We’re
down to 284 days until the Olympics, and if we’re ever going to understand the
new judging system, it’s time to get started.
Of
course, we can’t simply leave behind almost a century of the 6.0 judging system
without giving it some credit.
Yes,
that’s right. The 6.0 system. No, a 10 was never a perfect score in amateur
figure skating. The perfect score was
the 6.0. A 5.9 was exceptional and a 5.7
or so would usually land you on the podium.
Unless, of course, you were a junior skater, in which case the scores
were usually between 4.8-5.2, and you could easily wipe out the competition
with a 5.3. One of the greatest benefits
of this system was the fact that in all four disciplines, a good score looked
the same. 5.9 in pairs was just as good
as 5.9 in ladies. Not so today—but we’ll
get to that later. Today, we discuss the
swan song of 6.0
It was
February of 2002, and the Winter Olympics were being held in Salt Lake City,
Utah. The Pairs long program was going
on. Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton
Sikharulidze (for the record, I spelled both of those names right on the first
try, 11 years after the event—it’s a shame they don’t have a Russian Last Name
Spelling Bee) had just skated, and had one small error. Their chief rivals, Canadians Jamie Salé and
David Pelletier, were about to take the ice.
Here’s what happened:
Eleven
years later, and we have a new judging system.
There’s not a doubt in my mind the system is the direct result of the
media hype that exploded after that evening.
Many opponents of the new system have blamed commentators Sandra Bezic
and Scott Hamilton for overreacting and misleading the American public, and to
some extent, they were right. Close
results like this weren’t unheard of in skating, and Salé and Pelletier had the
easier program. At this point in time,
there’s no going back to those olden days, so get ready to do some math to
figure out the winners in 2014. More on
that in another post.
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