Posted on 03/07/2002 10:00:34 AM PST by SCOOGIE SPIN
============================================================================ “Axles” of Evil at the Winter Olympics (By Shmuel R. Bulka) ============================================================================ I have watched the Olympics almost every year that they take place and invariably, after the Games are over, I promised myself that I would never watch them again. Why? The Olympics are run by a bunch of self-promoting, egotistical, self-important snobs. They wax poetic about the Olympic ideal, and then make a complete farce of it when the events are judged. After 1998, I promised myself I would not watch the Olympics again. Shortly before the 2000 Summer Games, I watched the HBO documentary on the Munich Games and it got me so upset, that I actually held to my commitment not to watch the Sydney Olympics. The fact that every event was taped had something to do with it as well. I decided to give the Games a chance again in 2002. What a mistake! I am not going re-hash what happened on the first Monday night of the Olympics when the Canadian team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier were robbed of a gold medal. That the Canadians skated better is not a matter of debate so why waste paper writing about it. After the performances and the scores, I was kicking myself. How could I be so stupid? I knew the scoring in these kinds of events is a sham. Why did I even bother watching, let alone caring? Let us look at what in fact was done to see whether the skating folks really get it. As everybody no doubt is aware, dual gold medals were given. That is the perfect Olympic ending. Great TV for NBC and those just want to feel good. But whom are we kidding? The decision was a joke. Firstly, I understand that they disciplined the French judge, which is a good thing, but what about the other four judges that voted for the Russians even though they were clearly inferior? The response was that basically they have freedom of expression almost like voting in a biased manner is a constitutional right. Give me a break. Secondly, by rule, if one judge is eliminated and there is a tie, the referee then steps in and casts the deciding vote. This referee, an American, made his feelings known. Why didn’t they take away the Russian’s gold medal? The stated reason is that why should the Russians be penalized if they didn’t do anything wrong? Well, they didn’t take drugs or anything like that, but they did do something wrong. They lost. In 1992, a Canadian Synchronized Swimmer outperformed the American but when the Brazilian judge attempted to put in a “9.7” for the Canadian, she mistakenly put in “8.7”. She immediately noticed her error and told the officials but since it was in the computer, they refused to change it. After a huge uproar, they gave another gold to the Canadian. That was equally ridiculous. Let’s be honest. The real reason they give 2 golds is because these sports and the entire Olympics are about making people feel good and not hurting feelings. To call them sports is a joke. (More on that later). The other thing the International Skating Union did was announcing new rules for competitions in the future. There are 2 major changes. The first is that you will no longer start with a 6.0 and then have deductions. You will have to earn points and there is no maximum score. The judging will be similar to the way diving is scored. (Gee, that makes me feel good). The second change is that there will be 14 judges but only 7 votes will count and nobody will ever know which votes counted and which didn’t. In some ways this is worse because then there is no oversight. The ISU is all excited about this because they feel it will eliminate “block judging”, another way of saying “fixing”. I don’t see how the scoring system change will make much of a difference and “block judging” is still possible although judges cannot guarantee a quid pro quo so maybe the likelihood is reduced. Let’s say for the sake of argument that “block judging” is completely eliminated. In my mind, this still does not address the biggest problem. All judges, whether American, Canadian, Russian or French, come into the competition with a pre-conceived notion of who is going to win and they judge accordingly. The bottom line is that if you are not one of the favorites, it is virtually impossible to win. This goes for skating, gymnastics, synchronized swimming and virtually all “sports” where subjective opinion determines the winner. The biggest joke of all is ice dancing. How the hell do you tell the difference between any of them? In the Olympics, the top 14 positions did not change from the short program to the long program, this despite the fact that the third and fourth place finishers actually fell during their routine (you gotta be pretty pathetic to fall during ice dancing). So when there was a clear way to determine who was better and who was not, the judges ignored the facts. What happened with the pairs figure skating was great because it exposed the joke that was being swept under the rug for too long. And despite their attempts to fix things, these people just don’t get it. This was proven a little more than a week later when the Russians cried foul when Sara Hughes won the gold over a Russian. I agree with the Russians that an investigation was warranted. I would have investigated how it was that it was even that close. How is it that 2 judges, including the Russian judge, voted Sara Hughes 4TH? What were they watching? In fact, under the newer system of scoring, Hughes actually probably would have lost. So what would I do? I believe that all these so-called sports should be demonstration sports and should be part of an exhibition, but should not be judged and no medals should be awarded. I know that NBC will never go for that. So, absent coming up for a way for the judges to judge without knowing who is actually skating, I think that the ISU should hire some smart computer programmers and program in all the required elements and have a computer score the events. It will be tough to program in things like presentation, but I think someone should be able to come up with something that gives us the real winner. It sure beats what we have now.
You're right. These alleged scoring changes change nothing. Whether you think of it as a process of losing points for screwing up or gaining points for doing good things it's still a subjective decision by the "expert" as to who did the best job. If there were a mechanical way of just totalling up the points there would be no need for expert judges in the first place.
As to ignoring half of the judges' decisions, this introduces far more problems than it purports to solve. This means that you can be ranked 2nd by 10 of the 14 judges and still win the gold if you're lucky enough to have your 4 judges make the live panel. Imagine the outrage that will ensue the first time this happens. In their panic to cover up the event fixing, the IOC has opened themselves up to a host of unintended consequences. It will be a delight to watch the compounding of IOC miseries in succeeding olympics.
The solution is easy: quit pretending that these judged events are sport. Recognize them for what they are, entertainment. Set up an entertainment division, market the stuff like crazy, and watch the TV ratings and revenue roll in. Let diving and figure skating pay the bill for track and field, boxing, etc.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.