For at least the past year Elvis Stojko has been on a tear about what Men's skating should be, and what manly skating should look like. Following the Men's final, Stojko, on Yahoo Sports wrote under the headline The night they killed figure skating 'Sorry, Evan Lysacek. You’re a great skater and all. But that wasn’t Olympic champion material."
If memory serves me correct the night they killed figure skating was the night of the Pairs Final in Salt Lake City, and since then the ISU has been attempting, mostly futilely, the task of raising the dead.
Stojko further wrote "But the judges’ scoring was ridiculous.
"Because of it, the sport took a step backward. Brian Boitano did the same thing, technically, in 1988. There are junior skaters who can skate that same program.
"And the judges’ scoring probably killed figure skating because kids now are going to see this and say, “Oh, I don’t need a quad. I can just do great footwork for presentation marks and do a couple of nice spins and make it to Olympic champion.” With that type of scoring, you don’t have to risk it. You can play it safe and win gold."
Along the same lines, Plushenko's coach Alexi Mishin was quoted in another article on Yahoo Sports, “This is nonsense. It is wrong. It is criminal. How can it be like this? They are killing figure skating and taking it back 20 years. They have robbed him of his destiny.
“There is nothing we can do but we want to know what happened because this is not right. We will investigate. Someone needs to explain to me how this is possible. I cannot believe it.”
Back to Stojko, "The International Skating Union has taken the risk out of figure skating and it makes me sick."
Were we watching the same competition? The same sport?
I can see the point of those who might have preferred Plushenko's performance. There is plenty of room for discussion on whether one mark or another was too high or too low. Change a score here or there and the result could switch. But this refrain that the person with the quad should win was tiresome when Joubert and the French raised it when he lost the world title to Buttle, and it is no more appealing now.
The team that hits a grand slam home run does not always win, the team with the most touchdowns does not always win, the team with the most three point shots does not always win. And the skater with the quad does not always win. Anyone who has a problem with that should not be flogging the skaters or the judges. The skaters made their individual strategic choices as the system was designed to give them, and the judges marked the content the skaters chose to present.
The idea that this sends the message that skater will not attempt quads because they don't need them to win is nonsense. Lysacek's strategy worked because Plushenko has weaknesses in other areas and was vulnerable to someone with a clean skate and strong spins, steps and components. Everyone, one would think, has been aware of that for years. Did Stojko, Mishin and others not get the memo?
In the future, other skaters at other competitions will be making similar strategic decisions, to quad or not to quad. Their choices at that time will depend on who is skating and their mix of skills, not any "message" sent by this competition.
If Plushenko had put more effort into all the components since Salt Lake City, we would not be having this discussion. But Plushenko was only in a tie for third in components. He scored below Lysacek on both spins and steps. Plushenko placed his bet that the best jumper would win, and he bet wrong. In placing that bet, he did not even bother to executed the most difficult jump set with a quad. A pathetic double loop added to any of this three two-jump combinations would have given him the victory. A triple flip instead of the double Axel gives him the victory. He left points on the table. All of this is nobody's fault but his own. And the fact the jumper with the quad did not win should not detract or distract from Lysacek's achievement. The system was designed to reward the best all around performance, and the best all around performance won. Don't like that? Get the ISU to change the system this June.
Watching on TV, Sonia Bianchetti told us, "I am very happy that Lysachek could prove that in figure skating, or artistic skating, as we call it, a competitor may win the gold medal even without a quad. For me it has always been better to have a beautiful , clean program, well choreographed and skated to music, even if a bit easier, rather one with more difficult elements but poorly skated ,full of errors and falls. The rules should not encourage the skaters to "try" difficult elements hoping that may be that day they are lucky enough to stand up. Plushenko did a good quad-triple combination. It is correct. But then he did only triple-double combinations , his steps were not that fantastic, and he skated as a soldier. No passion, no feeling. Lysachek was better for me."
All of which is not to say there is nothing to glean from the Men's final about the system. When it is this close, everything is important, from the strategic choices, to the number of judges, to every imprecise design feature in the system, to the accuracy of every call and decision by the Technical Panel and the Judges. Are all of these aspects of IJS the best they an be? Not by a long shot. The message we take from the Men's final is that important competitions will regularly be determined by a few points or less, and the system must be improved so that a small point difference actually captures the reality on the ice. Often with small point differences IJS does not capture the reality on the ice, but it did Thursday night.
Copyright 2010 by George S. Rossano