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It Beats Pairs Figure Skating

Posted by RPM on February 16, 2006
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Apparently, you can fall down in figure skating and still win a silver medal. Imagine if this happened in a real sport. Say, for example, one of the Italian hockey players falls to the ice and a Canadian player scores a goal. Does the Italian team get a do over? I don’t know what I hate more, figure skating or tape delay.

My favorite drunk skier, Bode Miller, was DQ’d after straddling a post. I’m guessing that post won’t be the only think straddled in the Olympic village. My second favorite drunk skier is this guy. I’m especially fond of this description of his experiment on drunk skiing:

During the timed portion, the test subject had a couple near misses with skiers on the mountain, and almost ate shit a couple times going around turns. Going off a couple of the rollers, the test subject broke his tuck position, and started “rolling down the windows” to keep from falling.

Rolling down the windows is sweet description (one I’ve never heard), and I’m gonna have to start using it. The so called “Bode Miller Experiment” ended with the drunken skier failing on a 360 off of a catwalk (only making it 210 degrees around) and crashing in a magnificent yard sale.

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Comments

  1. #1 Dave S.
    February 16, 2006

    Reminds me of the Canadian chess master who once competed while high on dope.

    His only comment, “Resultwise, it was a disaster.”

  2. #2 Dave Munger
    February 16, 2006

    I’m not buying your logic. If a player is injured, in most sports, they stop the clock, get the player medical attention, and allow the player to continue if possible. Just about the only exceptions are events where the timing of the event *is* the goal, such as running or racing.

    I do think the chinese skaters may have gotten some sympathy points, but the skating they did after the fall was quite impressive.

  3. #3 RPM
    February 16, 2006

    My logic was bad, but my point was not. In other competitions where you are judged on a performance and have a limited time/space to perform your routine, you do not get to stop and start over again. For example, if you slip on the halfpipe, you don’t get to start back where you fell down. You must continue from where you are and that fall counts against you big time. The only judged sports I ever watch are X-games style sports. In the performance events in which you have a limited time to perform your tricks, they don’t stop the clock for you when you fall. A fall should count against you big time.

    If a player is injured, in most sports, they stop the clock, get the player medical attention, and allow the player to continue if possible.

    In football, if the game is stopped due to injury, the player must leave the game for at least one play. In basketball, if a player is injured, he is removed from the game. If he is due to shoot a foul shot and cannot, the opposing team gets to pick another player from the bench to shoot the shot. In soccer, if you get injured and must leave the game, play continues with your team one man down until the official allows you to reenter the game. These all sound like fair practices. I would have had no problem if the skater had stood up and continued her routine, but once she left the ice, her pair should have been DQ’d.

  4. #4 Rachel
    February 16, 2006

    Ah, but she didn’t leave the ice, and neither did her partner. She remained on it while the coach briefly inspected her knee to ensure she hadn’t torn a ligament and deemed her okay. That’s how it’s always been in ice-skating. It endlessly annoys me when people declare sports outside of their favourite area to be ‘not real sport’ because it has rule sets differing from their favourite sports. It’s ice skating, not half pipe. Of course it has different rules. And the football and basketball comparisons are invalid, as those are team sports with spare players available to replace injured ones.

    I think they did get some sympathy points, scoring objectivity has always been and will always be a problem in artistic sports such as ice skating, but they executed the rest of their routine perfectly. A short pause in the program is not a penalty situation. The closest comparison I can think of is in tennis where a player calls an injury time out. They are allowed a certain amount of time to consult with a coach or medical staff, and have the option to forfeit or pick up from where they left off, without penalty.

    It has different rules to X-game style material, and of course such a rule wouldn’t work for X-games, as they would be contrary to the nature or philosophy of X-games, which is to go all out in one go and either nail it or go down in a screaming heap. That’s not how ice skating works. I don’t see the big deal.

    But what really shits me is the sports snobbery that comes out here, where you deem it ‘not a real sport’ because it happens to have such a difference. I’d like to see your ass out there in a short program, and see how buggered you are afterward. Not a real sport my ass. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t render it a non-sport.

  5. #5 RPM
    February 16, 2006

    The things figure skaters do are amazing. They have great physical skills and have worked their asses off to get where they are. I could never perform the amazing feats they pull off each time they take the ice. And I find their sport unwatchable.

  6. #6 Rachel
    February 16, 2006

    It’s not my fav either, I only saw the event because I leave the Olympics coverage on continuously while pottering around. I much prefer the skeleton, luge or that new addition Snowboard Cross. I find many other popular sports (such as American Football) unwatchable as well, but never consider them not real sports. Of course, it would be daft for me to make statements on what is or isn’t a real sport, given that my all time favourite Winter Olympic sport is curling.