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foxmonkeyTHIS is what I hate about figure skating. Evan Lysacek skated a beautiful program, damn near flawless - if he bobbled, I certainly didn't see it. No falls, stuck all his jumps, and not half-ass sticks, either, solid landings that flowed right into the next move. How then, can two skaters with multiple falls and several sketchy moves have placed *ahead* of Lysacek? I can't believe he's not getting a medal. Unbelievable. Man, it had been a good Olympics experience for me up 'til now. Edited to add: YES, while signing off, the female analyst (no idea who it is) said the performance of the night belonged to Evan Lysacek. YA THINK? He was so, so robbed. It makes me crazy. Friggin' asshole judges, man. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. ;-(
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Date: 2006-02-17 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 04:44 am (UTC)Thank you, yes, that's what I just couldn't figure out. Both the silver and gold wiped out repeatedly, but they were on the podium and he wasn't. Robbed. ROBBED, I tell you.
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Date: 2006-02-17 04:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 04:50 am (UTC)Now I've looked at the protocols, and I can see what happened, but it still doesn't make sense.
Buttle started out with a 74.8 base value, and ended up with 76.8 for his executed elements once the GOE was figured in (he lost -3 on his Quad Toe for the fall, and -1 on the Triple Axel/Double Toe combo for the touch down, all the others positive, though less than 1.0 each). Take off another -1 for the fall.
Lysacek started out with a 72.6 base value, and ended up with a 78.24 for his executed elements. His GOE's look a bit low to me, and I was surprised to see a few scattered -1s, though everything averaged out to positives. But Evan is about 2.5 points ahead on the executed elements section, so things seem to be going well, until....
Evan got totally hosed on the Component scores, though -- 74.34 to Buttle's 78.5. Buttle got 7.75 - 8.25 across the board, while Evan had 6.50 to 8.00.
As for Lambiel, he started out with higher difficulty, so his base component score was 76.1, and even with the splats, his executed elements worked out to 76.89. Again, he got major gifts with the component scores which is what pulled him up. He was so close behind Evan in the free skate that it was stastistically insificant, but of course he had a lead from the short that put him on the podium.
The short version is still crappy judging, but that's how the numbers played out.
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Date: 2006-02-17 04:53 am (UTC)Dammit, in my ranting, foaming fury I typed "gold and silver" when I MEANT to type "silver and bronze." I really need to simmer down.
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Date: 2006-02-17 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-17 04:58 am (UTC)So boring. Didn't he pull at least one jump?
Poor sparkly Johnny Weir just fizzled, didn't he? Oh well, he has his Louis Vuitton bags to console him. ;-)
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Date: 2006-02-17 05:43 am (UTC)LV does tend to cheer people up...
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Date: 2006-02-17 05:50 am (UTC)His tragedy was his short program - there was no way for him to overcome that, when the points were totalled up. What made no sense to me was how Plushenko got 85 points for presentation. As Button and Hamilton both said, there was no program. All of the jumps were loaded at the front and he practically walked from one trick to another. He should have been marked down for his footwork and spins, and perhaps he was, but jumps are still so heavily weighted that all a skater really has to do is go out and land the most difficult jumps (or even try them, because a skater is still better off falling on a quad than leaving it out altogether).
Johnny's program was safe, but he stayed on his feet. Definitely, he lacked the jumps, but there is no question that his footwork was better, and even if he didn't have the sparkle of Tuesday night, he should have at least had higher presentation marks than Plushenko. In fact, every skater in that last group (with the exception of Joubert) was miles ahead of Plushenko in presentation (as were most of the skaters we saw from the earlier groups). It makes you wonder if they've really got the Russian Mafia out of the judging.
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Date: 2006-02-17 12:43 pm (UTC)I thought the problems for a lot of the others were a combination of the new judging style (which seems to favour 'my god, do the fucking jump!' over program continuity) and just unnevenness of performance. Given a lot of them don't seem to be that old (was one of the earlier ones 19?) I don't think it's that surprising. Hopefully they'll be back for the next lot of games in 4 years all the better for having been there and competed this time.
I do have to say I thought a lot of the programs in general were pretty boring. (I watched nearly all of them, since the BBC showed the whole thing.) There was a a lot of 'hey, I'm skating! And there's music!' going on, rather than skating-to-the-music which is infinitely better to watch.
Also, I don't remember who, but I do remember there were several skaters who *looked* flawless but on replay didn't land jumps correctly and so on. Perhaps there's some of that going on and the US coverage didn't show the replays? (As I said, the BBC showed THE ENTIRE THING. Including warmups and 300000 replays of things.) It was pretty small stuff, but I don't know how that figures into the new scoring system.
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Date: 2006-02-17 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-18 01:24 am (UTC)Ahhhh, I didn't see the short program. Hmmm, I guess I should get all the facts before ranting like a madwoman. ;-) Still, judgin for the free skate *was* pretty crappy.
In fact, every skater in that last group (with the exception of Joubert) was miles ahead of Plushenko in presentation (as were most of the skaters we saw from the earlier groups). It makes you wonder if they've really got the Russian Mafia out of the judging.
Yep, which brings me back to what I hate about figure skating. ;-p
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Date: 2006-02-18 01:32 am (UTC)See, I hate that the scoring is so heavily weighted for trying. Trying is great, because otherwise, *every* program would be a safe, boring one, but should they really be giving medals to skaters with multiple falls and shaky landings? There's got to be a better way.
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Date: 2006-02-18 01:35 am (UTC)That's true. A lot of the athletes are fighting the first Olympics jitters. :-)
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Date: 2006-02-25 04:30 am (UTC)Grace, beauty, artistry, are what make figure-skating worth watching for me. Not the accumulated jumping points. Arrgh.