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

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

Right - that's a big problem with admitting artistic events into a sporting event.

Figure skating is not a sport, by my lights. You can tell something is not a sport if it needs a judge. Don't need a judge for the speed skating - first skater over the finish line wins. Shooting? Obvious to everyone who was the best - the guys who hit the most targets.

I like dance more than I like any sport. But I don't confuse myself into thinking it is one, just because it is athletic.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

It's funny. That's one of the ones I saw (I think), and I didn't really like it. Not so much from a skating perspective, but from a dance perspective. Part of that is the problem with combining the athletics with the performance. Usually one suffers. But while he did get a lot of the little nuances, they didn't flow well together for me. It felt....choppy.

Though I totally get you on the Skating as Dance front. It's why I love Johnny Weir.

[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.

[redsquirrel.livejournal.com]

I recall that skater (he was from the Czech Republic) and I'm afraid I must disagree with you on the fairness of his scores re: artistic merit. The new scoring system does take artistry into account, at least to some extent. He did not score higher because the brilliance in the Gene Kelly number lay more in the choreography than the execution and you don't get graded on the choreography. It was a great routine but the execution was uneven. The extension through the arms, the completion of movements and smooth flow from one move to the next was just not there. And his spins were quite dreadful (for that level of competition), slow and sloppy. I watched with my sister who has studied figure skating; she agreed with me so this is not a completely uneducated opinion.

We absolutely LOVED the choreography and would really like to see it done by a skater who can fully execute it. The commentator's opinion was that he "ran out of gas" and it did look that way - he just didn't have the stamina for that program. He probably needs to work much harder on his off-ice conditioning. He's talented and jumps well but is missing a lot of the little things that set the really top level skaters apart from the rest.

That artistry does count can be seen by the relatively high scores of Stephan Lambial, the Swiss skater who skated to "La Traviata". Can't jump worth beans but oh, can he skate - line, extension, footwork, musicality...I'm very, very sad that he was not "on his best game" last night. He came within a whisker of taking the bronze medal. Had he been as "on" as he was for the short program - done to "William Tell" - he could have done it. It is unfortunate, I much preferred him to the Japanese skater who did win; he was flashy and technically proficient but without as much heart. :-(

Late to the party, but...

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

I heard a very interesting interview with Dick Button (he of Olympic figure-skating fame mid-century, who, like Shaun White is doing now, invented many of the moves skaters now *must* use), and he says something similar -- that the judging has swung so far over to the technical/compulsive side that folks really _can't_ either add in something new or devote as much effort to the artistry as they might. Frankly, I thought Lysachek's routine was too full of arm-waving and hops to be interesting. But, then, we all have differing tastes.

[ilaine-dcmrn.livejournal.com]

There are three competitors worth comparing here.

Plushenko was at the athletic end of the spectrum. He front loaded his program with huge amazing jumps, then spent the following two and a half minutes skating around on two feet smirking at the audience.

Weir is at the artistic end - he does have good jumps, but no quad, and not enough of the others for the high score. Great spins and footwork, and fabulous presentation.

Lysachek has almost as good jumps as Plushenko, good spins and footwork, and great presentation. He also skated his best performance ever, no mistakes, when the pressure was on. The skater with the most complete package won - not the ends of the bell curve.