FR LIVE EVENT-Olympic Scandal Press Conference..

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

[skateman]

Can anyone tell me why at the medals ceremonies, the announcements are made in French as well as English?

[discostu]

There was a thread a couple days ago that indirectly responded to that. French was (up until earlier this week) considered the language of diplomacy, ie the "international language". French is losing that position though because nobody likes the French or their dorky language that only pronounces half the letters. English has been the most used language for a long time but French was always considered the important one. Thanks to the spread of capitalism the world is realizing that the one that's most used is most important. Between the two the languages are spread far and wide enough that you've got pretty solid odds (probably over 50%) that any randomly selected person on the planet speaks one of the two languages.

[DJ88]

I've spent enough time debating you and the point is this:

I have my opinion, you have yours. You want to say you win because you "know more" than I do? Go ahead, if that makes you happy. As a matter of fact, I'll put in bold letters so that you can pat yourself on the back for being the brains of this "Olympic Skating Controversy". Is that what you want? It's your way or the highway, correct? Just to get it over with, to let you have your way and make you look like you won, here it is:

BY DEFAULT, DICOSTU WINS THE DEBATE OF WHO WON THE GOLD MEDAL IN THE OLYMPIC PAIRS SKATING. HE COMES TO THIS CONCLUSION BASED ON HIS "RATING" OF THE TECHNICAL AND ARTISTIC SCORES. HOWEVER, EVEN TODAY THE FRENCH JUDGE IS NOW ADMITTING SHE WAS "PRESSURED" AND "MANIPULATED" IN THIS COMPETITION TO VOTE ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. BUT THAT DOES NOT MATTER, DOES IT?

There. Happy now? I'm not arguing with you anymore. I don't CARE what you think. If you post to me, I won't post back. It's not that I'm not able to debate you, I just get tired of the same things being said over and over and over.

Let the IOC figure it out...and apparantly, they will. Whether or not they change the results, which probably will never happen, this has managed to put a "black eye" on the Olympics and it is NOT something that will go away and never be talked about again, as you "think". You're off base with that one. As a matter of fact, that's all ANYONE is talking about right now.

But like I said, YOU WIN. That's all you wanted, so I give it to you.

But just like the Gold medal, it doesn't matter. It's just a game.

[discostu]

Wow do you ever need to calm down. All the way through this you've been insulting, short tempered and high strung. All I've tried to do is show that it is possible, not necessarily likely or even factual merely POSSIBLE, that the Russians could have won legitimately. Meanwhile you're running around making declarative statements on what people were thinking and not tolerating even the slightest hint that this might not have been a fix. You've called me "Mr. Know it All" for suggesting other possible thoughts that might have been going through the judges head, meanwhile stating boldly what they were thinking. You acted like it was a startling revelation when I said for the 12th time that I thought the Russian long program was better, then stated that invalidated my position acting like I'd been hiding it, even though I've been completely honest about and in fact my opinion was the basis for the whole thing. My entire arguement has been that if 5 judges thought like me the Russians win fare and square. But you don't care.

I've tried to be civil through this entire thread except for one post which wasn't directed at you and I apologized for when I learned I had misinterpreted the post it was directed towards. It's not my fault you're being shrill and unreasonable. Maybe if you presented something based on logic instead of telepathy I could actually debate your points. But statements on what the judges WERE thinking cannot be debated.

[DJ88]

Are you still worried about this? I said you win. OK? Get over it.

[discostu]

No, it annoys me that youve turned this so personal. And it angers me that the person the chose to use insults is trying to cast me as the bad guy. Now I'm just throwing stuff in for the record in case this gets dug up in the archives. I've tried to be civil throughout all of this inspite of your insults and slander.

[marajade]

How could it be legit when the french judge has already come out publicly stating that she was pressured to vote the way she did?

[DJ88]

Go ahead and archive it if you want, discostu. The French judge has ADMITTED that she was "pressured" and "manipulated" into voting the way she DID. That's the FACT JACK.

If you want to believe that the Russians skated better than the Canadians, GO AHEAD. I think the Canadians skated better than the RUSSIANS.

End of discussion.

[sissyjane]

Me thinks the person who wrote that has his head buried in the sand.He can't see what is the truth. Lying and cheating have been elevated to a high art by some in this country---perhaps he approves of it. Personally I think the french Judge should be banned for life from skating and the Canadiens should receive a gold medal.

[marajade]

Scott Hamilton thought the Canandians skated better too.

[marajade]

I didn't see them skate. I did however see a clip of the Russian ice skater bobble out of a jump and I thought that meant they had to assess a penalty of so many tenths of a point for that kinda of thingy.

Considering the Canadians didn't error shouldn't they of scored higher?

Only common sense.

[DJ88]

I know, so did everyone in the arena. But that doesn't matter to everybody...the fact that this story has risen to the proportions it has, coupled with the revelations of the French judge today, not to mention the revelations of the referrees overseeing the judging yesterday goes to prove that something here is not right.

I had no bias going into this competition. I always thought the Russians were excellent skaters. However, they were NOT perfect the other night, IN MY OPINION, and IN MY OPINION, they did not deserve the Gold medal.

