FR LIVE EVENT-Olympic Scandal Press Conference..

MSNBC.com ^ | February 13, 2002 | Kelly O' Donnell

[codebreaker]

Sandra Bezic with the commentary..

[mlo]

Understood.

[Grig]

There was one jump at the start where the Russian guy tripped over his own feet on landing and nearly fell on his butt. There were also 3 throws where the landing was very poor. The difference between the two performances was HUGE, and the difficulty factor is a poor and invalid excuse. The fact that the USA is up in arms about the Canadians not getting the gold kind of tells you something.

And Kudos to the Canadians for acting in a very classy way in the midst of such a heart wrenching injustice.

[Petronski]

Their program was certainly NOT more artistic

Sez you, but almost any of the pairs competing that night could skate around side by side most of the time. The Canadians also showed poor form for using a routine for which they had already been awarded a win in an earlier (2+ years) competition.

[Elkiejg]

The head of ISU made the statement that they couldn't "do anything regarding the results" unless an appeal was made. I encourage everyone to email the Canadian Skating group skatecanada@skatecanada.ca,brenda-g@skatecanada.ca and URGE them to file that appeal. The ISU has promised in the past that the dishonoest judges would be fixed -- nothing has been done. Time to put pressure on them.

[PoisedWoman]

OTOH, the Russian program was more difficult, more artistic, and was not retreaded from another competition.

The Russians' short program was definitely better than the Canadians' and I think their long program was, indeed, more difficult than Canadians'. Or did it just look more difficult? In any event, IMHO, the pairs were very close, and a 5-4 vote either way would be acceptable result.

As others have mentioned, the Canadians will get huge contracts and we'll be seeing them for years, while the Russians will go home and fade into oblivion. Really a pity. Yelena is astonishingly beautiful and talented and has overcome so much...If I had young children, I'd point out to them that she deserves to celebrate her victory and the Canadian girl is a rotten loser, a very bad sport. To call winning a Silver medal at the Olympics "losing," is beyond tacky.

[commish]

Three Judges voted the Russians First - Russia, Ukraine, France

Four Judges voted the Canadians First - USA, Canada, Japan, Germany

Two Judges had them tied - China and Poland .. The ISU MANDATED tiebreaker is the PRESENTATION score, which both judges gave to the Russians, ergo the Russians got First Place Ordinals based on the tie-breaker.

If you add the scores together the Canadians WON the long skate 105.1-104.7 , but since they use Ordinals instead of Overall score the Russians were given the victory.

The Score breakdown for any interested is this :
Bereshnaya-Sikarulidze: Short 104.3 Long 104.7
Sale-Peletier : Short 103.9 Long 105.1
Shen-Zhao : Short 101.9 Long 103.1
Totmianina - Marinan : Short 99.8 Long 100.7
Ina - Zimmerman : Short 99.5 Long 101.1

Using the Factored Placements system (Short worth 1/3 Long Worth 2/3) that the ISU uses the final results would have been : Sale-Peletier : S - 1 L - 1 Overall - 2 GOLD
Bereshnaya-Sikarulidze : S - .5 L - 2 Overall 2.5 SILVER
Shen-Zhao : S - 1.5 L - 3 Overall - 4.5 BRONZE
Ina-Zimmerman : S - 2.5 L - 4 Overall - 6.5 4TH
Totmianina - Marinan : S - 2 L - 5 Overall - 7 5TH

With the Judges Points :
Sale-Peletier : S - 103.9 L - 210.2 Overall - 314.1 GOLD
Bereshnaya-Sikarulidze : S - 104.3 L - 209.4 Overall 313.7 SILVER
Shen-Zhao : S - 101.9 L - 206.2 Overall - 308.1 BRONZE
Ina-Zimmerman : S - 99.5 L - 202.2 Overall - 301.7 4TH
Totmianina - Marinan : S - 99.8 L - 201.4 Overall - 301.2 5TH

I think it is clear that the ORDINALS system needs to be scraped .. Add up the judges scores and let it be a score based outcome. An added bonus to this would be that it would do away with the "HAVE TO LEAVE ROOM FOR OTHER SKATERS" problem -- and it would give a team anywhere in the top 10 after the short program at least a chance at a medal.

[discostu]

That's your opinion which your welcome to. The fun part of of judged events is that it is ALL about opinions. It's the opinion of 9 people that matters. 5 of them didn't think it was a gold medal routine. They could be the only 5 in the world who think it and it still wouldn't matter, because it's their opinion that hands out the medals. Not yours, not mine, not the live audience. 9 judges, majority rule.

