2014 Winter Olympics Sochi - Page 51

On February 19 2014 16:36 L1ghtning wrote:

You shouldn't speak about things that you don't know much about. Now, I'm not a huge figure skating fan, but that's exactly why I assume the americans to be not guilty until proven otherwise.

They caught the bribed judge in 2002, and they changed the scoring system afterwards, to make it easier in the future to expose corrupt judges. If Davis/White got their gold because of bribes, then it means that they've successfully bribed the judges in all the events that they have participated in, in the last 2 years, without ever getting caught. That's just a ridiculous accusation. Davis/White went into the olympics undeafeated for 2 years. That's what you call a almost certain gold. And pretty much everybody agrees that Davis/White were on par or better than they've been in prior events. If a pair is almost a lock for gold, and they perform flawlessly, then why do you assume that they won because of corrupt judging? It makes no sense to assume this. You assume this because that's what a few very vocal fans of Virtue/Moir (where almost all of them are canadians) are saying. Show some respect for these two olympic gold winners for crying out loud.

If you want to put blame on someone, then blame their coach. Yes, Davis/White and Virtue/Moir have the same coach, and many fans of Virtue/Moir's are saying that their current programs aren't as good as their Olympic programs from Vancouver. This to me seems like a more logical explanation to why they've been nr 2 in all the competitions lately.

On February 20 2014 00:38 HolydaKing wrote:
Yay, gg Norway! Grats

Germany is pretty bad in Biathlon these days, but at least a pretty good showing from the men. Sadly, especially the women team was our strength not too long ago.

On February 20 2014 00:28 OpticalShot wrote:

While I tried to refrain from posting regarding this sensitive topic... I have to chip in here and say that the quoted poster (JimmyJRaynor) and the video broadcaster does not directly accuse the American pair of successfully bribing the judges in all the events that they have participated in the past 2 years. Even in the video, I think the accusations on bribery only pertains to the current 2014 Sochi olympics (with 2002 Salt Lake considered a "solved case"), while the corruption and ambiguity in judging issues are stretched to the past.

Prior events can be used as a good preliminary indicator of expectations, that's something that can be accepted by the common masses. I do follow major figure skating events around the year and yes the American pair have been fantastic. Even so, I think most casters and ice skating experts in this olympics went as far as to describe the American pair as "dominant in the past few years" and "the team to beat", while "certain gold" sounds like a stretch to me. Well, that's individual judgement, I'll leave it at that.

The point is, in the two programs, the American pair were not flawless. As explained in the video, there's something called "Finnstep" that the Americans did not execute as well as the Canadians, but the scoring told the opposite story. I'm not an expert on the scoring components of ice dancing pairs, so in the lack of counter-evidence, I'm compelled to believe the argument presented in the video.