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Sochi Winter Olympic 2014
- Thread starter singveld
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Sochi 2014: Yuzuru Hanyu wins figure skating gold at 19
Yuzuru Hanyu became the first Japanese man to win an Olympic figure skating gold as he secured his country's first title of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
The 19-year-old fell twice in the free skating final but prevailed thanks to a world record score in Thursday's short programme and errors from his rivals.
Hanyu posted an overall score of 280.09 to beat Patrick Chan of Canada, who also stumbled in his last performance.
Kazakhstan's Denis Ten, the world silver medallist, took the bronze.
Hanyu, also the first Asian to win figure skating gold, became the youngest winner of the Olympic men's title since American Dick Button in 1948.
"A win's a win's a win. It's going to sink in. This is history. It's a gift for my country," said Hanyu.
"I'm so surprised. I can't find the words. It was such a difficult programme for me and I felt rough, physically. I'm just shocked. I'm so proud of this feat as a Japanese."
Denis Ten captured the bronze medal at the 2014 Olympics in the men’s figure skating competition.
Ten finished behind Patrick Chan of Canada and Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan.
SOCHI. KAZINFORM - Kazakhstan's figure skater Denis Ten has clinched bronze at the XXII Winter Olympics Games in Sochi today.
The 20-year-old stunner from Kazakhstan won total score of 255.10 points after short and free programs. Gold went to Yuzuru Hanyu from Japan. Patrick Chan of Canada collected silver.
This is the first Olympic medal for Kazakhstan at the 2014 Winter Olympiad in Sochi.
He ended with an overall score of 255.10, less than two points ahead of fourth place Javier Fernandez of Spain and Tatsuki Machida of Japan.
Ten previously won the silver medal at the 2013 Wold Games.
He’s part of the Korean minority in Kazakhstan. He moved to Moscow, Russia in 2004 with his mother. In 2010, they moved to California.
Ten began competing internationally in 2006 at the age of 13. He’s now 20.
Ten finished behind Patrick Chan of Canada and Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan.
SOCHI. KAZINFORM - Kazakhstan's figure skater Denis Ten has clinched bronze at the XXII Winter Olympics Games in Sochi today.
The 20-year-old stunner from Kazakhstan won total score of 255.10 points after short and free programs. Gold went to Yuzuru Hanyu from Japan. Patrick Chan of Canada collected silver.
This is the first Olympic medal for Kazakhstan at the 2014 Winter Olympiad in Sochi.
He ended with an overall score of 255.10, less than two points ahead of fourth place Javier Fernandez of Spain and Tatsuki Machida of Japan.
Ten previously won the silver medal at the 2013 Wold Games.
He’s part of the Korean minority in Kazakhstan. He moved to Moscow, Russia in 2004 with his mother. In 2010, they moved to California.
Ten began competing internationally in 2006 at the age of 13. He’s now 20.
Japanese figure skating star Yuzuru Hanyu wins gold despite falling twice
The 19-year-old Japanese star Yuzuru Hanyu has become the youngest skater for 66 years to take gold in the men’s figure skating, despite falling twice in his final performance.
After becoming the first skater to surpass the 100-point mark in the short programme on Thursday, Hanyu went into the free skate on Friday in the top spot.
Hanyu made the rotation for the quad in the opening seconds, but slipped on the landing and lost his footing badly. After another fall on a triple flip, Hanyu finished crouched on the ice, his head bowed, certain he had lost the gold.
The judges awarded him 178.64 points – a good score, but one that left him vulnerable to three-time world champion Patrick Chan of Canada. But Chan, up next, fared worse, and made three errors. Hanyu’s combined score of 280.09 was enough give him the gold.
World silver medalist Denis Ten of Kazakhstan took the bronze. Hanyu is the Asian to take Olympic gold in the men’s figure staking.
The 19-year-old Japanese star Yuzuru Hanyu has become the youngest skater for 66 years to take gold in the men’s figure skating, despite falling twice in his final performance.
After becoming the first skater to surpass the 100-point mark in the short programme on Thursday, Hanyu went into the free skate on Friday in the top spot.
Hanyu made the rotation for the quad in the opening seconds, but slipped on the landing and lost his footing badly. After another fall on a triple flip, Hanyu finished crouched on the ice, his head bowed, certain he had lost the gold.
The judges awarded him 178.64 points – a good score, but one that left him vulnerable to three-time world champion Patrick Chan of Canada. But Chan, up next, fared worse, and made three errors. Hanyu’s combined score of 280.09 was enough give him the gold.
World silver medalist Denis Ten of Kazakhstan took the bronze. Hanyu is the Asian to take Olympic gold in the men’s figure staking.
due to the falls of gold and silver medalist, supporters of bronze medalist made a petition.
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Petition Asks that Figure Skater Denis Ten Be Awarded a Retroactive Gold Medal
Impossible? It happened once, when the whole world was up in arms 12 years ago at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Why not again now?
Corruption and political bias may be as old as figure skating itself, but sometimes the judges push their luck to the point where the world cannot accept the outrage any longer. As a result of worldwide protests, as well as a confession of corruption from a French judge, the International Skating Union (ISU) made an unprecedented decision at the 2002 Games: to award a second Olympic gold medal to the Canadian pairs team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who viewers and experts alike believed should have won the gold in the first place.
Now a new petition posted last night asks that the same type of action be taken to redress a terrible wrong done less than two weeks ago at this year’s World Figure Skating Championship by awarding a gold medal in the men’s competition to the man who most deserved it: Kazakhstan’s Denis Ten. The petition is addressed to Ottavio Cinquanta, the president of the International Skating Union (ISU), and Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The perennial overmarking of World Champion Patrick Chan of Canada, who gave a performance so flawed that even he apologized for it, robbed a very talented young skater of the gold medal he clearly earned. Ten — the first skater from Kazakhstan to ever break into the ranks of elite skaters — delivered the program of his life on March 15, 2013. His program was not just technically difficult and flawless, but artistically exquisite as well. His scores were high and he won the long program, but by a margin so small that it allowed Patrick Chan to squeeze by him and win the gold yet again. That, in spite of the fact that Chan’s program was marred by four major mistakes, including two falls.
Any other skater but Chan would not have even been within striking distance of the podium with such a skate. Yet the judges deemed Chan't disastrous skate to be almost as good as Ten’s perfect performance. And based on the combined short and long program score, they awarded him the gold medal.
It is true that Chan’s short program was flawless, but so was Denis Ten’s, who was second to Chan in that phase of the competition. Yet the difference in the long (and far more important) program between the two skaters was far smaller than difference between them in the short, where they both skated clean programs. How can that be defended?
Most of the press covering the event was up in arms. Here is a sample of headlines and quotes from the press and skaters:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/760/...-the-2013-world-figure-skating-championships/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Petition Asks that Figure Skater Denis Ten Be Awarded a Retroactive Gold Medal
Impossible? It happened once, when the whole world was up in arms 12 years ago at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Why not again now?
Corruption and political bias may be as old as figure skating itself, but sometimes the judges push their luck to the point where the world cannot accept the outrage any longer. As a result of worldwide protests, as well as a confession of corruption from a French judge, the International Skating Union (ISU) made an unprecedented decision at the 2002 Games: to award a second Olympic gold medal to the Canadian pairs team of Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, who viewers and experts alike believed should have won the gold in the first place.
Now a new petition posted last night asks that the same type of action be taken to redress a terrible wrong done less than two weeks ago at this year’s World Figure Skating Championship by awarding a gold medal in the men’s competition to the man who most deserved it: Kazakhstan’s Denis Ten. The petition is addressed to Ottavio Cinquanta, the president of the International Skating Union (ISU), and Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The perennial overmarking of World Champion Patrick Chan of Canada, who gave a performance so flawed that even he apologized for it, robbed a very talented young skater of the gold medal he clearly earned. Ten — the first skater from Kazakhstan to ever break into the ranks of elite skaters — delivered the program of his life on March 15, 2013. His program was not just technically difficult and flawless, but artistically exquisite as well. His scores were high and he won the long program, but by a margin so small that it allowed Patrick Chan to squeeze by him and win the gold yet again. That, in spite of the fact that Chan’s program was marred by four major mistakes, including two falls.
