Also a time for high DRAMA and media blitz! For some reason, little attention is paid to these things in other seasons. But during the Olympic season, whoo, boy, there is suddenly a bunch of ridiculous crap going on.
I'm sure everyone knows about the Tonya/Nancy scandal. Even those who don't care about skating know the story. This is especially prevalent now, with the release of the film "I, Tonya", and with Harding making multiple television appearances. I had considered writing a separate post just on Tonya, but frankly, I'm not interested. It is just dwelling on the past and beating a dead horse. The skating world has moved on and we should too.
If you like ridiculous drama, you are in for a treat! There are many more figure skating scandals to see, from the low impact and laughable, to major issues that have changed the rules of skating, to things that are just downright disturbing.
I will ease you into the world of scandals with some fairly minor ones, some with bitchy quibbles, others with controversial Olympic team selections.
I now introduce you to...
Minor Scandals
Nancy Kerrigan and Oksana Baiul
Another scandal in the 1994 Olympics where Nancy Kerrigan was involved. She was obviously the victim between her and Tonya, but with Oksana, she was the villian. Kerrigan won the silver in Lillehammer to Baiul's gold, and she made a comment stating that Oksana won because of Russian favoritism. That was not the final blow. Prior to the medal ceremony, Oksana was emotional for a variety of reasons. Her mother passed away when she was 13, and she was thinking of her when she won her gold medal. She was crying and it messed up her makeup, so she was reapplying before the ceremony. Nancy is caught on camera rolling her eyes and saying,
"Oh, come on. She's going to get up there and cry again. What's the difference?" Then she proceeded to mock Oksana a few weeks later when she hosted Saturday Night Live.
No one thinks Nancy deserved what happened to her. That was a horrible act of violence that no one should have to go through. However, that does not make her perfect, or entirely innocent. This situation proves that. It was so unclassy and rude. And as an Oksana fan, I definitely did not appreciate it. As a result, Nancy lost a lot of sympathy that people had for her after the attack.
Plushenko and the Platinum Medal
Another minor quibble came about in the 2010 Olympics Men's event. Evan Lysacek won the gold, delivering a stellar performance and lacking just one thing, a quadruple jump. Evgeny Plushenko, who did perform a quad, was not pleased about this fact. Plushenko is also extra AF, so he had to announce this in a grand fashion. He made a picture of him with his silver medal from the 2002 Olympics, his gold medal from the 2006 Olympics, and his newly-anointed "platinum medal" from the 2010 Olympics. Here it is:
He had mentioned that without a quad, "it wasn't men's skating" and several coaches and skaters chimed in with their thoughts on the issue.
Anyway, moving along...
Costume Complaints
Figure skating bombshell Katarina Witt caused quite the stir when she showed up at the 1988 Olympics in this costume:
This high cut, skirtless costume apparently shocked and offended many people, particularly the judges. That did not stop her from winning though. It was, however, the cause for a new rule: the Katarina rule. This rule stated that the "hips and buttocks must be covered" in skating costumes. This rule was repealed in 2004. After 2004, there were a few brave ladies that went on the push the envelope with their costume choices, and caught a bit of flack for it.
The first one is ice dancer Tanith Belbin (now White), in this scandalous original dance costume at the 2006 Olympics:
And there were complaints on Tessa Virtue's free dance costume for this season:
Someone on Twitter said this costume with its bare back was too revealing.
All of this, not a big deal in regards to what's coming. Or at all. Now for some more low-level scandals...
At the 2014 US Nationals, the favorite to win, and assumed lock for the Olympic team, Ashley Wagner, had a disappointing skate and finished 4th. Gracie Gold won the US title, a young girl named Polina Edmunds won the silver in her senior debut, and Mirai Nagasu put out a great effort to capture the bronze.
The real controversy started the next day, when the Olympic team was announced. USFS had chosen to send Gold, Edmunds, and Wagner to the Olympics, leaving Nagasu off the team. The internet erupted about the injustice that was done, and how Mirai was screwed over. The team selection actually came down to Polina Edmunds and Mirai Nagasu, but many people, including myself, did not know this at the time. I was mad at the world, and definitely not pleased with Ashley. Of course, my attitude on her has now changed completely. Another thing that was an issue was that the US Figure Skating Association was not very transparent on the criteria used for the team selection. The criteria did include US Nationals, but also took into account the international competitions of the season. Ashley had won the bronze medal at the Grand Prix Final that season, so that definitely played in her favor. Polina Edmunds was in the Junior Grand Prix Final, so that may have factored into their decision as well.