We shall see what happens with the ice-dancing competition. If the French win it, then we know.

However, IN MY OPINION, the fix was already in before they even hit the ice.

[DJ88]

They showed a clip of the pairs last night on NBC skating side by side, there were obviously techinal errors that would have affected ANY OTHER TEAM (and did)...they were overlooked here. My point is, if they are just going to give out placings, why even bother scoring on technical and artistic merit? As my friend discostu says, "It's to show the audience how they are thinking". Well, if that WAS the case, then the JUDGES were thinking that the CANADIANS skated better than the Russians.

So....I guess....they were just "messing" with the audience, huh? Stupid.

[marajade]

Well this is why I wouldn't even attempt to watch the Olympics because it would start a yelling match with my husband immediately. My husband thinks the Olympics are nothing and even though the cold war is over it is still east vs. west at the Olympics so why bother.

[discostu]

A - All this was before Frenchy said anything. I was simply trying to prove that legitimacy was a possibility within the (admittedly stupid) rules of figure skating. Almost everybody else on this thread was going from a position that there was no possible legitimate way the Russians could have won, that the victory itself was proof of collusion. But it's a subjective sport, if 5 out of 9 judges don't like a program it will lose, and since I didn't like the Canadian program I feel I'm a good example of the mentality that could have been present and which then would have resulted in a legitimate win.

B - The reports of Frenchies "admittal" have mutated pretty heavily. The original Costas "story" of tuesday was a hypothetical (he said so), and his story was a direct trade. Then late yesterday some pres of some French association said she was "preasured". Then early today it was reported that he said she was "manipulated", an "honest" person surrounded by people taking advantage of her "emotional fragility". Since then that pres's PR dude said what the pres said was "incorrectly translated". So we're right back to where we were before.

Over all I think this is the funniest damn thing I've seen in years. All judged sports are inherrently stupid because they're subjective. Even if they were scored "beauty" sports like figure skating are silly because... well they just are, sports should involve sweat, active opposition and cups. The extra punchline to this is that nothing will change. Skating has these "scandals" (since it's a subjective sport and the scandal always revolves around people making objective absolute declarations I don't really think they're true scandals) periodically and nothing ever changes. Nobody is going to get a different medal. Maybe a judge or two will be "sanctioned" (they don't get paid anyway) but the method of selecting judges won't change and the method of scoring won't change. And shortly after the Olympics are over nobody is going to remember or care.

It's funny.

[marajade]

I do believe judges are held to giving penalties for jumps that are missed and it wasn't in Russia's case.

[discostu]

Here's from Commish's post 346 it has some very important data that people like DJ88 cover their ears while it's being said:

{start big quote}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. {end really long block quote}

The emphasis on the short program scores and overall total scores is mine. I'm pointing out something that almost everyone in this discussion is ignoring completely
THE GOLD IS NOT WON BY THE LONG PROGRAM ALONE
Two programs count in this. No one is contesting that the Russians won the short. I've even heard the Canadian contestants say that. While the long program contributes more to the short they both count. As you can see the Canadians DID win the long (which they wouldn't have had I been a judge) but they didn't WIN IT BY ENOUGH TO GET THE MEDAL.

And as for the French "admital" that came from a third party who was not involved in the conversation where it supposedly came up, and has been denied. Still could have been a fix. I have never stated that it couldn't. But it also could have legit. That's what so many people refuse to admit.

[marajade]

I thought the judge herself admitted there was pressure?

[discostu]

They are. But the scoring system is effusive. They have a base score, they are supposed to add points for the relative difficulty and subtract points for error. But the only part of that which is explicit is the base (I think it's 5, might be 6). All the rest is up to the judge. How much do you add because they did a really hard move? Nobody knows except the person that did the adding. How much do you subtract for a bad landing? Nobody knows except the person doing the subtracting.

Also remember there are two scores: techincal and artistic. While flubs are supposed to subtract from both they aren't supposed to subtract as much from the artistic (because flubs are technically technical but also detract from the artistic presentation they are supposed to be primarily assessed against the technical). But again how much? Who knows.

Because of the silly nature of the scoring. Especially because half the score is artistic (something that's completely subjective, there are no absolutes in art) you never really know what's going to happen. The real sport in figure skating is playing "spot the looney" with the judges, they're all insane, God only knows what they're going to think. If you actually like the artistry of figure skating (it can be very pretty) I recommend watching the programs but never allow yourself to learn the scores or results, leave the room, mute the TV, do what ever it takes. Nothing distracts from the beauty of figure skating like the 9 people that pick the winner.

[DJ88]

You're right. This is so stupid. I give up...I don't care anymore, I'm sorry I insulted you. I just don't understand the whole thing anyway....and I'll tell you this...I will not watch ANYMORE of the Olympics because it makes NORMAL people like you and me fight with each other and say things we wouldn't normally say...

Again...I'm sorry. And I'm not being sarcastic, I'm being honest. I don't understand why they even USE the scoring system in the FIRST place when it doesn't matter.....

I'm going back to football, baseball and NASCAR ...at least there, when a team SCORES or a car comes across the finish line, YOU KNOW WHO WON.

I hope we can just put this aside. Normally, with medicine, I'm not like this. :-)