Any other skater but Chan would not have even been within striking distance of the podium with such a skate. Yet the judges deemed Chan't disastrous skate to be almost as good as Ten’s perfect performance. And based on the combined short and long program score, they awarded him the gold medal.
It is true that Chan’s short program was flawless, but so was Denis Ten’s, who was second to Chan in that phase of the competition. Yet the difference in the long (and far more important) program between the two skaters was far smaller than difference between them in the short, where they both skated clean programs. How can that be defended?
Most of the press covering the event was up in arms. Here is a sample of headlines and quotes from the press and skaters:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/760/...-the-2013-world-figure-skating-championships/
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Russian Figure Skater Evgeni Plushenko Abruptly Withdraws From Olympics, Retires
Russian Olympian Evgeni Plushenko has done his last triple axel. The 31-year-old figure skater's career came to an abrupt end on Thursday, Feb. 13, when he withdrew from the men's event at the Sochi Winter Olympics and then retired from skating altogether.
Plushenko, a four-time Olympic medalist, has a chronic bad back, which he aggravated in practice on Wednesday. According to the Associated Press, he struggled visibly in warmups before the short program, later saying it felt "like a knife in [his] back" when he fell on a jump.
Seconds after his name was announced in competition, the AP reports, he skated over to the judges' table to withdraw, then turned to the crowd with both arms raised in acknowledgement. He announced his retirement a short time later.
"I think it's God saying, 'Evgeni, enough, enough with skating," Plushenko is quoted as saying. "[My] age, it's okay. But I have 12 surgeries. I'd like to be healthy."
The news comes just days after the athlete helped his country win team gold. The medal was his fourth in four Olympics; he also won individual gold at the 2006 Torino Games, and silver at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and the 2010 Vancouver Games, both for his singles skate.
"This is not tragedy what happened with Evgeni," his coach Alexei Mishin said. "I was with him 20 years. Mostly we have good success. Mostly he was a winner."
Russian Olympian Evgeni Plushenko has done his last triple axel. The 31-year-old figure skater's career came to an abrupt end on Thursday, Feb. 13, when he withdrew from the men's event at the Sochi Winter Olympics and then retired from skating altogether.
Plushenko, a four-time Olympic medalist, has a chronic bad back, which he aggravated in practice on Wednesday. According to the Associated Press, he struggled visibly in warmups before the short program, later saying it felt "like a knife in [his] back" when he fell on a jump.
Seconds after his name was announced in competition, the AP reports, he skated over to the judges' table to withdraw, then turned to the crowd with both arms raised in acknowledgement. He announced his retirement a short time later.
"I think it's God saying, 'Evgeni, enough, enough with skating," Plushenko is quoted as saying. "[My] age, it's okay. But I have 12 surgeries. I'd like to be healthy."
The news comes just days after the athlete helped his country win team gold. The medal was his fourth in four Olympics; he also won individual gold at the 2006 Torino Games, and silver at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and the 2010 Vancouver Games, both for his singles skate.
"This is not tragedy what happened with Evgeni," his coach Alexei Mishin said. "I was with him 20 years. Mostly we have good success. Mostly he was a winner."
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Fall toward grace: Yuzuru Hanyu survives mistakes to win figure skating gold
SOCHI, Russia -- Yuzuru Hanyu made it difficult on himself before coming through to win Japan's first gold medal in Olympic men's figure skating Friday night at the Sochi Games.
Not only did Hanyu fall on his opening jump, a quad salchow, but he also crashed on his third, a triple flip. That left plenty of room for Canada's Patrick Chan to skate through to the top of the podium, but he made three errors in a watered-down program to finish second.
Canada has never won the event, either.
Yuzuru Hanyu's gold-medal journey took him from the destruction of the Sendai earthquake to the highest spot on the Olympic podium, writes Jim Caple. Story
Kazakhstan's Denis Ten, the world silver medalist, won bronze in Sochi in a final that was a two-man showdown between Hanyu, now the first Asian man to win a title at these Games, and three-time world champion Chan.
Neither performed close to his peak on a second consecutive night of competition. Most skaters appeared fatigued, particularly at the end of their 4 1/2-minute free skate routines. It was one of the sloppiest men's Olympic programs in memory.
Chan skated directly after Hanyu with a chance to do what such renowned Canadian men as Donald Jackson, Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko and his own coach, Brian Orser, could not. But he wasn't sharp either, and the difference at the end was pretty much Hanyu's nearly 4-point margin carried over from Thursday's short program.
When the 19-year-old Hanyu finished, kneeling, he laid two hands on the ice for a long time, thinking he had blown it.
"I was so nervous and I was so tired,'' he said. "But I was surprised (to win). I was not happy with my program.''
Yuzuru Hanyu "was so sad" after his two falls on the second night of men's figure skating, but his scores proved good enough to capture the first men's gold medal in the event for Japan.
Orser told him not to fret, that the competition wasn't over. And when Chan came up short, as nearly every man did in the free skate, the gold was headed to Japan.
Asked if he thought he would win, Hanyu shook his head.
"No, I was so sad,'' he said.
But he was thrilled when the final results were posted, and he skated around the rink draped in a Japanese flag after the flower ceremony. Around the Iceberg rink were about two dozen banners supporting him and the Japanese team.
The last time Japan won gold at the Winter Olympics was eight years ago when Shizuka Arakawa took top honors in women's figure skating in Turin.
Ten, coached by Frank Carroll, who helped Evan Lysacek win the 2010 gold medal, surged from ninth to third with a busy free skate that include three spot-on combination jumps. It is Kazakhstan's first Olympic figure skating medal.
American Jason Brown, 19, of Highland Park, Ill., fell from sixth to ninth, earning no points for a triple loop at the end of his program because of a previous false takeoff that was counted as a jump.
"I went out there and just performed and where I ended up is where I ended up,'' Brown said, "but I'm so proud to be in that top 10.''
Four-time U.S. champion Jeremy Abbott, of Aspen, Colo., rallied from 15th to 12th place.
Javier Fernandez, seeking Spain's first Olympic figure skating medal, struggled and fell from third to fourth. He repeated a triple salchow without putting it in a combination, costing him precious points.
Japan's Daisuke Takahashi, the 2010 bronze medalist and among the most popular skaters in the event -- there were Dice-K signs throughout his rooting section -- had a flawed if gorgeously choreographed program to a Beatles medley. He finished sixth, one spot behind countryman Tatsuki Machida.
That gave Japan half of the top six finishers, spectacular for a nation that until 2010 never stepped on the men's podium.
Not on the ice, of course, was Russian star Evgeni Plushenko. He dropped out before the short program on Thursday night with a back injury.
SOCHI, Russia -- Yuzuru Hanyu made it difficult on himself before coming through to win Japan's first gold medal in Olympic men's figure skating Friday night at the Sochi Games.
Not only did Hanyu fall on his opening jump, a quad salchow, but he also crashed on his third, a triple flip. That left plenty of room for Canada's Patrick Chan to skate through to the top of the podium, but he made three errors in a watered-down program to finish second.
Canada has never won the event, either.
Yuzuru Hanyu's gold-medal journey took him from the destruction of the Sendai earthquake to the highest spot on the Olympic podium, writes Jim Caple. Story
Kazakhstan's Denis Ten, the world silver medalist, won bronze in Sochi in a final that was a two-man showdown between Hanyu, now the first Asian man to win a title at these Games, and three-time world champion Chan.
Neither performed close to his peak on a second consecutive night of competition. Most skaters appeared fatigued, particularly at the end of their 4 1/2-minute free skate routines. It was one of the sloppiest men's Olympic programs in memory.
Chan skated directly after Hanyu with a chance to do what such renowned Canadian men as Donald Jackson, Kurt Browning, Elvis Stojko and his own coach, Brian Orser, could not. But he wasn't sharp either, and the difference at the end was pretty much Hanyu's nearly 4-point margin carried over from Thursday's short program.
When the 19-year-old Hanyu finished, kneeling, he laid two hands on the ice for a long time, thinking he had blown it.
"I was so nervous and I was so tired,'' he said. "But I was surprised (to win). I was not happy with my program.''
