Friday, February 21, 2014

What's next? Dancing With The Stars as an Olympic event?

You just knew it was going to happen, didn't you?  I'm talking cheating by biased judges at the Olympics.  It seems yesterday a Russian woman won the Gold figure skating medal while most people thought the South Korean skater did better and should have won.

It seems one of the judges is married to the Russian Figure Skating Federation (?) leader and another was caught cheating back in the 1990's giving preferred scores to fellow Russian skaters.  Did they cheat this time, too?  I have no idea.   




 I once tried to watch figure skating, but all I saw was a skater jump up into the air and in .000003 seconds do 4 spins,  2 flips (and maybe finish off a Starbucks latte for all I know), then land on her feet and do it again going the other direction.  Or so they said.

Meanwhile a judge watches the same and says, "You know, I think the little finger on her left hand wasn't extended far enough.  I like to see a more pronounced pinkie.  I'm going to deduct 6 points."

What I do know, however, is that just putting judges on the panel with those kind of past indiscretions and potential conflicts of interest makes a mockery of the event. The IOC, or whoever it was that selected the judges, needs to be slapped down.  

I've heard many people say these Olympics have lost some of the magic that past Olympics had.  This type of SNAFU doesn't help that image.

It's a shame that all events can't just be timed events where the winners and losers are clear cut, with no room for manipulation.  First one across the line wins.  Here's your medal, sing the song, salute the flag, then go home for the big parade.

And one last Olympic comment:  While I enjoy watching the halfpipe and freestyle skiing and such showy events, they sometime seem more like entertainment events than serious Olympic sports.  

It's like watching the Harlem Globetrotters....they're great fun to watch, but they aren't the NBA.  Not to take away anything from the talents of the participants, but they just don't seem like they "belong" at the same venue.

That said, I've got to get back to my training.  Cow chip tossing, if you must know.  :)

S


12 comments:

  1. Overall, I agree with you. I hate the idea of going to judges to decide who won something. It is always subjective, whereas scoring more runs or breaking the tape first are not. So, I watch most judged competitions only for the aesthetics and try not to pay too much attention to the scores. I will say, however, that I thought the Russian who won last night just blew every other skater out of the water (this comes from a guy who has no idea what qualities the judges are looking, and I base my opinion only on how much her performance made me happy.)

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  2. Figure skating is always rigged. I haven't watched any of the Olympics and don't really feel I'm missing much. Really though if not for all those slacker Winter X Games events crammed into the Olympics, the US would probably have 5 medals.

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    1. If you havn't watched, don't think you've missed anything and don't care, how do you still throw an anti-american comment in anyway? There are glass half full and glass half empty people, and then there are if the glass is made in the USA it sucks kinda people.

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    2. This might get interesting...

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  3. Well, you have stolen my Saturday Opinion post again! I'm going to make believe I never read this and post it tomorrow anyway.

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    1. Sorry Big Joe. You need to tip me off with an email next time . I 'll still read yours and act surprised. ;)

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  4. Some of the events are exciting. Watching a stone slide down the ice gives me chills.

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  5. Actually, the US has a very respectable alpine team with a number of men and women who have done well in World Cup competition. We fielded two great hockey teams for the games. Our bobsled, luge, and skeleton teams are very respectable. Our performance in speed skating has been solid of late, this Olympics being an anomaly in that we've been shut out of medals. Over half our Games-leading medal total comes from fairly "traditional" Winter Olympic sports. Yes, our total is padded by slopestyle and half-pipe and snowboarding, aka X-Games sports. Russia, for example, only has four X-Games medals, if you will, compared to eleven for Canada and twelve for USA. It is what it is. I am choosing not to watch coverage of the games, because I hate Putin with a passion. But I do keep tabs on results and I do hope Team USA wins the medal count.

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  6. Oh, right, there was your blog, S! I am told that the Russian won because of the scoring rubric and all the points one earns for technical superiority. She was apparently technically superior to the South Korean, though the latter was far more artistic. In her prime, she would have skated a more technically demanding program, but she is past her Olympic prime. That's the spin, but I still think there is something rotten in Sochi :-)

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  7. I'm not sure if the right skater won or not, or if this is just another example of a sore loser trying to stir up a controversy. But when you have a judging sport like figure skating in a place like Russia with the shadow of the KGB lurking everywhere it sure ain't hard to predict something like this. I'm actually glad that Gracie Gold fell on her butt so she's not the one getting screwed. But it still sucks if in fact there's any truth to it.

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  8. An American commenter on NBC said tonight that while the Korean's performance was more artistic, the Russian skater was more athletic and blew away the competition. He said the judges got it right. Just sayin'.

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