Even Thais has been used many times.

[Jenna]

This This
They have been pulling the exact same thing in the ladies trying to pin Asada against Kim for years.

Since Asada became a mess after Vancouver, they brought Ando into the role.

Yes, she became such a mess that she won her second world title a month later.

[Triple Butz]

If TL (or any skater) won any title because judges overlooked a skater taking off of the wrong edge, and didn't take a deduction (or any other deduction), then yes it wasn't right if they won, back then or now.

Do I know if TL or anyone was given deduction for taking off on the wrong edge? No; does anyone? At least with the COP, you can see if it was taken or not and it should be for any skater.

Any skater can have multiple deductions and still win a competition, no lucid person would debate that.

Well, one poster did suggest that having a flutz would make a skater unworthy of winning major titles, so I don't really understand your defense.

[julieann]

Well, one poster did suggest that having a flutz would make a skater unworthy of winning major titles, so I don't really understand your defense.

Clearly

All things being equal the skater with a perfect lutz should win over a skater with a cheated jump.

[Triple Butz]

Clearly

All things being equal the skater with a perfect lutz should win over a skater with a cheated jump.

So give me an example of a situation where "all things being equal" a skater with a flutz, in this case Tara Lipinski, was propped up over another skater with a true lutz.

[miki88]

2002 pairs was largely similar to 1994 pairs. Logic dictates that the cleaner program between 2 apparently equal pairs wins, and the public responds to the more passionate pair. But the purists are willing to overlook the minor mistake of the significant better pair.

Hmm, so do the purists always have the better judgment? I always feel that those who focus on the details tend to overlook the bigger picture. Perhaps, sometimes, the cleaner and more passionate performance should win out despite the other pair/skater having better skating skills, because the results should be based on the actual performance rather than skating skills or scoring potential.

[gkelly]

Perhaps, sometimes, the cleaner and more passionate performance should win out despite the other pair/skater having better skating skills, because the results should be based on the actual performance rather than skating skills or scoring potential.

I agree that the performance that day should be judged, and not the potential.

However, since skating as sport is primarily a contest of skating skills, not primarily a contest of passion, I do think that the skating skills as demonstrated in the actual competition should take precedence in the judging.

[miki88]

However, since skating as sport is primarily a contest of skating skills, not primarily a contest of passion, I do think that the skating skills as demonstrated in the actual competition should take precedence in the judging.

I think this would make more sense if the skaters in question were of different levels (i.e. comparing intermediate to an elite). But since the skaters discussed are usually among the top of their field, there shouldn't be a huge disparity between their skating skills. There is already a section to score SS in PCS components. I think it should be possible for a skater to not achieve the highest SS but still edge out for the win by achieving higher marks in other component sections.

[gkelly]

I think this would make more sense if the skaters in question were of different levels (i.e. comparing intermediate to an elite). But since the skaters discussed are usually among the top of their field, there shouldn't be a huge disparity between their skating skills.

Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't. On the current scale, some senior skaters deserve Skating Skills scores in the 4s, most in the 5s, 6s, and 7s, and a handful of the best in the 8s and 9s. That can make a big difference even if the other components are judged completely independently from Skating Skills.

Under 6.0 some senior skaters deserved scores in the 4s and some in the 5s based primarily on skating skills. If they did the exact same jumps and earned 4.5, or even 5.0, and the other 5.5, then the better skater making one more big mistake wasn't going to give the weaker skater the win. But with enough mistakes from the stronger skater, then yes, it could happen.

Of course the actual numbers were more fluid under 6.0.

(Under both systems you would sometimes see senior skaters earning marks in the 3s, not necessarily with any major mistakes like falls, but those would be skaters that you would think were not really "senior level.")

There is already a section to score SS in PCS components. I think it should be possible for a skater to not achieve the highest SS but still edge out for the win by achieving higher marks in other component sections.

Yes, I think it should too. The skater with weaker skating skills can also prevail via TES by doing enough successful difficult technical content, even if the average GOEs might be lower than for the successful (or possibly easier) elements by the stronger skater.

It's always going to be a process of balancing out the strong and weak points of one skater against the different strong and weak points of another. How much better was each skater in the areas where s/he was better? Under 6.0, each of the judges had to decide for themselves about every skater compared to every other, based on their own individual weightings. Under IJS, to a large degree the Scale of Values and PCS factors end up determining the weightings.

In those situations where the choice comes down to clearly superior skating skills vs. clearly cleaner or more heartfelt program, I personally believe that the skating skills should win out. And I think that it often did in many of the controversial decisions under 6.0.

But the problem is that what's clearly superior to judges sitting at ice level may look pretty much the same to nonskaters watching at home on a TV or computer screen, or even to other skaters sitting at the top of the arena.

And then of course even the judges watching up close with all their training may see things differently from each other. They may agree completely on who was better at what but disagree on how much better, or (under 6.0, and in balancing some PCS criteria) on what should count more.