Yuzuru Hanyu "was so sad" after his two falls on the second night of men's figure skating, but his scores proved good enough to capture the first men's gold medal in the event for Japan.
Orser told him not to fret, that the competition wasn't over. And when Chan came up short, as nearly every man did in the free skate, the gold was headed to Japan.
Asked if he thought he would win, Hanyu shook his head.
"No, I was so sad,'' he said.
But he was thrilled when the final results were posted, and he skated around the rink draped in a Japanese flag after the flower ceremony. Around the Iceberg rink were about two dozen banners supporting him and the Japanese team.
The last time Japan won gold at the Winter Olympics was eight years ago when Shizuka Arakawa took top honors in women's figure skating in Turin.
Ten, coached by Frank Carroll, who helped Evan Lysacek win the 2010 gold medal, surged from ninth to third with a busy free skate that include three spot-on combination jumps. It is Kazakhstan's first Olympic figure skating medal.
American Jason Brown, 19, of Highland Park, Ill., fell from sixth to ninth, earning no points for a triple loop at the end of his program because of a previous false takeoff that was counted as a jump.
"I went out there and just performed and where I ended up is where I ended up,'' Brown said, "but I'm so proud to be in that top 10.''
Four-time U.S. champion Jeremy Abbott, of Aspen, Colo., rallied from 15th to 12th place.
Javier Fernandez, seeking Spain's first Olympic figure skating medal, struggled and fell from third to fourth. He repeated a triple salchow without putting it in a combination, costing him precious points.
Japan's Daisuke Takahashi, the 2010 bronze medalist and among the most popular skaters in the event -- there were Dice-K signs throughout his rooting section -- had a flawed if gorgeously choreographed program to a Beatles medley. He finished sixth, one spot behind countryman Tatsuki Machida.
That gave Japan half of the top six finishers, spectacular for a nation that until 2010 never stepped on the men's podium.
Not on the ice, of course, was Russian star Evgeni Plushenko. He dropped out before the short program on Thursday night with a back injury.
Japan's Hanyu persevered through tragedy to win gold
SOCHI, Russia -- His rink damaged and his hometown of Sendai destroyed, Yuzuru Hanyu wasn't sure he even wanted to keep skating.
The mere act of living was difficult enough to bear with his world ravaged by the earthquake and tsunami three years ago, let alone maintaining the rigorous demands of being elite athlete. But Turin Olympic champion Shizuka Arakawa encouraged the then-16-year-old to continue, helping fund his training, and people in his region donated money and arranged charity shows.
His thank you comes in the form of an Olympic gold medal, the first for Japan in men's figure skating.
"I'm here because of all the people in Japan who helped me, all the people around the world who supported me," Hanyu said through an interpreter. "I think I'm able to give something good back, to return the favor, if you will."
Hanyu's performance Friday will not rank as one of the most memorable in Olympic history. In fact, with two falls early in his program, he was sure he had lost the gold medal. He stayed crouched in his final pose for several long seconds when his music finished, his head bowed.
When he finally rose, he gave a sheepish smile. So steely and composed in his short programs in both the team competition and the men's event, he had come unglued at the most inopportune time.
"I'm not happy with my program," Hanyu said.
But three-time world champion Patrick Chan was even more flawed and, for once, the judges refused to bail the Canadian out.
Hanyu won by almost five points, becoming the youngest Olympic champion since Dick Button in 1948 and continuing "the Canadian curse." Despite 14 world titles by Canadian men, Canada has never won an Olympic gold medal.
That Hanyu is coached by Brian Orser, one of the many Canadian men who fell short at the Olympics, and trains in Toronto, adds to the irony.
"Of course it's a chance missed," Chan said. "I had that gold medal around my neck and I didn't grasp it."
Denis Ten of Kazakhstan won the bronze medal. Jason Brown was ninth and Jeremy Abbott 12th, the worst U.S. finish since 1936.
Hanyu's journey to the top of the podium in Sochi goes directly back to Sendai.
As the junior world champion in 2010, Hanyu was considered Japan's next big star. But when the earthquake hit in March 2011, it damaged his rink so badly Hanyu could no longer train there. He relocated to Yokohama, and did ice shows both as a way to train and raise money.
Finally, a year after the earthquake, he moved to Toronto to train with Orser.
"The reason I relocated to Canada was a very difficult one," Hanyu said. "I really wanted to stay in Sendai City."
Hanyu has always had better hops than most kangaroos. But under Orser, who led Yuna Kim to the women's gold medal four years ago in Vancouver, he developed the elegance and performance quality of which Olympic champions are made.
Rebounding from his two falls, it was his artistic qualities that won Hanyu the gold. Skating to Romeo and Juliet, his edge quality was so magnificent Sochi organizers could cut up the ice and sell the carvings from his blades. His spins are tight, quick and perfectly centered, and he does them in such unique positions it looks as if he's got rubber for bones.
But judges have made a habit of propping up Chan -– he won last year's world title despite several major errors in his free skate -– and he was still to come.
"For six minutes I was panicking a little bit," Hanyu said.
Chan opened with a gorgeous quad toe loop –triple toe loop combination, done with such speed and flow he looked as if he were flying. But he fell apart from there, slipping on the landing of his second quad, another toe, and having to put his hands to the ice to keep from falling.
He stepped out of the landings of two more jumps, and doubled a planned triple salchow.
"I just made one too many mistakes," Chan said.
Hanyu tapped his heart as he heard himself introduced as Olympic champion for the first time, a smile breaking across his face. As Chan and Ten left the ice following the flower ceremony, Hanyu grabbed a Japanese flag and took a spirited victory lap by himself.
Or so it looked.
"Today, I am the only gold medalist," he said. "But I don't think I am here just spiritually by myself."
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SOCHI, Russia -- His rink damaged and his hometown of Sendai destroyed, Yuzuru Hanyu wasn't sure he even wanted to keep skating.
The mere act of living was difficult enough to bear with his world ravaged by the earthquake and tsunami three years ago, let alone maintaining the rigorous demands of being elite athlete. But Turin Olympic champion Shizuka Arakawa encouraged the then-16-year-old to continue, helping fund his training, and people in his region donated money and arranged charity shows.
His thank you comes in the form of an Olympic gold medal, the first for Japan in men's figure skating.
"I'm here because of all the people in Japan who helped me, all the people around the world who supported me," Hanyu said through an interpreter. "I think I'm able to give something good back, to return the favor, if you will."
Hanyu's performance Friday will not rank as one of the most memorable in Olympic history. In fact, with two falls early in his program, he was sure he had lost the gold medal. He stayed crouched in his final pose for several long seconds when his music finished, his head bowed.
When he finally rose, he gave a sheepish smile. So steely and composed in his short programs in both the team competition and the men's event, he had come unglued at the most inopportune time.
"I'm not happy with my program," Hanyu said.
But three-time world champion Patrick Chan was even more flawed and, for once, the judges refused to bail the Canadian out.
Hanyu won by almost five points, becoming the youngest Olympic champion since Dick Button in 1948 and continuing "the Canadian curse." Despite 14 world titles by Canadian men, Canada has never won an Olympic gold medal.
That Hanyu is coached by Brian Orser, one of the many Canadian men who fell short at the Olympics, and trains in Toronto, adds to the irony.
"Of course it's a chance missed," Chan said. "I had that gold medal around my neck and I didn't grasp it."
Denis Ten of Kazakhstan won the bronze medal. Jason Brown was ninth and Jeremy Abbott 12th, the worst U.S. finish since 1936.
Hanyu's journey to the top of the podium in Sochi goes directly back to Sendai.
As the junior world champion in 2010, Hanyu was considered Japan's next big star. But when the earthquake hit in March 2011, it damaged his rink so badly Hanyu could no longer train there. He relocated to Yokohama, and did ice shows both as a way to train and raise money.
Finally, a year after the earthquake, he moved to Toronto to train with Orser.
"The reason I relocated to Canada was a very difficult one," Hanyu said. "I really wanted to stay in Sendai City."
Hanyu has always had better hops than most kangaroos. But under Orser, who led Yuna Kim to the women's gold medal four years ago in Vancouver, he developed the elegance and performance quality of which Olympic champions are made.
