Did you catch the Olympics Pairs Figure Skating yesterday ? The judges gave the gold to the pair who made a deduct a point kind of mistake and the the silver to the flawless pair. Has anything started in the way of contest?

Well I figured they (the judges) know better and maybe because the gold medalists were skating forever (over 18 years) and this was their last chance and then they were going to go off and make babies after and also because Canada is afraid of China (okay the last two reasons are false)

The medal is based on a composite score that includes the short program (from the previous day). The pair that got the gold medal (Shen and Zhao) scored very high in the short program, whereas the pair that got silver (Tong and Pang) didn’t score as well. The slip in Shen and Zhao’s free program wasn’t enough to erase the difference.

@Harp oh fine, logic! :)

@Harp did they make it clear that that is the reasoning? Because if so, I didn’t see or hear it.
@Simone_De_Beauvoir I dont think people should lose what is rightfully theirs just because of political reasons.

The judges also go over video of the performance so they can see things that are not noticable to the naked eye, like symmetry,

@flo Yes, it was clear. The scores were shown on the screen. What made up their score in the final and what made up their combined score.

Here are the standings.

SHEN Xue /
ZHAO Hongbo 1 76.66 2 139.91 216.57

China PANG Qing /
TONG Jian 4 71.50 1 141.81 213.31

As you can see, the second place couple won the final, but were in 4th after the short program, which Shen and Zhao came in second in, winning gold overall.

@flo The announcers said exactly what Harp said.

Yes, the announcers said that if Pang and Tong had done better in the short program, they probably would have taken the gold.

Everyone, I thought the two numbers that were one for artistic and the other for technical. Okay I stand corrected then.

@flo If you go to the link, you can expand the numbers out and see exactly how they were scored.

In figure skating, there has been wrongdoing by the judges in the past.

@flo Yes, the last time that happened (in Salt Lake City) they changed the scoring method.

@marinelife what did they change about the scoring?
-And when and where do you think we can watch what we missed, I want to watch the short programs of the two pairs.

@flo Here is the article from wikipedia on the changes to the scoring system.

Here are the short programs of the respective pairs.

@marinelife thanks so much. I haven’t watched the video yet. I thought that they would only allow you to watch the highlights. I thought it would cut in the revenue if they showed the whole thing.
Till next time.