Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
Well the problem for figure skating in particular is that they've opened the door to this criticism on their own. It might be that I'm not an expert in these matters, but the fact is there have been a number of judging controversies in the recent past. Even this article to start the thread was brought about because an expert in the field says a deal has been made. In otherwords you might not like the armchair experts like me weighing in every four years, but the judges themselves say there is a problem!
Unfortunately all of these judged events come out that way. We've seen this with boxing at the olympics (which should be really easy to score....guy gets punched and the other gets a point, yet somehow the fighter from the country that controls the commission gets more points). Its happened in MMA and boxing at the pro-level as well with people being incensed that the "wrong" fighter was given a decision. Unfortunately its human nature.
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You mention a number of recent judging controversies in the recent past in figure skating... Care to reference that? The only one I can think of is 2002 Olympics - which resulted in massive changes to the figure skating judging system. The changes resulted in a significant increase in objectivity (for all technical skills) and a reduction in the ability for a single judge to influence the outcome. I did a very quick google search and wasn't able to find any other judging issues (besides this years allegation which seems to be more propagated by the media than anything else).
Judging in these sports is not as fraught with controversy as so many seem to think. The controversy comes when media watches an event they haven't seen in four years and writes stories of outrage that their athlete didn't win for whatever reason.