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2010 Vancouver Olympics: Controversy Thread

post #1 of 48
2/15/10 at 11:45pm
Thread Starter 
As always happens in the Olympics, there is controversy. In my humble opinion, the worst thing to happen in sports has to do with the hidden judging that is closed to public scrutiny. It use to be that we all saw the scores of each judge on our screen. Because of public outrage to overt tampering in the past, the public is closed out to seeing the judges scores. Who knows if money and favors are being exchanged for medals in the Olympics? That is why, unfortunately, I have more respect for the timed events and the races. With that said, let's get on with the controversies-

Thanks to Tivo, my friends and I kept rewinding the Men's Moguls Finals. Everyone now knows that Canada has now brought home it's first gold medal on home soil. Congratulations to Alexandre Bilodeau and to Canada for this accomplishment. We no nothing about what goes into judging the moguls but speed is about 25% of the score. The French competitor, Colas Guilbaut, won the speed portion handily and yet he only ended up in 6th place overall? Rewinding his race, his knees did not separate and his first jump was technically perfect, so was his landing. His turns were beautiful and there no upper body movement. His second jump was a bit to be desired but it wasn't terrible. So that was good enough for only a 6th place finish? My friends and I all agree that he got screwed. Hmm, someone had snow in their eyes or maybe...

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post #2 of 48
2/15/10 at 11:57pm
Don't they also judge according to the difficulty of the jumps? If others had more impressive jumps but not 100% perfect I would think that would score higher than a perfect simple backflip.
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post #3 of 48
2/16/10 at 12:48am
The Frenchman's run was absolutely perfect, much better than the Canadian's, IMO.
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post #4 of 48
2/16/10 at 12:55am
Was the French the last run of the night?
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post #5 of 48
2/16/10 at 12:56am
Yes
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post #6 of 48
2/16/10 at 1:00am
The Australian should have won. Home judge was biased! Yeah...

I hate sports where there is judging. You can question too many things.
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post #7 of 48
2/16/10 at 1:07am
I thought the Canadian's run was much better than the Frenchman's then. His turns and jumps were much better. The last run was very fast but not as smooth, and the jumps were not very impressive in my opinion.
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post #8 of 48
2/16/10 at 1:11am
okay, I am a complete homer here, and proud that we won the gold, but CTC (which is the netwrok in Canada covering Olympics) had some dude who was a Doctor, but not sure if that was relevant, but he proved scientifically that Bilodeau deserved the gold...
I just tried to look fo rit on the CTV site, I pvr'd it so will go back and find the name...anyway, even though it was a homer network with a homer scientist, he did prove that scientifically speaking, the gold was awarded properly.
I do hate sports where judging is involved though...I am suddenly a fan of the snow cross event...very cool
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post #9 of 48
2/16/10 at 1:38am
Technique isn't only about keeping your knees together. The announcers noticed and mentioned some technical failing with one of his jumps as it happened .... something about not grabbing his foot or something. At that time, they indicated that that mistake would cost him. One would think that if it were a close, questionable call, he wouldn't drop from 1st all the way down to 6th.

Quote:
My friends and I all agree that he got screwed.
Are you and your friends experienced, trained, Olympic judges? Has there been any public outrage or formal protest about the results? I do agree however, it would be much better to see the individual judges' scores in any and all events where subjective scoring comes into play.
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post #10 of 48
2/16/10 at 1:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mbriant View Post
Technique isn't only about keeping your knees together. The announcers noticed and mentioned some technical failing with one of his jumps as it happened .... something about not grabbing his foot or something. At that time, they indicated that that mistake would cost him. One would think that if it were a close, questionable call, he wouldn't drop from 1st all the way down to 6th.
I thought the same thing. If he came in 2d, then I might have been suspicious. His air score was the lowest of the top six and his speed score (25% of the score) was the highest. I had no problem with the result.
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post #11 of 48
2/16/10 at 2:06am
In the gymnastics, when all the judges scores were shown, it was clear that judges were giving higher scores for their own athletes and scoring down athletes from countries that were their biggest competitors. I recall at least one year where the Chinese judge was giving 10s for all the Chinese athletes, it was rather sad. There was also the case of the marathon walkers whose running was ignored, yet the Aussie athlete was disqualified when she did it at exactly the same spot just outside the stadium. To imagine that there isn't bias and some degree of corruption in the Olympics or that it is possible to run it without some is just naive.
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post #12 of 48
2/16/10 at 2:08am
Thread Starter 
O.K. guys, controversy #2 in the works-
Pairs ice skating results.
Here are the results of the pairs skating short program:



Here are the results of the pairs skating free skate:



China's first place team in the short program finished 5.16 points ahead of their 4th place team. I saw the short program and it seemed, at the time, that the scores were fair and justified (I have to say though, I wish we can see the individual judges scores). Here is the controversial part, the long program. Going into the free skate China's 4th place team skated brilliantly without even one mistake. Their skate even aroused a standing ovation in the audience. Then China's first place team (who seem to be the darlings of the figure skating world) went out to skate their routine. They do not make any major mistakes but the male skater landed a jump sloppily and Xue Shen fell off of Hongbo Zhao's back. There were minor mistakes throughout the whole routine. Yet, their rountine was scored only 1.90 points behind the fourth place team, Quing Pang and Jian Tong, who skated perfectly. China won Gold and Silver. Congratulations to them for that stunning feat. In the end though, Jian Tong and Qing Pang got robbed. There is no way their free skate was only 1.90 points better than Xue Shen and Hongbo Zhao's. Either that or Shen and Zhao did not skate 5.16 points better than Pang and Tong in the short program. Pang and Tong should've won gold.
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post #13 of 48
2/16/10 at 2:32am
Quote:
O.K. guys, controversy #2 in the works-
Have we established that controversy #1 actually exists? Has there been any complaints from the French or any other team with regards to the Men's Moguls judging?
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post #14 of 48
2/16/10 at 2:41am
OK, pretend that Pang/Tong's free skate score was better than 1.9 pts more than Shen/Zhao.. Can you really say that their score was 5.17 pts better than Shen/Zhao (which would have been required to take 1st place)? No.

I don't think any of this is a controversy.. in any competition there will be people thinking that someone else should have won.
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post #15 of 48
2/16/10 at 2:48am
Difficulty of the tricks factor into the mogul rankings and only 2 competitors pulled off the hardest trick a double twisting back flip off the top air. It's a trick "arms race" in these things and who ever can pull off the big one of the competition gets bonus points.

The pure timed events make things so much easier to make rulings on but this being head-fi everyone should be used to subjective judging by now.
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