It appears that there has been a dichotomy for most of the world's top skaters: the challenger events and Grand Prix series, culminating in the Grand Prix Final, and each country's national championships. Skaters that were not seen as international contenders early in the season were putting everything into their performance at their respective national championships, presumably in hopes of making the Olympic team. Several of the top international competitors seemed to falter a bit at their national championships, leaving the Olympic selection committees with quite the dilemma. Another thing to factor in here is the scores. International competitions have a panel of judges from several nations represented in the ISU, where as the judging panel at National Championships consists only of judges from that particular federation. Why do I bring this up? Typically the "in country" judges inflate the scores of skaters at their National Championships.
We will start out with the first of difficult decisions, after the All Japan National Championships. Their particular dilemma was who to send for the ladies, only having 2 slots.
Satoko Miyahara qualified for the Grand Prix Final and won the National Championship, so she was an easy pick for the first slot. The dilemma came down to choosing Kaori Sakamoto, who won the silver at Skate America, and placed second at Nationals, and Wakaba Higuchi, who qualified for the Grand Prix Final and placed fourth at Nationals. The JSF opted to send Sakamoto to the Olympics, and Higuchi to the World Championships. This decision was not met with a lot of outrage, as it seemed equitable to both skaters' achievements. There were a few that were sad for Wakaba, but there was not the angry gnashing of teeth that we will see in a few of these selections...
Then there is the Team Russia controversy. The Olympic Team was chosen after the European Championships. The Russian selections were then sent to the International Olympic Committee, or IOC. There are two skaters, ice dancer Ivan Bukin, and pairs skater Ksenia Stolbova, who did not receive an invitation to the Olympics. They are both quite devastated and angry at this, and rightfully so. No explanation has been given as to why they were not invited. The Russian Federation is currently fighting for these athletes to attend the games, and I hope they are successful in doing so.
US Nationals and the Olympic team selection were fairly clean cut for pairs and ice dance. The ladies and men's slots, however, were a point of contention. In the ladies event, we sense a bit of deja vu from the 2014 Olympic season...
Ashley Wagner placed a disappointing 4th again, even though she performed with only one mistake in the free skate. This time, she was not chosen for the Olympic team. There was much discussion about how the judges seemed to boost certain skaters, while purposely lowballing others.
Then, in the men's event, some very strange things happened.
One that was not strange was Nathan Chen defending his title. That one was pretty much a given. The 2017 Junior World Champion Vincent Zhou also performed better than he had the whole season to win the bronze. Unfortunately, after a great start to the season, Adam Rippon made a few costly mistakes at the end of his free skate to end up in 4th at nationals. Ross Miner performed one of his best ever performances for the silver. This became an issue of whether nationals should determine the Olympic team, or whether the entire body of work throughout the last few seasons should count more. The US Olympic Committee opted to send Rippon over Miner, and there was a great deal of debate on that.
In both instances I think they should have at least put Ashley and Ross on the World Team, but that didn't happen.
The last major national event of some contention was Canadian Nationals. In the pairs event, Liubov Ilyuschechkina and Dylan Moscovitch made some mistakes and ended up in 4th. Canada opted not to send them to the Olympics despite their standings of the last season.
Now we go on to ratchet up the scandal level just a bit...
This ended up bringing about the change in how compulsory figures were measured as part of the overall score. The new percentages consisted of 40% figures, 20% short program, and 40% free skate. The ISU had started making this change in 1972, but it wouldn't take effect until after the Olympic Games. This made compulsories less important to the total score than the free skating. The percentages for compulsory figures continued to dwindle until they were abandoned in 1991.
In the free skate, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had the more technically difficult program, but they had a small mistake, whereas Sale and Pelletier did not make any mistakes. In the technical merit scores, Sale and Pelletier had a lead over Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze. However, the presentation marks were where things started getting hairy, with the Russians slightly edging out the Canadians. Under the 6.0 system, there are these scores, and then there are ordinals, where the judges recommend a placement for each pair for the competition. This is what caused the most controversy, as Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were placed first, and Sale and Pelletier second. It was later proven that there was collusion with the judges on the placements, as the French judge later came forward and confessed. To try to fix this whole mess, they decided to award both pairs a gold medal.
What came next was a complete revamp of the judging standards. The new system was the International Judging System, or IJS, which is still in use today. The IJS scoring attempts to make things more objective by quantifying elements. There is also a Program Components Score, which replaces the old Artistic Impression/Presentation scores. The new scoring system has its fans, and its detractors. It has evolved a lot since its beginnings in 2002, which may be confusing to some fans.
