I enjoy the Olympics despite the scores

[jducoeur]

One observation from last night: it reminded me, once again, that I find the judging and scoring to be my one real beef with the figure skating.

This time, there was a skater (didn't catch where from) whose routine was based on Gene Kelly's classic number from An American in Paris. For my money, it was brilliant: not just good skating, but good nods to the original routine peppered throughout. He actually managed to get a bunch of little nuances of Kelly's movement idiom in there -- not easy when you're moving on teeny little blades at high speed.

Of course, the commentators were full of, "Oh, it's not very hard; it won't score well; blah blah blah". And that proved true -- from a scoring POV, it was mediocre. Which is a damned shame, because from a purely artistic POV (as opposed to an athletic one), I thought it completely stole the show.

This seems to happen about once in each Winter Olympics for me. Sometimes it's a solo, sometimes a pair, but there's always *somebody* who just clearly gets the idea of Skating As Dance, and as Art, far better than the rest of the field. And they *never*, ever, win...

Comments

[laurion]

Part of it is that the judges -have- to be more considering of the technical merits. Figure skating is a sport that has unfortunately been beset with a lot of controversy in the past, and much of it over the judging. Allegations of fraud, rigging, and bribery all over. Having technical merits that they can point to as defense of the judging is one of the steps they have to take to rebuild credibility. If it were an artistic 'black box' of judging only, with scores awarded simply to the "better" skater (with all the ambiguities inherent in that term), it would be right back to the way it was.

This sort of valuation prioriting happens a lot. Look at the current attempts to quantify 'good' teachers and 'good' schools - increased reliance on standardized testing, and performance metrics, culminating in schools and teachers that instruct students in the best ways to look good on those yardsticks, and not necessarily to make the 'best' students. Pedagogy is an art as well, but quantifying art has problems.

[ulfhirtha.livejournal.com]

Figure skating (at least they don't show those darn "school figure" sessions anymore) is hardly the only Olympic *competition* like this - judging is in the moguls, snowboarding,diving, gymnastics and so on. Technical skill and athleticism are a worthy part of competition, beyond sheer racing or who can land (by what measure?) the most twisty jump. I asgree it is more satisfying (and understandable to the layman) to say "Skier X made it down the fastest - they win", but adding more subjective athletic contests only enriches the event for me. It is not enough to do X, you must do it WELL.

As I have heard said, and agree with, about last night's skating, the Russian landed the bigger jump (shakily) but the American's was cleaner (and supposedly other elements were more difficult as well). I thought Weir did an excellent job, but perhaps in terms of technical elements it wasn't as demanding as others. Similarly, I liked the Chaplin-based performance, partly for showing what Peggy Fleming was saying about earlier and less-seasoned skaters and the need to find your own artistic voice.

At least we don't see quite so much of the blatant bias like the old "and the scores...4.6, 4.3, and a 2.6 from the Russian judge" ;-)

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am not saying that non-sports have no place in the olympics - I after all prefer arts to sports. I just think that the differentiation is worth making.

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

But that is exactly my point, and also answers Alexx' point about referees in baseball. Sure, you can be wrong about which person touched the base first, but the criterion is perfectly clear. I would posit that as the difference between a judge and a referee. And I think there is a clear line: if you are making qualitative differentiations between competitors, you are adjudicating an artistic competition, and if you are making quantitative differentiations you are refereeing a sport. There are certainly corner cases. And it is definitely true that there are efforts to make the qualification more of a quantification in many fields, including skating (and, as you say, with very little positive effect...teaching).