Rebounding from his two falls, it was his artistic qualities that won Hanyu the gold. Skating to Romeo and Juliet, his edge quality was so magnificent Sochi organizers could cut up the ice and sell the carvings from his blades. His spins are tight, quick and perfectly centered, and he does them in such unique positions it looks as if he's got rubber for bones.
But judges have made a habit of propping up Chan -– he won last year's world title despite several major errors in his free skate -– and he was still to come.
"For six minutes I was panicking a little bit," Hanyu said.
Chan opened with a gorgeous quad toe loop –triple toe loop combination, done with such speed and flow he looked as if he were flying. But he fell apart from there, slipping on the landing of his second quad, another toe, and having to put his hands to the ice to keep from falling.
He stepped out of the landings of two more jumps, and doubled a planned triple salchow.
"I just made one too many mistakes," Chan said.
Hanyu tapped his heart as he heard himself introduced as Olympic champion for the first time, a smile breaking across his face. As Chan and Ten left the ice following the flower ceremony, Hanyu grabbed a Japanese flag and took a spirited victory lap by himself.
Or so it looked.
"Today, I am the only gold medalist," he said. "But I don't think I am here just spiritually by myself."
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Russians criticize figure skater Plushenko for dropping out of Sochi Olympics
Russians are turning on legendary figure skater Evgeni Plushenko -- their own countryman -- a day after he dropped out of the Sochi Olympics for medical reasons.
Plushenko's strong performance in the team event helped Russia earn its first gold medal at the Sochi Games, along with wide accolades for his determination to overcome a prior back injury. But on Thursday he withdrew before the men's short program, complaining of severe spinal pain during the warmup.
Plushenko received loud cheers as he took the ice in preparation for his routine, but when he limped out of the Iceberg Arena, the cheering stopped, eventually turning into mild applause.
“I feel sorry for my fans, and I feel sorry for everybody. But I tried – I tried until the end…I almost cried there, because it’s hard, believe me. This is the end of my career," an emotional Plushenko said in an interview with NBC shortly after he skated off Olympic ice for the last time. "I am normal people like you. I'm not robot. I try my best and I try to go 'til the end."
But on Friday, some Russians suggested Plushenko didn't go far enough.
"I think Zhenya will understand my words," said longtime rival Alexei Yagudin, the 2002 Olympic gold medalist, using the familiar version of Plushenko's name. "We always competed through the pain."
Alexei Yagudin told the R-Sport news agency he supports "people who go to the end."
Plushenko was Russia's only men singles skater in Sochi. He won the slot in a closed exhibition skate that cut out Maxim Kovtun, who beat him in the Russian nationals.
The choice of Plushenko as the sole Russian man was debatable. Although he was the dominant skater the past 15 years, with an Olympic gold and two silvers before coming to Sochi, he is 31 years old and underwent back surgery a year ago. When he was selected, advocates argued his long international experience made him a stronger choice than the 18-year-old Kovtun.
But that came under sharp questioning Friday.
"You should go when it's time," Ruslan Nugmatullin, a former Russian national soccer goalkeeper said on Twitter. "Kovtun earned the right to participate in Sochi2014."
Alexei Urmanov, the 1994 Olympic gold-medal winner, suggested that Plushenko's hubris backfired.
"It's on the conscience of Zhenya, the team and the federation," he was quoted by R-Sport.
Plushenko's coach, Alexei Mishin, defended the skater for competing in the Sochi Games.
"At the end of the free skating [in the team event], he was feeling unsure. I have worked with him for 20 years. We have had lots of success," Mishin said, according to FoxSports.com. "This is one incident in 20 years when he was not successful. Please be positive to him and respect him."
To some politicians though, Plushenko's withdrawal was a blow to Russia's national pride.
"Perform through the pain for the honor of the country," Igor Lebedev, a parliament member from the nationalist Liberal Democrats, said on Twitter.
Elena Vaitsekhovskaya, the figure skating correspondent for Russia's Sport-Express newspaper, seemed weary not only of the intrigue behind Plushenko's selection but also of the appearances of his flamboyant wife, Yana Rudkovskaya, in the mixed zone to support him.
"All of this was reminiscent of an incompetently directed stage show," she wrote. "It became harder and harder to sympathize with the athlete."
"The one-man show in Sochi has concluded. Real sport has begun," she said in the newspaper's Friday edition.
But more complaints may still come.
"After Sochi, the federation will have to answer for its choice," nationalist lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky said.
Plushenko retired from figure skating Thursday after withdrawing from the Olympics.
Russians are turning on legendary figure skater Evgeni Plushenko -- their own countryman -- a day after he dropped out of the Sochi Olympics for medical reasons.
Plushenko's strong performance in the team event helped Russia earn its first gold medal at the Sochi Games, along with wide accolades for his determination to overcome a prior back injury. But on Thursday he withdrew before the men's short program, complaining of severe spinal pain during the warmup.
Plushenko received loud cheers as he took the ice in preparation for his routine, but when he limped out of the Iceberg Arena, the cheering stopped, eventually turning into mild applause.
“I feel sorry for my fans, and I feel sorry for everybody. But I tried – I tried until the end…I almost cried there, because it’s hard, believe me. This is the end of my career," an emotional Plushenko said in an interview with NBC shortly after he skated off Olympic ice for the last time. "I am normal people like you. I'm not robot. I try my best and I try to go 'til the end."
But on Friday, some Russians suggested Plushenko didn't go far enough.
"I think Zhenya will understand my words," said longtime rival Alexei Yagudin, the 2002 Olympic gold medalist, using the familiar version of Plushenko's name. "We always competed through the pain."
Alexei Yagudin told the R-Sport news agency he supports "people who go to the end."
Plushenko was Russia's only men singles skater in Sochi. He won the slot in a closed exhibition skate that cut out Maxim Kovtun, who beat him in the Russian nationals.
The choice of Plushenko as the sole Russian man was debatable. Although he was the dominant skater the past 15 years, with an Olympic gold and two silvers before coming to Sochi, he is 31 years old and underwent back surgery a year ago. When he was selected, advocates argued his long international experience made him a stronger choice than the 18-year-old Kovtun.
But that came under sharp questioning Friday.
"You should go when it's time," Ruslan Nugmatullin, a former Russian national soccer goalkeeper said on Twitter. "Kovtun earned the right to participate in Sochi2014."
Alexei Urmanov, the 1994 Olympic gold-medal winner, suggested that Plushenko's hubris backfired.
"It's on the conscience of Zhenya, the team and the federation," he was quoted by R-Sport.
Plushenko's coach, Alexei Mishin, defended the skater for competing in the Sochi Games.
"At the end of the free skating [in the team event], he was feeling unsure. I have worked with him for 20 years. We have had lots of success," Mishin said, according to FoxSports.com. "This is one incident in 20 years when he was not successful. Please be positive to him and respect him."
To some politicians though, Plushenko's withdrawal was a blow to Russia's national pride.
"Perform through the pain for the honor of the country," Igor Lebedev, a parliament member from the nationalist Liberal Democrats, said on Twitter.
Elena Vaitsekhovskaya, the figure skating correspondent for Russia's Sport-Express newspaper, seemed weary not only of the intrigue behind Plushenko's selection but also of the appearances of his flamboyant wife, Yana Rudkovskaya, in the mixed zone to support him.
"All of this was reminiscent of an incompetently directed stage show," she wrote. "It became harder and harder to sympathize with the athlete."
"The one-man show in Sochi has concluded. Real sport has begun," she said in the newspaper's Friday edition.
But more complaints may still come.
"After Sochi, the federation will have to answer for its choice," nationalist lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky said.
Plushenko retired from figure skating Thursday after withdrawing from the Olympics.
How ski jumping gets Olympic judging right (and figure skating gets it wrong)
This is a guest post by Dartmouth economist Eric Zitzewitz. When not writing about such topics as benchmark indices and equity compensation, he is the author of two papers on bias in figure skating judging.
Maybe it’s something in the water, but journalists seem especially interested in corruption this Olympics. And the Olympics are cooperating: halfway through the first week, we already have criticism of the slopestyle judging and far more serious allegations of a figure skating vote trading scheme reminiscent of the scandals in 1998 and 2002.
