That is the same with pretty much all the Olympic judging. If it can't be timed, it is up to the judges discretion. Snowboarding, ski jumping, ice skating, all that.
Hell, even the boxing has a moronic scoring system (at least, it used to). The 3 judges all have to press a button signifying a boxer scored a point within a time limit of each other, or the point doesn't count.
Did the Russian girl get a potentially inflated score due to her eliciting an emotional response with the audience? Probably. Did Yuna Kim get a lower score because she was in Russia? Not from everything I've heard. Her score was in line with what she should have gotten.
And besides, female ice skating is a joke. The male skating is far better. More technical, better jumps, and overall just better. Yuzuru Hanyu's worst performance makes Yuna Kim look like the ice capades backup performers.
yeah, I get that, and it's also why I dismiss nearly all athletic events that require judging, even though there is no way around it. Nearly all--I think events like gymnastics are certainly competitive very athletic events, and there is no way around the judging once you get to that level--OK, essentially no one is falling down and everyone kicks ass at this level, how the fuck do they compete?
Skiing, as much as I love it, I can only tolerate downhill--because it requires no judges and is actually useful. No one would really be doing freestyle or moguls or that crap if it mattered. I apply this to swimming: racing, relevant and useful (I need to escape a shark that is trying to eat me.) Diving, which requires judges? wtf is the point of this diving thing in any real world scenario? pfft. Stuff like that is the "sporting" equivalent of a dog show. I get that this certainly requires athleticism to be good at, but who cares?
figure skating--very athletic. But I mostly see this as a Broadway show or some such.
Boxing is the only other that I can see has necessarily athletic and requiring judging--though that judging is simply to increase statistical reliability. You can quantify number of hits and get a real score, but you need a couple of heads to even out the discrepancies.
using "audience participation" as a metric in the scoring system....absurd.