ARGH!

[foxmonkey]

THIS 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. ;-(

Comments

[liz-w.livejournal.com]

Evan actually finished third in the free skate, but his combined scores put him fourth. How the hell the judges put Buttle in front of him I can't begin to figure out, except that Buttle has been vastly overmarked all season (as has Lambiel, actually).

[babygotbass.livejournal.com]

I thought Yevgeny Plushenko's rutine was booooooring. Just a bunch of jumps. It was boring the way a men's tennis match is boring when every point is won on an ace.

[http://users.livejournal.com/chastin_/]

Evan Lysacek skated a beautiful program, damn near flawless - if he bobbled, I certainly didn't see it.

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.

[quiet000001.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I liked Plushenko. Though both I and the UK commentators were in agreement that he was 'playing it safe' to an extent, in terms of being very focused on what would get him the points (landing the jumps, etc.) rather than just going with the music. I'm hoping he comes up with something interesting for the exhibition.

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.

[brighton-girl.livejournal.com]

I think I am glad I didn't stay up to watch it all last night, I think I would have been extremely ticked off this morning about the injustice of it all. I mean the Chinese pair came in for Silver and she fell, BADLY!

[stungunbilly.livejournal.com]

I'm a million years late responding to this, but YES! They suck, with the rewards for points over style.
Grace, beauty, artistry, are what make figure-skating worth watching for me. Not the accumulated jumping points. Arrgh.