Some amount of bias is probably inevitable in judged sports. The question is, can a sport do anything to control it? As an otherwise serious academic economist, I got interested in Olympic judging because I was interested in how groups of people make decisions. A group of judges picking a gold medalist is at least a little analogous to a committee deciding whom to hire. Individual members each have their own opinions about the decision, and these opinions reflect both valuable information and the members’ biases. The question is how to combine these opinions, and how to create incentives for members to stay as unbiased as possible.
Both ski jumping and figure skating have nationalistic judging biases, where judges give higher scores to athletes from their countries. But the sports take very different approaches to dealing with this. Ski jumping has its international federation select the judges for competitions like the Olympics, and I find that they select the least biased judges. Figure skating lets its national federations select the judges, and my research showed that they select the most biased judges.
This creates different incentives for judges. Ski jumping judges display less nationalism in lower-level competitions — it appears they keep their nationalism under wraps in less important contests to avoid missing their chance at judging the Olympics. Figure skating judges are actually more biased in the lesser contests; they may actually be more biased than they would like to be due to pressure from their federations.
Despite being nationalistically biased, ski jumping judges appear to care about fairness. Having a compatriot judge is actually not an advantage in ski jumping. I find that while you get a higher score from your compatriot, the other four judges lower your score ever so slightly, leaving you no better (or worse) off.
The reverse happens in figure skating. Not only does a figure skater with a compatriot judge get a higher score from that judge, but they also get higher scores on average from the other judges, too (compared with events when they are not represented on the panel). This is evidence of vote trading, of the kind that occurred at the Olympics in 1998, 2002, and (allegedly) is occurring in 2014. Most of the benefit of having a compatriot judge actually comes through the vote trading. Skaters even benefit from having compatriot judges on the panels of other events, which is consistent with the fact that the vote trading we know about is often across events.
The dysfunctionality of the sport is also revealed by how it reacted to the 2002 judging scandal. The International Skating Union made a couple of sensible reforms, such as increasing the size of the judging panel (at least temporarily) and making the scoring system more objective (although some think they went too far). But most of their response consisted of hiding the evidence of bias. The ISU stopped revealing which judge gave which score, making it much harder for competitors and fans to see whether the judging was fair. The ISU even went back and altered online score sheets from earlier competitions, obfuscating which judge gave which score and even which country each judge represented. They also began randomly dropping scores from three out of 12 judges. As any statistician can tell you, an average of nine out of 12 scores is essentially the average of the 12 scores plus a random number. When Yale statistics professor Jay Emerson noticed that in one case this randomness had altered who won a medal, it appears that the ISU responded by scrambling the order that scores were reported on score sheets. The only plausible purpose of this change was to make it harder to identify cases where randomness had affected results. All this suggests that the focus has been on hiding problems rather than fixing them.
While the scrubbing of past score sheets and randomization are very hard to defend, the ISU argues that judge anonymity should actually help prevent vote trading deals by making it easier for judges to secretly renege on them. The argument is basically the same for the secret ballot in elections or voice voting in legislatures, where the idea is to protect voters or lawmakers from external influences. Anonymity, though, also protects judges from monitoring by outsiders. I find that judging biases got about 20 percent larger after anonymity was introduced, suggesting that in this case, transparency is the better approach.
Of all these results, I am most intrigued by the contrast between the ski jumping judges undoing each other’s biases and the figure skating judges reinforcing them. When we make decisions in a group at work, we often encounter individuals with strong biases — say to hire a particular type of job candidate. When we do, we have a choice. We can act like a ski jumping judge, and resist the bias, in an effort to keep things fair. Or we can act like a figure skating judge and say “hiring this guy really seems important to Joe, I wonder what he’ll give me in return if I go along.” We have probably all seen examples of both in our lives.
What determines whether we get “ski jumping” or “figure skating” behavior out of our colleagues? Incentives are part of the story, and an organizational culture helps create those incentives. Whether a skilled vote trader is viewed as a savvy operator, or as someone who undermines the organization’s mission, is partly a question of values. But culture is also a product of the incentives people face. Whether the “skilled operators” move up in the world affects the extent to which that skill is respected.
As an economist, I know how to fix figure skating judges’ incentives. Fixing culture is harder, but my hope would be that if you can get the incentives right, the culture will eventually follow.
This is a guest post by Dartmouth economist Eric Zitzewitz. When not writing about such topics as benchmark indices and equity compensation, he is the author of two papers on bias in figure skating judging.
Maybe it’s something in the water, but journalists seem especially interested in corruption this Olympics. And the Olympics are cooperating: halfway through the first week, we already have criticism of the slopestyle judging and far more serious allegations of a figure skating vote trading scheme reminiscent of the scandals in 1998 and 2002.
Some amount of bias is probably inevitable in judged sports. The question is, can a sport do anything to control it? As an otherwise serious academic economist, I got interested in Olympic judging because I was interested in how groups of people make decisions. A group of judges picking a gold medalist is at least a little analogous to a committee deciding whom to hire. Individual members each have their own opinions about the decision, and these opinions reflect both valuable information and the members’ biases. The question is how to combine these opinions, and how to create incentives for members to stay as unbiased as possible.
Both ski jumping and figure skating have nationalistic judging biases, where judges give higher scores to athletes from their countries. But the sports take very different approaches to dealing with this. Ski jumping has its international federation select the judges for competitions like the Olympics, and I find that they select the least biased judges. Figure skating lets its national federations select the judges, and my research showed that they select the most biased judges.
This creates different incentives for judges. Ski jumping judges display less nationalism in lower-level competitions — it appears they keep their nationalism under wraps in less important contests to avoid missing their chance at judging the Olympics. Figure skating judges are actually more biased in the lesser contests; they may actually be more biased than they would like to be due to pressure from their federations.
Despite being nationalistically biased, ski jumping judges appear to care about fairness. Having a compatriot judge is actually not an advantage in ski jumping. I find that while you get a higher score from your compatriot, the other four judges lower your score ever so slightly, leaving you no better (or worse) off.
The reverse happens in figure skating. Not only does a figure skater with a compatriot judge get a higher score from that judge, but they also get higher scores on average from the other judges, too (compared with events when they are not represented on the panel). This is evidence of vote trading, of the kind that occurred at the Olympics in 1998, 2002, and (allegedly) is occurring in 2014. Most of the benefit of having a compatriot judge actually comes through the vote trading. Skaters even benefit from having compatriot judges on the panels of other events, which is consistent with the fact that the vote trading we know about is often across events.
The dysfunctionality of the sport is also revealed by how it reacted to the 2002 judging scandal. The International Skating Union made a couple of sensible reforms, such as increasing the size of the judging panel (at least temporarily) and making the scoring system more objective (although some think they went too far). But most of their response consisted of hiding the evidence of bias. The ISU stopped revealing which judge gave which score, making it much harder for competitors and fans to see whether the judging was fair. The ISU even went back and altered online score sheets from earlier competitions, obfuscating which judge gave which score and even which country each judge represented. They also began randomly dropping scores from three out of 12 judges. As any statistician can tell you, an average of nine out of 12 scores is essentially the average of the 12 scores plus a random number. When Yale statistics professor Jay Emerson noticed that in one case this randomness had altered who won a medal, it appears that the ISU responded by scrambling the order that scores were reported on score sheets. The only plausible purpose of this change was to make it harder to identify cases where randomness had affected results. All this suggests that the focus has been on hiding problems rather than fixing them.
While the scrubbing of past score sheets and randomization are very hard to defend, the ISU argues that judge anonymity should actually help prevent vote trading deals by making it easier for judges to secretly renege on them. The argument is basically the same for the secret ballot in elections or voice voting in legislatures, where the idea is to protect voters or lawmakers from external influences. Anonymity, though, also protects judges from monitoring by outsiders. I find that judging biases got about 20 percent larger after anonymity was introduced, suggesting that in this case, transparency is the better approach.
Of all these results, I am most intrigued by the contrast between the ski jumping judges undoing each other’s biases and the figure skating judges reinforcing them. When we make decisions in a group at work, we often encounter individuals with strong biases — say to hire a particular type of job candidate. When we do, we have a choice. We can act like a ski jumping judge, and resist the bias, in an effort to keep things fair. Or we can act like a figure skating judge and say “hiring this guy really seems important to Joe, I wonder what he’ll give me in return if I go along.” We have probably all seen examples of both in our lives.