Here's my thoughts on the whole thing. I think IJS worked fantastically when it first got started, up until about 2014 or so. Since then, I have seen some judging protocol violations far more flagrant than what we saw at the 2002 Olympics. This is because the judges are going away from the quantifiable side of things and becoming more subjective, awarding larger grade of execution and program component scores to their favorites, whether they are deserving or not. I predict we will have another great shift in judging and scoring in the not too distant future.
For this next section we are visiting figure skating's dark side. This is:
This high cut, skirtless costume apparently shocked and offended many people, particularly the judges. That did not stop her from winning though. It was, however, the cause for a new rule: the Katarina rule. This rule stated that the "hips and buttocks must be covered" in skating costumes. This rule was repealed in 2004. After 2004, there were a few brave ladies that went on the push the envelope with their costume choices, and caught a bit of flack for it.
The first one is ice dancer Tanith Belbin (now White), in this scandalous original dance costume at the 2006 Olympics:
And there were complaints on Tessa Virtue's free dance costume for this season:
Someone on Twitter said this costume with its bare back was too revealing.
All of this, not a big deal in regards to what's coming. Or at all. Now for some more low-level scandals...
The 2014 US Olympic Team selection (Ladies)
At the 2014 US Nationals, the favorite to win, and assumed lock for the Olympic team, Ashley Wagner, had a disappointing skate and finished 4th. Gracie Gold won the US title, a young girl named Polina Edmunds won the silver in her senior debut, and Mirai Nagasu put out a great effort to capture the bronze.
The real controversy started the next day, when the Olympic team was announced. USFS had chosen to send Gold, Edmunds, and Wagner to the Olympics, leaving Nagasu off the team. The internet erupted about the injustice that was done, and how Mirai was screwed over. The team selection actually came down to Polina Edmunds and Mirai Nagasu, but many people, including myself, did not know this at the time. I was mad at the world, and definitely not pleased with Ashley. Of course, my attitude on her has now changed completely. Another thing that was an issue was that the US Figure Skating Association was not very transparent on the criteria used for the team selection. The criteria did include US Nationals, but also took into account the international competitions of the season. Ashley had won the bronze medal at the Grand Prix Final that season, so that definitely played in her favor. Polina Edmunds was in the Junior Grand Prix Final, so that may have factored into their decision as well.
The 2018 Olympic Team selection (many countries, all disciplines)
It appears that there has been a dichotomy for most of the world's top skaters: the challenger events and Grand Prix series, culminating in the Grand Prix Final, and each country's national championships. Skaters that were not seen as international contenders early in the season were putting everything into their performance at their respective national championships, presumably in hopes of making the Olympic team. Several of the top international competitors seemed to falter a bit at their national championships, leaving the Olympic selection committees with quite the dilemma. Another thing to factor in here is the scores. International competitions have a panel of judges from several nations represented in the ISU, where as the judging panel at National Championships consists only of judges from that particular federation. Why do I bring this up? Typically the "in country" judges inflate the scores of skaters at their National Championships.
We will start out with the first of difficult decisions, after the All Japan National Championships. Their particular dilemma was who to send for the ladies, only having 2 slots.
Satoko Miyahara qualified for the Grand Prix Final and won the National Championship, so she was an easy pick for the first slot. The dilemma came down to choosing Kaori Sakamoto, who won the silver at Skate America, and placed second at Nationals, and Wakaba Higuchi, who qualified for the Grand Prix Final and placed fourth at Nationals. The JSF opted to send Sakamoto to the Olympics, and Higuchi to the World Championships. This decision was not met with a lot of outrage, as it seemed equitable to both skaters' achievements. There were a few that were sad for Wakaba, but there was not the angry gnashing of teeth that we will see in a few of these selections...
Then there is the Team Russia controversy. The Olympic Team was chosen after the European Championships. The Russian selections were then sent to the International Olympic Committee, or IOC. There are two skaters, ice dancer Ivan Bukin, and pairs skater Ksenia Stolbova, who did not receive an invitation to the Olympics. They are both quite devastated and angry at this, and rightfully so. No explanation has been given as to why they were not invited. The Russian Federation is currently fighting for these athletes to attend the games, and I hope they are successful in doing so.
US Nationals and the Olympic team selection were fairly clean cut for pairs and ice dance. The ladies and men's slots, however, were a point of contention. In the ladies event, we sense a bit of deja vu from the 2014 Olympic season...
Ashley Wagner placed a disappointing 4th again, even though she performed with only one mistake in the free skate. This time, she was not chosen for the Olympic team. There was much discussion about how the judges seemed to boost certain skaters, while purposely lowballing others.
Then, in the men's event, some very strange things happened.
