[mlo]

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.

[Amore]

Obviously all our outrage was manufactured and unjustified. What WERE we thinking?! Guess this is one of those, "Nothing to see here, move along" situations! </ sarcasm>

[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.