What determines whether we get “ski jumping” or “figure skating” behavior out of our colleagues? Incentives are part of the story, and an organizational culture helps create those incentives. Whether a skilled vote trader is viewed as a savvy operator, or as someone who undermines the organization’s mission, is partly a question of values. But culture is also a product of the incentives people face. Whether the “skilled operators” move up in the world affects the extent to which that skill is respected.
As an economist, I know how to fix figure skating judges’ incentives. Fixing culture is harder, but my hope would be that if you can get the incentives right, the culture will eventually follow.
Figure skating scoring lends itself to scandal, and getting worse: expert
The world of figure skating was thrown into controversy – again – over alleged vote swapping between the Russians and Americans, and for economist Eric Zitzewitz the problem lays within the judging system.
The allegations, outlined in a report by French newspaper L’Equipe, involved Russian and American judges exchanging votes to keep Canadian skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir off the podium.
Kevin Reynolds of Canada, left, and team members react as he sits in the results area after competing in the men's team free skate figure skating competition at the Iceberg Skating Palace during the 2014 Winter Olympics, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2014, in Sochi, Russia. Canada wins silver in Sochi team figure skating competition
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir compete in the team ice dance short dance figure skating competition at the Iceberg Skating Palace, Saturday, Feb. 8, 2014. Virtue and Moir shrug off reports of vote swapping skating scandal
Patrick Chan of Canada practices his routine during Figure Skating training ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Iceberg Skating Palace on February 3, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. Do salchows and twizzles leave your head spinning? Figure skating terms explained
Eric Zitzewitz, an economist at Dartmouth College, has studied judging biases in Olympic winter sports extensively and found that despite changes made by the International Skating Union (ISU) incidents of collusion between skating federations have gotten worse.
“As someone who has analyzed past data you do see evidence of vote trading and scoring patterns that are consistent with these type of arrangements,” said Zitzewitz. “Since the changes were made in 2002 things have gotten worse.”
In one study using data on roughly 3,000 performances from 61 international competitions between 2000-02 (including the Olympics), Zitzewitz found the “home judge bias” accounted for nearly 0.2 points in skaters’ routines, often enough to boost their rankings by a position or more. The research also supported the theory of vote-swapping, that figure skating federations were making backroom deals to favour each other’s skaters.
For many, especially Canadians, the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City will be forever marred by the figure skating scandal in which judges from five countries colluded to give Russian skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze the gold over Canadian skaters Jamie Salé and David Pelletier.
A resulting investigation had scores by a French judge removed and the gold medal given to the Canadians.
In the wake of the massive scandal, the ISU made several changes — most notably that judges scores would be kept anonymous.
Zitzewitz says the stated reason for getting rid of the transparency was it made it easier for judges to participate in collusive vote-swapping. But it also eliminated the ability for outsiders to monitor voting patterns.
“And so it becomes a question of which is more important? Monitoring by outsiders and the disciplining effect that it has on these sorts of arrangements or the monitoring by insiders,” he said.
READ MORE: Canada’s Bilodeau, Kingsbury win gold, silver in moguls at Sochi Olympics
Speaking to reporters in Sochi on Sunday, International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams dismissed the report from the French newspaper.
“I’ve seen absolutely no evidence apart from what I’ve read in the [L’Equipe] and we’ll treat that as a bit of gossip with no grounds,” Adams said.
The Canadians, Virtue and Moir, ultimately did finish second to their American rivals in the short dance segment of the new team event Saturday night, after the Canadian couple made a small technical error during their routine.
Despite the controversy, Virtue and Moir are preparing for the upcoming individual ice dance program.
“Our hats go off to what was probably a dominant Russian performance, and they really earned the gold medal and had some great skates,” said Moir in a phone interview from Russia. “From a personal standpoint there is some work for Tessa and I to do. Our goal wasn’t to come here and be silver medalists. We want to be Olympic champions.”
For our ongoing coverage on the Sochi Games, click here
According to Zitzewitz, a two step process is required in order to create a more honest judging system.
“My research suggest the ISU should go back to the disclosure regime in a way that allows [outsiders] to analyse the results of judges,” he said. “The other would be to allow the central body (ISU) to select judges rather than the federations. Although in figure skating this won’t happen until we have a central body that people trust more.”
The world of figure skating was thrown into controversy – again – over alleged vote swapping between the Russians and Americans, and for economist Eric Zitzewitz the problem lays within the judging system.
The allegations, outlined in a report by French newspaper L’Equipe, involved Russian and American judges exchanging votes to keep Canadian skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir off the podium.
Kevin Reynolds of Canada, left, and team members react as he sits in the results area after competing in the men's team free skate figure skating competition at the Iceberg Skating Palace during the 2014 Winter Olympics, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2014, in Sochi, Russia. Canada wins silver in Sochi team figure skating competition
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir compete in the team ice dance short dance figure skating competition at the Iceberg Skating Palace, Saturday, Feb. 8, 2014. Virtue and Moir shrug off reports of vote swapping skating scandal
Patrick Chan of Canada practices his routine during Figure Skating training ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Iceberg Skating Palace on February 3, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. Do salchows and twizzles leave your head spinning? Figure skating terms explained
Eric Zitzewitz, an economist at Dartmouth College, has studied judging biases in Olympic winter sports extensively and found that despite changes made by the International Skating Union (ISU) incidents of collusion between skating federations have gotten worse.
“As someone who has analyzed past data you do see evidence of vote trading and scoring patterns that are consistent with these type of arrangements,” said Zitzewitz. “Since the changes were made in 2002 things have gotten worse.”
In one study using data on roughly 3,000 performances from 61 international competitions between 2000-02 (including the Olympics), Zitzewitz found the “home judge bias” accounted for nearly 0.2 points in skaters’ routines, often enough to boost their rankings by a position or more. The research also supported the theory of vote-swapping, that figure skating federations were making backroom deals to favour each other’s skaters.
For many, especially Canadians, the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City will be forever marred by the figure skating scandal in which judges from five countries colluded to give Russian skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze the gold over Canadian skaters Jamie Salé and David Pelletier.
A resulting investigation had scores by a French judge removed and the gold medal given to the Canadians.
In the wake of the massive scandal, the ISU made several changes — most notably that judges scores would be kept anonymous.
Zitzewitz says the stated reason for getting rid of the transparency was it made it easier for judges to participate in collusive vote-swapping. But it also eliminated the ability for outsiders to monitor voting patterns.
“And so it becomes a question of which is more important? Monitoring by outsiders and the disciplining effect that it has on these sorts of arrangements or the monitoring by insiders,” he said.
READ MORE: Canada’s Bilodeau, Kingsbury win gold, silver in moguls at Sochi Olympics
Speaking to reporters in Sochi on Sunday, International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams dismissed the report from the French newspaper.
“I’ve seen absolutely no evidence apart from what I’ve read in the [L’Equipe] and we’ll treat that as a bit of gossip with no grounds,” Adams said.
The Canadians, Virtue and Moir, ultimately did finish second to their American rivals in the short dance segment of the new team event Saturday night, after the Canadian couple made a small technical error during their routine.
Despite the controversy, Virtue and Moir are preparing for the upcoming individual ice dance program.
“Our hats go off to what was probably a dominant Russian performance, and they really earned the gold medal and had some great skates,” said Moir in a phone interview from Russia. “From a personal standpoint there is some work for Tessa and I to do. Our goal wasn’t to come here and be silver medalists. We want to be Olympic champions.”
For our ongoing coverage on the Sochi Games, click here
According to Zitzewitz, a two step process is required in order to create a more honest judging system.
“My research suggest the ISU should go back to the disclosure regime in a way that allows [outsiders] to analyse the results of judges,” he said. “The other would be to allow the central body (ISU) to select judges rather than the federations. Although in figure skating this won’t happen until we have a central body that people trust more.”