One that was not strange was Nathan Chen defending his title. That one was pretty much a given. The 2017 Junior World Champion Vincent Zhou also performed better than he had the whole season to win the bronze. Unfortunately, after a great start to the season, Adam Rippon made a few costly mistakes at the end of his free skate to end up in 4th at nationals. Ross Miner performed one of his best ever performances for the silver. This became an issue of whether nationals should determine the Olympic team, or whether the entire body of work throughout the last few seasons should count more. The US Olympic Committee opted to send Rippon over Miner, and there was a great deal of debate on that.
In both instances I think they should have at least put Ashley and Ross on the World Team, but that didn't happen.
The last major national event of some contention was Canadian Nationals. In the pairs event, Liubov Ilyuschechkina and Dylan Moscovitch made some mistakes and ended up in 4th. Canada opted not to send them to the Olympics despite their standings of the last season.
Now we go on to ratchet up the scandal level just a bit...
Mid-level Scandalousness...
The scandals in this category brought a few changes to how things were done in the sport, but it was not major, groundbreaking change. This first one started out before the 1908 Olympics, and shaped a new policy going forward...
Madge Syers
This is Madge Syers. She was a British figure skater early on in the sport, who blazed a trail for many skaters to follow.
And no, it's not just for that fabulous coat. See, in the early days of figure skating, they didn't have separate disciplines by gender like they do today. So she competed against this guy in the singles event at the 1902 World Championships:
That's right, skating legend Ulrich Salchow of Sweden, inventor of the salchow jump. In the 1902 World Championships, Syers was the only woman in the event, and won a silver in singles, with Mr. Salchow taking the gold. Many though Syers should have won! After that, the ISU decided that this was just too much, and they couldn't have all this co-mingling going on. In 1905, they established separate men's and ladies divisions. Not only did Madge continue to dominate singles, taking home gold medals including the 1908 Olympics, but she also won in pairs with her husband Edgar Syers.
The Russian Doping Scandal and Team Russia for the 2018 Olympics
Over the past few years, there have been widespread investigations into the Russian Federation, which has been mired in allegations of doping for all sports. I even wrote about this in one of my very first blog posts in 2016. You can check that out here. Now, when I mentioned there should be repercussions, I did not mean banning athletes who have worked hard and done nothing wrong. That was what the Olympic Committee was looking at doing.
What they have now decided is this: individual athletes can compete, but they will be announced as an "Olympic Athlete from Russia". They will not march in under the Russian flag in the opening ceremony, and if they win, the Olympic theme will be played instead of the national anthem. This is not deterring any of the Russian skaters from competing at the Olympics, and I'm glad to see that. I'm sure they are tired of having reporters asking about this all the time.
Now we are onto the big'uns, it's time for...
What they have now decided is this: individual athletes can compete, but they will be announced as an "Olympic Athlete from Russia". They will not march in under the Russian flag in the opening ceremony, and if they win, the Olympic theme will be played instead of the national anthem. This is not deterring any of the Russian skaters from competing at the Olympics, and I'm glad to see that. I'm sure they are tired of having reporters asking about this all the time.
Now we are onto the big'uns, it's time for...
High-Impact Scandals!
These scandals ended up driving major rule changes. Let me preface this by saying that figure skating has always been a subjective sport. One judge will prefer the style of one skater to another, and sometime the fans don't understand or like it. However, these instances speak to both obvious corruption of the judges and inherent flaws in the system.
The 1972 Olympics- Ladies Event
During the 1972 Olympics, much debate was sparked on the importance of compulsory figures and how much weight they should carry as part of the total score. What spurred this debate was the ladies event at these Olympic games. Beatrix "Trixie" Shuba of Austria won the gold medal, despite having a less than stellar free skate with mostly single jumps. This happened because she was exceptional at figures. During that time, the short program and free skate scores were combined to make up 50% of the score. The other 50% was for compulsory figures. There was another skater, American Janet Lynn, who was her complete opposite. She won the free skate with this performance:
Despite winning the free skate and being awarded a 6.0 by one of the judges, Lynn ended up going home with the bronze medal.
This ended up bringing about the change in how compulsory figures were measured as part of the overall score. The new percentages consisted of 40% figures, 20% short program, and 40% free skate. The ISU had started making this change in 1972, but it wouldn't take effect until after the Olympic Games. This made compulsories less important to the total score than the free skating. The percentages for compulsory figures continued to dwindle until they were abandoned in 1991.
