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.
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.
This is the problem. North American thinking is that substance trumps style. If the performance is not perfect, then the artistic value is meaningless. Either European/Eastern thinking is opposite to this or they are just using it as a fudge factor for their corruption. BTW, I believe it is this difference, that makes the US dominant in the world, both economically and militarily.
The other problem with the scoring was the high technical marks given to the Russians. They clearly made 4 mistakes, that even causal spectators could plainly see. There should not have been ties in the first place.