Sochi Olympics: New allegations of figure skating scoring scandal
It’s been 12 years since the Olympics were rocked by a score-fixing scandal in figure skating that led to a dramatic makeover in how performers were judged. Now, just a few days in to the Sochi Olympics, new accusations of similar nefarious actions have been just a few days into the latest Games. The French publication L’Equipe is reporting that a Russian coach, speaking anonymously, has said the United States and Russian judges have colluded to aid each others’ teams. The coach told L’Equipe that the Russian judge would help U.S. ice dancing duo Meryl Davis and Charlie White take home the gold in exchange for the U.S. judge helping Russia secure gold in the pairs and team events.
In this Oct. 18, 2013 file photo, Meryl Davis and Charlie White perform their ice dancing short dance program during a practice session at the Skate America figure skating competition in Detroit. World champions Davis and White should easily ice dance their way into the Sochi Olympics. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
In this Oct. 18, 2013 file photo, Meryl Davis and Charlie White perform their ice dancing short dance program during a practice session at the Skate America figure skating competition in Detroit. World champions Davis and White should easily ice dance their way into the Sochi Olympics. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
In a statement to the press excerpted by the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. Figure Skating Association has denied any accusations of wrongdoing, calling the accusations “categorically false” and adding, “There is no ‘help’ between countries. We have no further response to rumors, anonymous sources or conjecture.”
There’s quite a nice rivalry between the U.S. team of Davis and White and the Canadian ice dancing duo, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who won gold in the Vancouver games (and are the biggest team standing between that U.S. pair and gold in Sochi). The two teams share both a practice rink and a coach. The U.S. duo took the first battle between the two earlier today when they outscored the Canadian duo in the team event.
Michael Slipchuk, of Skate Canada, told the Toronto Sun, “We were made aware of the article from L’Equipe today and we feel it is best not to comment on it. Canada is confident that the results of competition will be determined where they should be, on the ice.”
Meanwhile, Slipchuk did find it interesting that seven of Canada’s skaters have been called in for doping tests since arriving in Sochi: “Our skaters don’t complain about it. … It’s just interesting.”
It’s been 12 years since the Olympics were rocked by a score-fixing scandal in figure skating that led to a dramatic makeover in how performers were judged. Now, just a few days in to the Sochi Olympics, new accusations of similar nefarious actions have been just a few days into the latest Games. The French publication L’Equipe is reporting that a Russian coach, speaking anonymously, has said the United States and Russian judges have colluded to aid each others’ teams. The coach told L’Equipe that the Russian judge would help U.S. ice dancing duo Meryl Davis and Charlie White take home the gold in exchange for the U.S. judge helping Russia secure gold in the pairs and team events.
In this Oct. 18, 2013 file photo, Meryl Davis and Charlie White perform their ice dancing short dance program during a practice session at the Skate America figure skating competition in Detroit. World champions Davis and White should easily ice dance their way into the Sochi Olympics. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
In this Oct. 18, 2013 file photo, Meryl Davis and Charlie White perform their ice dancing short dance program during a practice session at the Skate America figure skating competition in Detroit. World champions Davis and White should easily ice dance their way into the Sochi Olympics. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
In a statement to the press excerpted by the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. Figure Skating Association has denied any accusations of wrongdoing, calling the accusations “categorically false” and adding, “There is no ‘help’ between countries. We have no further response to rumors, anonymous sources or conjecture.”
There’s quite a nice rivalry between the U.S. team of Davis and White and the Canadian ice dancing duo, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, who won gold in the Vancouver games (and are the biggest team standing between that U.S. pair and gold in Sochi). The two teams share both a practice rink and a coach. The U.S. duo took the first battle between the two earlier today when they outscored the Canadian duo in the team event.
Michael Slipchuk, of Skate Canada, told the Toronto Sun, “We were made aware of the article from L’Equipe today and we feel it is best not to comment on it. Canada is confident that the results of competition will be determined where they should be, on the ice.”
Meanwhile, Slipchuk did find it interesting that seven of Canada’s skaters have been called in for doping tests since arriving in Sochi: “Our skaters don’t complain about it. … It’s just interesting.”
Men's figure skating: from fire of early falls, Yuzuru Hanyu refines gold
Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan fell twice Friday, but Canada's Patrick Chan couldn't take advantage to win his country's first men's figure skating gold. The entire night was error-filled.
There is one image of the Olympic champion – the one that end up on the front of a Wheaties box. It is athletic perfection personified, a performance that strains the bounds of belief in its excellence or strength or sheer beauty.
The gold medal won in men’s figure skating at the Iceberg Skating Palace here Friday was not one of those.
It was an Olympic gold of a different kind, and perhaps one more common than the ideal. It was a gold medal of grit.
In figure skating, the two things can seem incongruous. After all, you will not find “grit” as a judged element among the program components. Nor did the skate by Japan’s Yazuru Hanyu in any way look like the teeth-clenched stuff of bobsled push athletes or cross-country skiers grimacing through every last meter.
And yet it was.
Perhaps Friday's free skate in the men’s figure skating competition will not be labeled for posterity by the figure skating world like the “Battle of the Brians” or the “Battle of the Carmens.” In the end, it was memorable mostly for Canada missing out on perhaps its best chance ever to win a gold medal in the event.
But behind the slips and bobbles and falls of what appeared to be a night of skating scared – with only one skater the entire evening rising up to seize a medal opportunity – there was the story of Hanyu, who did the next best thing: After falling not once, but twice, on his first three jumps, he got up and found a way to skate nearly perfectly the for the remaining four minutes.
On this night, that was the measure of an Olympic champion.
Competitions are won, said silver medalist Patrick Chan of Canada, by the skater that makes the fewest mistakes.
On Friday, those words could have been embroidered into every athlete’s outfit.
Hanyu’s mistakes were few in number, but huge. His genius on the night was in his ability to completely quarantine them from the rest of his program. On his first and third jumps – a quad and a triple flip – Hanyu crashed. They weren’t step-outs, they weren’t two-footed landings, they were smash-your-rear-end-on-the-ice landing fails. Yet remove those two mistakes from his skate, and it was brilliant.
Earlier in the night, when Estonian Viktor Romanenkov fell twice, the string of his will unraveled utterly. If he could have skated the rest of his program with his hands in his pockets, he would have done so. When he finished, he had fallen several more times and bailed out of a host of other jumps, making them singles or doubles. After the music ended, he wandered aimlessly around the ice for 10 seconds, as though the stadium were collapsing around him.
He finished last.
Somehow, in that same moment, Hanyu found the thread of his program and knit it into something lovely, each hand position unaffected by disappointment or doubt, every spin exact in its execution. He had had a five-point lead from the short program, but against a skater of Chan’s quality, he knew, that would almost certainly not be enough of a cushion.
“I thought the gold was out of my hands,” he said. “Some negative feelings were brewing inside me.”
By his performance, you’d never have known.
Meanwhile, Chan had decided the after the short program Thursday that he’d pay no attention to Hanyu, who skated immediately before him Friday.
“I was going to focus on myself – how much I love skating, how much I enjoy my program,” he said after the free skate.
By his performance, you’d never have known that, either.
Unlike Hanyu, Chan never fell, never made one catastrophic mistake. Rather, in his 4-1/2 minute on the ice, he was never able to do much of anything convincingly. He looked precisely how someone bearing decades of a nation's heartache might be expected to look.
He as much as acknowledged that after the event. His first thought after putting together a program that admittedly included a host of mistakes? Relief.
"First, I was relieved to get that weight lifted," he said at a press conference.
In the previous eight Winter Olympics, Canada had taken silver in men's figure skating four times (Brian Orser and Elvis Stojko, both twice) and bronze once (Jeffrey Buttle). Some have dubbed it the "Canada Curse," or perhaps, "The Curse of the Boitano."
But Chan might call it the "silver lining." Despite no small provocation in the media scrum afterward, Chan was unfailingly polite and refused to be drawn into the hand-wringing. Asked who he might call first and what he would want to hear, he said: "I'd call my parents and thank them" for everything they've done.
The night wasn't much better for anyone up and down the program. The only thing approaching a clean skate among medal contenders came from Denis Ten, the Kazakh who skated almost two hours before the finale yet won bronze. He had so much time after his skate that he actually went to the gym to work out. It was only when the last skater, American Jason Brown, gave way to his own mistakes, that Ten realized he might need to be on the podium and sprinted back to the dressing room to put on his outfit.
