Quote:
Originally Posted by craigwd
I say baseless because we have ONE random magazine article reporting the day of the Olympic Games a RUMOUR from an ANONYMOUS coach.
There has been one proven conspiracy in all of ice dance and we knew the source (Marie Le Gougne) for months leading up to the Games. But what angers me is non-skating people saying that everything is corrupt, this is not a sport etc etc.
To be honest, it makes everyone sound like that fool at a Flames game who swears the NHL is out to get his team; that there is no way a Flames player should get penalized. I then ask, to what end? Davis/White are now Olympic Champions. Are they any more famous? Does the ISU get to pat itself on the back that there isn't a back to back Olympic champion?
As for a conspiracy going back more than this year. Again, if you really follow the sport you can see that no, it's not possible since every time they have faced head to head the better team won. And really they've gone head to head at the GPF, 4 Continents Championships and World Champions each year excluding 2011. So only 9 times since the 2010 Olympic Games.
And what about pre Vancouver when Virtue/Moir was also being beaten in the GPF leading up the Olympic Games? V/M had to change up the Mahler dance to gain more points to win.
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It doesn't make anyone seem like that Flames fan because it's only happening because a legitimate sports news source (who were right about Lance Armstrong years in advance) felt comfortable enough with there info to go public. Very different then some passionate fans in the crowd deciding the "refs are out to get us".
The point I was making about the potential conspiracy going back further would not be proven impossible by the fact Davis and White beat them each time for the past 2 years. That was my point, you assume the same judges aren't at those previous events, when in fact many were. In fact, one judge that was at these Olympics has apparently been a judge at every event when the two couples went head to head and Virtue/Moire had incurred lower than would have been expected scores. Is this the same judge? We don't know because the sport lacks transperancy. By the looks of it, if you wanted to fix this sport at the Olympics, the best way to do it would be to start well before, so the results at the event you are trying to fix are "out of the blue".
Again, I don't really know what to believe. Davis/White looked really good at what they do, as did Moire/Virtue, I'm certainly not qualified to say who should have one. What i do know is the sport has set its self up to be questioned given the way they operate, and judging transparency should be a required minimum of any judged sport if for no other reason to hold judges to the accountability of knowing people will be able to judge what they did. Kind of like how people on here say a lot of crap they wouldn't say if people knew their true identity.
But to say people being passionate about this is like fans of a hockey team whining about officiating is just wrong:
- the sport hides its judges and isn't accountable publicly - that breeds questions
- legitimate news source reporting an issue, not just invented by fans - often where there's smoke there's fire
- we know one judges score are messed up and way off their peers judgements of the exact same program.
Seems to me some debate on the topic is more than reasonable.