***
This is the first of what I hope will be three posts by next week (the others are a sham-focused post, and a look at the ice dance short programs that just had their debut).
Before I get started:
Virtue and Moir's paso doble cd from the 2009 World Championships. This performance placed third, but was enough to keep them on the podium after placing sixth in the od and fourth in the free dance. (The free dance placements in this competition were ridiculous, and Virtue and Moir ought to have been first after the cd.). Look at the incredible edge lean, close feet, precision, unison, and remember the condition of Tessa's legs back then, how recently she'd had her original CES surgery, how her legs were still recovering, and bear in mind the toll cds take on the shins, and how little mileage she had on the ice up to this point. This performance was in my mind's eye when I looked at all those healthy skaters doing the paso pattern this week, and this performance answers any questions about what Virtue and Moir can achieve in very little time (particularly from those who believe Virtue and Moir "need to spend every second" on program drills anytime they have an abbreviated training schedule). Remember that Virtue and Moir skated a different cd in all three events they competed that season. Viennese Waltz at Canadians, the Finnstep at the 4CCs, and paso here.
*******
I decided to google "Figure skating is corrupt" to see if there's anything other than the usual old articles on 2002 and more recent commentary on Slutnikova v. Yuna Kim out there.
Figure Skating is Hopelessly Corrupt
This links to a February 2014 Kevin Drum article in Mother Jones wondering which sport is more corrupt, figure skating or ski jumping. Me, I had no idea there were issues with ski jumping, but that's comforting. Sometimes it's lonely feeling as if all the other sports have actual oversight on the field of play while we're stuck with a sport that does exactly what it wants and fuck the rest of us.
Unsurprisingly, Mother Jones concludes that figure skating is more corrupt than ski jumping:
Normally, my rule of thumb is that the higher up the world ladder you go (local vs. national vs. international) the more corrupt a sport becomes. Thus, I would have guessed that a sport in which the international federation chooses judges would be more corrupt than one in which national federations choose judges. But no!Drum's primary reference is this February 12, 2014 Washington Post article by Eric Zitzewitz:
How ski jumping gets Olympic judging right and figure skating gets it wrong
Quoting Zitzewitz:
Ski jumping has its international federation select the judges for competitions like the Olympics, and I find that they select the least biased judges. Figure skating lets its national federations select the judges, and my research showed that they select the most biased judges.
This creates different incentives for judges. Ski jumping judges display less nationalism in lower-level competitions — it appears they keep their nationalism under wraps in less important contests to avoid missing their chance at judging the Olympics. Figure skating judges are actually more biased in the lesser contests; they may actually be more biased than they would like to be due to pressure from their federations.Quoting Drum:
It turns out that ski jumping judges are biased, but the other judges are mostly biased in the other direction, so everything ends up even. Having an American judge doesn't help American jumpers. Figure skating is just the opposite. Not only are national judges biased, the other judges all go along. If an American judge is on the panel, American skaters get higher marks from the American judge and also get higher marks from all the other judges