Ironically, the cleanest skate probably came from Jeremy Abbott, who has built a reputation for not performing well in big moments and whose fall in the short program was so violent that he considered pulling out of the competition. But his skate didn't help him much in the standings, both because he slipped so far down in the short and because he lightened his program's difficulty in the free skate, replacing his one quad jump with a triple. He finished 12th.
Fellow American Brown, who was sixth after the short program, finished ninth overall. That marked the worst performance in Olympic figure skating by the US men since 1936, when the top American finished 12th.
All the men were under no delusions about their performance.
Ten said, "I could see that everyone had to fight hard for their jumps."
But on this night, Hanyu's gold-medal feat was dealing with those feelings when, it seemed, Chan could not. It was a different kind of Olympic fortitude. Hanyu did not merely stare failure in the face, he tangoed with it for a half-minute while the world was watching.
Yet somehow, with his backside on the ice and his program in pieces, Hanyu did what no one else could do. From the moment he rose from the ice after his failed triple flip, he was wonderful. Had you walked into the room at that instant, you would have thought you were watching a gold-medal-worthy performance.
Which, in the end, it was.
Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan fell twice Friday, but Canada's Patrick Chan couldn't take advantage to win his country's first men's figure skating gold. The entire night was error-filled.
There is one image of the Olympic champion – the one that end up on the front of a Wheaties box. It is athletic perfection personified, a performance that strains the bounds of belief in its excellence or strength or sheer beauty.
The gold medal won in men’s figure skating at the Iceberg Skating Palace here Friday was not one of those.
It was an Olympic gold of a different kind, and perhaps one more common than the ideal. It was a gold medal of grit.
In figure skating, the two things can seem incongruous. After all, you will not find “grit” as a judged element among the program components. Nor did the skate by Japan’s Yazuru Hanyu in any way look like the teeth-clenched stuff of bobsled push athletes or cross-country skiers grimacing through every last meter.
And yet it was.
Perhaps Friday's free skate in the men’s figure skating competition will not be labeled for posterity by the figure skating world like the “Battle of the Brians” or the “Battle of the Carmens.” In the end, it was memorable mostly for Canada missing out on perhaps its best chance ever to win a gold medal in the event.
But behind the slips and bobbles and falls of what appeared to be a night of skating scared – with only one skater the entire evening rising up to seize a medal opportunity – there was the story of Hanyu, who did the next best thing: After falling not once, but twice, on his first three jumps, he got up and found a way to skate nearly perfectly the for the remaining four minutes.
On this night, that was the measure of an Olympic champion.
Competitions are won, said silver medalist Patrick Chan of Canada, by the skater that makes the fewest mistakes.
On Friday, those words could have been embroidered into every athlete’s outfit.
Hanyu’s mistakes were few in number, but huge. His genius on the night was in his ability to completely quarantine them from the rest of his program. On his first and third jumps – a quad and a triple flip – Hanyu crashed. They weren’t step-outs, they weren’t two-footed landings, they were smash-your-rear-end-on-the-ice landing fails. Yet remove those two mistakes from his skate, and it was brilliant.
Earlier in the night, when Estonian Viktor Romanenkov fell twice, the string of his will unraveled utterly. If he could have skated the rest of his program with his hands in his pockets, he would have done so. When he finished, he had fallen several more times and bailed out of a host of other jumps, making them singles or doubles. After the music ended, he wandered aimlessly around the ice for 10 seconds, as though the stadium were collapsing around him.
He finished last.
Somehow, in that same moment, Hanyu found the thread of his program and knit it into something lovely, each hand position unaffected by disappointment or doubt, every spin exact in its execution. He had had a five-point lead from the short program, but against a skater of Chan’s quality, he knew, that would almost certainly not be enough of a cushion.
“I thought the gold was out of my hands,” he said. “Some negative feelings were brewing inside me.”
By his performance, you’d never have known.
Meanwhile, Chan had decided the after the short program Thursday that he’d pay no attention to Hanyu, who skated immediately before him Friday.
“I was going to focus on myself – how much I love skating, how much I enjoy my program,” he said after the free skate.
By his performance, you’d never have known that, either.
Unlike Hanyu, Chan never fell, never made one catastrophic mistake. Rather, in his 4-1/2 minute on the ice, he was never able to do much of anything convincingly. He looked precisely how someone bearing decades of a nation's heartache might be expected to look.
He as much as acknowledged that after the event. His first thought after putting together a program that admittedly included a host of mistakes? Relief.
"First, I was relieved to get that weight lifted," he said at a press conference.
In the previous eight Winter Olympics, Canada had taken silver in men's figure skating four times (Brian Orser and Elvis Stojko, both twice) and bronze once (Jeffrey Buttle). Some have dubbed it the "Canada Curse," or perhaps, "The Curse of the Boitano."
But Chan might call it the "silver lining." Despite no small provocation in the media scrum afterward, Chan was unfailingly polite and refused to be drawn into the hand-wringing. Asked who he might call first and what he would want to hear, he said: "I'd call my parents and thank them" for everything they've done.
The night wasn't much better for anyone up and down the program. The only thing approaching a clean skate among medal contenders came from Denis Ten, the Kazakh who skated almost two hours before the finale yet won bronze. He had so much time after his skate that he actually went to the gym to work out. It was only when the last skater, American Jason Brown, gave way to his own mistakes, that Ten realized he might need to be on the podium and sprinted back to the dressing room to put on his outfit.
Ironically, the cleanest skate probably came from Jeremy Abbott, who has built a reputation for not performing well in big moments and whose fall in the short program was so violent that he considered pulling out of the competition. But his skate didn't help him much in the standings, both because he slipped so far down in the short and because he lightened his program's difficulty in the free skate, replacing his one quad jump with a triple. He finished 12th.
Fellow American Brown, who was sixth after the short program, finished ninth overall. That marked the worst performance in Olympic figure skating by the US men since 1936, when the top American finished 12th.
All the men were under no delusions about their performance.
Ten said, "I could see that everyone had to fight hard for their jumps."
But on this night, Hanyu's gold-medal feat was dealing with those feelings when, it seemed, Chan could not. It was a different kind of Olympic fortitude. Hanyu did not merely stare failure in the face, he tangoed with it for a half-minute while the world was watching.
Yet somehow, with his backside on the ice and his program in pieces, Hanyu did what no one else could do. From the moment he rose from the ice after his failed triple flip, he was wonderful. Had you walked into the room at that instant, you would have thought you were watching a gold-medal-worthy performance.
Which, in the end, it was.
Has President Putin married former Olympic gymnast? Alina Kabayeva flashes 'wedding ring' at TV cameras
Miss Kabayeva was filmed flashing a ring on her wedding ring finger while at an event in Nizhnekamsk, left. Putin, 61, was also spotted wearing a wedding ring while meeting the Egyptian defence minister last week
Miss Kabayeva was filmed flashing a ring on her wedding ring finger while at an event in Nizhnekamsk, left. Putin, 61, was also spotted wearing a wedding ring while meeting the Egyptian defence minister last week
Silver medalist Patrick Chan of Canada, gold medalist Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan and bronze medalist Denis Ten of Kazakhstan on the podium during the medal ceremony for the MenÂfs Figure Skating on day 8 of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Medals Plaza on February 15, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
Gold medalist Darya Domracheva of Belarus celebrates during the medal ceremony for the Biathlon Women's 15km Individual on day 8 of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Medals Plaza on February 15, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
Gold medalist Darya Domracheva of Belarus celebrates on the podium during the medal ceremony for the Biathlon Women's 15km Individual on day 8 of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Medals Plaza on February 15, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
Silver medalist Noelle Pikus-Pace of the United States celebrates during the medal ceremony for the Women's Skelton on day 8 of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Medals Plaza on February 15, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
(L-R) bronze medalist Elena Nikitina of Russia, gold medalist Lizzy Yarnold of Great Britain and Silver medalist Noelle Pikus-Pace of the United States celebrates on the podium during the medal ceremony for the Women's Skelton on day 8 of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Medals Plaza on February 15, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
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