Joshua Dyal said:
Again, there are objective criteria, despite your ignorant and repeated claims to the contrary. The Russian did not just "not look as good" as the Canadian, he put both feet down and momentarily lost his balance. Again, I was hardly an expert, but watching the men's competition today, the commentators were a lot more explicit about what elements were grounds for "mandatory deductions" in the technical scores. As much as you say otherwise, it's very clear that there is a codified and objective set of criteria relative to judging the technical merit of a figure skating program. Now, about the artistic aspect of it, you are entirely right.
Good way to take things entirely out of context. The point has been made that if you simply worked skating down to purely technical elements then you could have objectivity in the judging. But you can't, even if you establish those, because you still have a judge deciding what is better than the other whn both competitors execute the same routines without technical errors.
Sure, in this
specific case the Russians had technical flaws that the Canadians didn't have. But that wasn't what my post was talking about. The conversation moved past that point, to the question of whether you could create entirely objective standards to judge skating by.
And I pointed out that you couldn't. If you have two skaters, both of whom include the exact same elements into their routine, and both of whom perform without any technical flaws, you
still have a judge deciding one skater was more aethetically pleasing than the other, you still have a decision based upon the personal preference of the judge.
Mandatory deductions are nice, and they are put into just about every single subjectively evaluated sport at present, but they don't solve the problem. What happens when the two competitors both execute with no mandatory deductions? You have a judge deciding one guy did better because he looked nicer doing it. And that is what I have been saying should have no place in an Olympic event.
However, one thing that I'm surprised to note no one has picked up on yet: just because you define a sport a certain way does not make it so. The Random House Dictionary defines a sport as an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature. If what you think is that figure skating is corrupt, then fine: say so, but you don't have to force us all to accept your worldview about what a sport is, or what role your definition of a sport has to do with what should or shouldn't be in the Olympics.
Of course the dictionary would say that. It describes the common usage of a term, and the common usage of the term currently includes judged events. I'm saying the term should be altered to exclude judged events. I'm not trying to force anyone to accept my definition, people asked what I considered to actuall be sport, since I said I didn't think the judged events should be considered such. Lots of people jumped all over the definition, frequently with completely irrelevant arguments (
see the scrabble silliness), and I defended my position.
And I pointed out long ago that it was merely wishful thinking to believe that I would ever get my way. I'm advocating what I would want if I could make these decisions. That's all.
[A good many of these questions were answered in NBCs broadcast tonight for the men's short program (real shame about both Eldridge and Stojko, BTW.) Contrary to Storm Raven's continued assertions, there are objective judging criteria related to what elements are included in the program and what is not.
In the short program, yes. In the long program, not so much. In any event, it is still irrelevant, since the artistic marks are still there, still have no metric to guide the judges other than what they think is pretty, and still count more than the technical marks. And even the technical marks come down to deciding which perfectly executed axel looked better than the other guys perfectly executed axel.
NBC also showed these elements of both pairs doing all of those elements from the same angle. There should have been a mandatory deduction from the Russians due to the less than perfect, in a quantifiable manner, mistake of the Russians. However, three of the judges gave the same technical merit score to both pairs. In my opinion, that's a clear case of bad judging, but that is the judges fault, not figure skating as a whole. The criteria were right there; they just didn't follow them.
Yes, there should have been. The fact that there wasn't (and never is, since this happens in every single Winter Olympics), just shows that figure skating as an entity is rotten at its core. This is allowed to go on, every four years the judges ignore the actual on ice events and hand the medal to whoever they think should win based on entirely subjective desires, and every four years the ISU does a lot of hand wringing and usually announces an internal investigation that goes nowhere.
But the fact of the matter is that even if the judges had taken the mandatory deduction, they still could have handed the medal to the Russians if they wanted by either downgrading the Canadians in their scoring on artistic merit, or upgrading the Russians there.