2002 Olympics Pairs Skating
During the 2002 Olympics, skating was still scored under the old 6.0 system. Here are the teams that changed it:
Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze:
Jamie Sale and David Pelletier
Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze
I submit to you the following performances from the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City:
Sale and Pelletier:
In the free skate, Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze had the more technically difficult program, but they had a small mistake, whereas Sale and Pelletier did not make any mistakes. In the technical merit scores, Sale and Pelletier had a lead over Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze. However, the presentation marks were where things started getting hairy, with the Russians slightly edging out the Canadians. Under the 6.0 system, there are these scores, and then there are ordinals, where the judges recommend a placement for each pair for the competition. This is what caused the most controversy, as Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze were placed first, and Sale and Pelletier second. It was later proven that there was collusion with the judges on the placements, as the French judge later came forward and confessed. To try to fix this whole mess, they decided to award both pairs a gold medal.
What came next was a complete revamp of the judging standards. The new system was the International Judging System, or IJS, which is still in use today. The IJS scoring attempts to make things more objective by quantifying elements. There is also a Program Components Score, which replaces the old Artistic Impression/Presentation scores. The new scoring system has its fans, and its detractors. It has evolved a lot since its beginnings in 2002, which may be confusing to some fans.
Here's my thoughts on the whole thing. I think IJS worked fantastically when it first got started, up until about 2014 or so. Since then, I have seen some judging protocol violations far more flagrant than what we saw at the 2002 Olympics. This is because the judges are going away from the quantifiable side of things and becoming more subjective, awarding larger grade of execution and program component scores to their favorites, whether they are deserving or not. I predict we will have another great shift in judging and scoring in the not too distant future.
For this next section we are visiting figure skating's dark side. This is:
WTF????
This section will show some very disturbing things. We have a dance program at the height of insensitivity, one scandal everyone and their dog knows about, and some that will shock and disturb you to the core. Here's where we'll start:
Domnina and Shabalin's Aboriginal Dance:
I have touched on this particular dance several times before in previous posts, so I won't go on about it for too long. This is probably the worst ice dance in history. Up to and including the 2010 Olympics, ice dance had 3 events: the compulsory dances, which were standard ice dances based on ballroom dances, the original dance, which had required elements with a different theme each season, and the free dance. The theme for the original dance for the 2010 Olympic season was dances from around the world. This led to a lot of, should I say, interesting program choices. This goes beyond mild cultural appropriation into something downright insulting. Unsurprisingly, the skaters received a lot of flack for this program. However, my previous statement still stands. They are not the only ones at fault here. They have a whole team of coaches, choreographers, and costume designers who all thought this was a good idea. Well, it was definitely something different, but not in a good way. The ISU later changed the ice dance events to two events, the short dance and the free dance. I often wonder if this program and other questionable ones like it helped drive that decision.
The "Whack Heard Round the World"
So, this one needs no introduction. Unless you've been living under a rock, everyone knows about the Tonya/Nancy scandal. And now there's a movie out about Tonya Harding. As I mentioned, I'm tired of hearing about this and don't really care to write about it. Then there's all the good, bad, and ugly takes out there about how skating isn't as popular as it was back then and other such tomfoolery. This was 24 years ago. Time to move on.
Sonja Henie Nazi salute?
Other than Tonya Harding, the only other skater who was surrounded with rumors, controversy and intrigue was figure skating icon Sonja Henie. Just before the 1936 Olympics in Germany, Sonja saw Hitler while she was skating and stopped and said "Heil Hitler" to him. He apparently was also a big fan of hers as well.
Understandably, this caused a huge uproar. It is very unsettling to think that someone who is credited with bringing figure skating to the masses could be associated with Hitler or the Nazis in any way. This article from Vanity Fair sheds a fascinating light on this situation. Many skaters think she mainly did this for publicity and career, and that she was not inherently a political person, and she did not really know what Nazis were about. There are still a lot of missing details in this story, so we may never know. Ironically, after retiring from competitive skating, she toured overseas with the USO tour, primarily geared toward US Forces and allies.
Wolfgang Schwarz Kidnapping Plot and Sex Trafficking
In what is probably the most disturbing thing of all, the 1968 Olympic Gold Medalist Wolfgang Schwarz was convicted in 2006 of plotting to kidnap the daughter of an Austrian businessman for a $3.6 million ransom. Just before that, he was charged with trafficking Lithuanian girls and bringing them to Austria to work as prostitutes, then taking a portion of the money. He was acquitted of this charge in 2005, but was previously convicted for this very same thing in 2002. He ended up only staying 1.5 years in prison because he was recovering from skin cancer.
Well folks, I hope you have enjoyed the ride with all this drama, some silly and frivolous, and other things just disturbing and wrong. Let the drama of this season be mild, if there has to be any at all. Stay tuned for more posts! You know I'll be all over the internet for the Olympics soon, and so will you!
- Icy Trails ⛸
