- Feb 14, 2002
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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.
I don't have a problem with Yuna's short or long program scores. I do have a major problem with Adelina's short and long program scores. Both scores were massively inflated. If people want to cite her energy and the emotional connection with the Russian audience, fine. Let her have the massive overinflated PCS scores. But TES scores can be examined. That's where I have a major problem with as I wrote in my earlier post. Technical elements like the number of steps, under rotation, flutz. Those are objective elements rather than subjective and needed to be called. That is the job of the tech panel. But the head of the 3 person tech panel was Russian. He didn't miss those calls. He saw it. He just chose to ignore it. It's also the tech panel job to determine the step sequence levels. Adelina performed the same step sequences at all other competitions prior to the Olympics. She always received level 3. In order to receive level 4, she needed more turns and steps. She did not do them. Yuna did do the required steps and turns and yet she received level 3. Same with Adelina's flutz on her lutz jump and under rotation on the triple joe jump. The mistakes are right there on the video replay. It can't be denied. Flutz on her triple lutz jump is something she always had a problem with. And you can't fix it overnight as the poor technique is ingrained and part of her leg muscle memory. It took Mao Asada over 2 years to completely rework her jump techniques and sort of correct her Flutz technique. And she still flutzes under pressure.
As for Hanyu, he's young and has great potential. However, that was the poorest skate by a winning men's Olympics champion. I know he was ashamed to win with that fall ridden mistake performance. If the Russian Plushenko had not withdrawn due to back injury, there's no way Hanyu would've won. Plushenko would've only needed to stand on the ice for 4 minutes and they would've given him the gold.