This isn't a unique event. Apparantly I'm the only person on FR that was watching MSNBC when they cut over to the Olympics. The did a little retrospective of recent controversial FS judgements. There was one in every Olympics since 84 and they even threw in a couple in the World Championship (or Cup or whatever it's called). Happens all the time, the whole world winds up disagreeing with the 9 judges, and somebody cries foul all the way home.

[Tijeras_Slim]

I expect Jesse Jackson to show up any minute and demand something be done about the under-representation of blacks in figure skating.

[ninachka]

There was more than one Russian mistake. Their program was certainly NOT more artistic, and the greater difficulty of it is debatable. The Candians did some difficult tricks too.

Actually..it isn't debatable. At least not the aspect of technical dificulty. It was a more difficult. Even the announcers (all skaters themselves) were saying that the Rusian team had a more difficult program. The footwork, the jumps and the order in which it flowed in the program made it so.

I was actually very surprised by the whole thing. I expected the Russian team to win, since each time I have seen both pairs skate the Russian team was always better, IMO but in this case the Canadian team was better overall.

[discostu]

According to the talking heads the Russians made 1 MAJOR mistake and a few minor. It's artistry is up to the viewer. As for the difficulty that get's determined before hand on the trick scale the ISU uses and the Russians, according to that scale, had the more difficult routine.

[TontoKowalski]

I think you two miss the point. I personally think the Canadians were better. I can see how one might think the Russians were better. But in a case where the judging is fixed (and I'm making a big assumption that the press reports are correct), then we will never know for sure who truely won that competition.

Regardless of who you think won, I hope you can see that it will be disgraceful if this competition were fixed, and nothing is done about it.

[Petronski]

And even in the case of that major mistake, a lesser skater would have fallen on his ass, but this Russian stayed 'ablade.'

[DJ88]

Oh, so that's why the judges gave them higher scores in both technical and artistic merit? Right on, bro. You make as much sense as that guy who just had the PRESS CIRCUS.

If what you're saying is correct (and I highly doubt it) than here's what they were telling the audience: "Yes, they were better both technically and artistically than the Russians, but we're giving the Gold Medal to the Russians anyway." Your theory makes absolutely no sense at all. And for your information, I watched it live on TV, and I saw the judges faces, and they were NOT SHOCKED at the AUDIENCES reaction, Mr. Know It All. Did you even watch it?

[Jaded]

Disasterous for the Russian couple? You mean like a prison sentence was disasterous for Tyson? FReepers are the only ones who will remember this in a few months.

[Petronski]

I hope you can see that it will be disgraceful if this competition were fixed, and nothing is done about it.

No doubt about this whatsoever. I endorse this statement completely.

I only mean to point out that the Russians could reasonably be deemed to have won, without any need for fraud.

[DJ88]

I agree..and thanks for breaking it down. I think that the whole thing is a big freaking scam, and I'm not watching them anymore. :-)

[DallasGal]

I saw the judges faces, and they were NOT SHOCKED at the AUDIENCES reaction, Mr. Know It All. Did you even watch it?

Give 'em heck Deej...at least it's only 4 more days to THE BIG EVENT!!! BTW have you seen that hysterical commercial with Jr. on the zamboni??

[Petronski]

Mr. Know It All. Did you even watch it?

I watched it, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Know It All, I saw it all live. I thought the judges were shocked to hear booing at the scores, which is very rare.

[Chief Inspector Clouseau]

The fact that they even medaled with a retread is a high compliment from the judges, usually they keep those out of the medals entirely.

OK, now I *KNOW* you didn't even watch the event. Had you watched, you would know that the pairs that finished 3rd and 4th are not fit to drive the Zamboni...even corrupt judges such as these had to put the Canadians and Russians 1-2.

But to imply the judges somehow did the Canadians a favor by giving them the silver is beyond ludicrous...

[discostu]

Thanks for that. Even I had forgotten in all of this that it's not a 1 routine competition. Lose by enough in the shorts and you'll have to win hard core in the long.

I think they need to find a way to get non-subjective scoring. Judged sports are dumb because they always include an artistic measurement and that's totally up to the whims of the judges. The same routine done the same way over and over will never get the same results. They need a scoring format that give the same "points" to a routine no matter who is watching.