Photo credit: Ivan Sekretarev/AP
Where to start? How about one of the most nonsensical things I’ve read about the travesty today? Michael Rosenberg at Sports Illustrated wrote an article arguing that Adelina Sotnikova "earned the gold." He argues the cries of fixing make no sense:
Now, if Russian officials wanted to fix the ladies’ free skate, why would they fix it so their second-best skater would win? How does that make sense? I guess it’s possible that Sotnikova associates set up the whole thing, but again, I’m going to need at least a bit of evidence.
This makes no sense whatsoever.
Lipnitskaya skated before Sotnikova in the short program and fell. It’s pretty hard to “fix” something in favour of a skater who has already fallen. Sotnikova followed and skated well. While she might have been viewed as the second best Russian skater entering the competition, the so-called fixers could have then shifted their focus to the skater who actually stood a chance of winning.
There are many problems with how figure skating is evaluated. We don’t really know anything about the judges, and the secrecy surrounding their scores/lack of transparency make it hard for casual fans to resist crying foul when what they see on the ice is not reflected on the podium. Yes, Adelina had one more jump than Yuna, but there's no credible way for the judges to have scored them so closely in the component department. Sotnikova skated very well, maybe even brilliantly. But, to score her so close to Kim in the component department is ludicrous.
The writing was on the wall from the short program. How did Lipnitskaya deserve 5th place after falling? The scores for both Russian women were inflated in both programs. Corruption is not a new thing in figure skating, and this result didn’t surprise me. But, Yuna Kim was robbed of her place in history alongside Katarina Witt. Just as there’s no evidence to confirm that the fix was in, there’s none to disprove it either. In the interim, we can only go by the smell test, and this smells very fishy.
As I’ve stated before, I think this was payback for Plushenko’s silver medal in Vancouver.
Lipnitskaya skated before Sotnikova in the short program and fell. It’s pretty hard to “fix” something in favour of a skater who has already fallen. Sotnikova followed and skated well. While she might have been viewed as the second best Russian skater entering the competition, the so-called fixers could have then shifted their focus to the skater who actually stood a chance of winning.
There are many problems with how figure skating is evaluated. We don’t really know anything about the judges, and the secrecy surrounding their scores/lack of transparency make it hard for casual fans to resist crying foul when what they see on the ice is not reflected on the podium. Yes, Adelina had one more jump than Yuna, but there's no credible way for the judges to have scored them so closely in the component department. Sotnikova skated very well, maybe even brilliantly. But, to score her so close to Kim in the component department is ludicrous.
The writing was on the wall from the short program. How did Lipnitskaya deserve 5th place after falling? The scores for both Russian women were inflated in both programs. Corruption is not a new thing in figure skating, and this result didn’t surprise me. But, Yuna Kim was robbed of her place in history alongside Katarina Witt. Just as there’s no evidence to confirm that the fix was in, there’s none to disprove it either. In the interim, we can only go by the smell test, and this smells very fishy.
As I’ve stated before, I think this was payback for Plushenko’s silver medal in Vancouver.
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