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1 - Like almost all judged sports the "scoring" system is base + difficulty - errors. Thus a harder routine performed not as well can still rate equal to or higher than an easier routine performed better. The Russians had the harder routine according to everybody.
2 - Like almost all judged sports 50% of the scoring is based on artistic merit. Since, as we all know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder half the score is up to the whims of the judges (IMHO the Canadians' costumes were hideous and anybody that bases anything on Love Story should be pelted with rocks and garbage, my score card gave them an artistic merit score of 0).
3 - Unlike most judged sports the scores don't actually matter (I'm talking strictly within the rules here). The scores are put forth to give the audience some indication of what the judges are thinking during the competition. The actual placement in the standings is done by vote, the judges vote 1 -2 -3 -who cares for each competitor and that's how the awards are determined.

In short this is just a fine shining example of why judged sports are to be mocked. There can be no objective determination of the winner in a judged sport. We see this over and over usually in figure skating, frequently in gymnastics and sometimes in diving. It always starts the same way, some butthead color commentator decides he's just seen a gold medal performance and says so on the air, then all of America agrees with him, but the judges weren't watching the TV broadcast and they didn't feel they saw a gold medal performance. And now there's some huge "controversy" that will burn hot for a while and then nobody will care until the next "scandal" and this one get's refered to in some retrospective of sporting scandals, like NBC aired about 9AM MST today (roughly an hour before the press conference).

Excuse me, but if that's the case, why do they even GIVE out scores for technique and artistic merit? The RUSSIANS made 4 big mistakes....TECHNICAL ERRORS...that SHOWED the WHOLE WORLD they shouldn't be the gold medal winners...and their performance was boring as hell. The Canadians had higher SCORES in BOTH areas, but ONE JUDGE gave them a 2nd place ranking....the FRENCH JUDGE. If you watched the competition, NBC even panned over to the judges who looked absolutely STUNNED at the outcome themselves..as if they had no IDEA why the Russians won it. That in itself was a HUGE CLUE that the fix was in already.

This is not a controversy manufactured by the announcers. The people in that arena weren't watching it on NBC. The Canadian's really did a better job. That it is subjective means there will never be 100% of us that agree, but you are in a very small minority. The Canadians won more total points. They should have gotten better marks on presentation. Despite whatever one's personal opinions on their costumes or the the Love Story theme, their performance of it was outstanding. The moment it was over I told my girlfriend that it was the best pairs skating performance I had ever seen. I didn't need the NBC announcers to be shocked at the results.