Olympic Outrage

[Heather]

Hey Guys,


I don't know if anyone else here is a figure skating fan, but I have been very much into the sport since the 94 Oympics. I have always held the Olympics in high esteem as a showcasing of not only supreme skill, but of gracious sportsman ship. Today's decision to give the Canadian pairs team a gold medal after they were properly awarded a Silver, was in my opinion, an outrage:mad:
There is talk about "corruption" and undue "pressure" on a judge, but I don't buy it:rolleyes: The Russian team were far more superior in overall artistic quality. It makes me sick that suddenly, just because someone cries foul after the fact, that the Russian's win is tainted. This Gold medal is suppose to be "shared", accoring to the all-seeing, all-knowing Olympic committee:rolleyes: That is completely devaluing the essence of competition!!!! In that case, why shouldn't other Silver medalists come forward and cry foul too! How childish!
I hope that the wonderful Canadian people here won't take this personally, but the Canadian team and The Canadian Olympic Committee should be ashamed of themselves! In my opinion, instead of being given a gold medal, they should be given a box of kleenex and two Olympic Edition Baby Bottles:rolleyes:


Read about the bull crap here..
http://sports.yahoo.com/oly/figure_skating/

[edoctordave]

Heather: It is good to hear an alternate opinion on this.

[Matt]

After hearing about the skating controversy, the first thing I thought about was this...


SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Roy Jones Jr. had just finished beating on Park Si-hun's head for three rounds in the 1988 Seoul Olympics when the referee sheepishly lifted the hand of the South Korean in victory.

Three of the five judges gave Park the gold medal in a decision so outrageous that even the hometown crowd was stunned.

"I can't believe they're doing this to you," referee Aldo Leoni whispered to Jones.

Sensing they might have gone too far, officials quickly selected Jones as the outstanding boxer of the games. But he never got a gold medal, despite reports of payoffs that found their way into files of East German secret police.

If history is any indication, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier won't get a gold medal, either.

The Canadian pairs skaters are merely the latest losers in Olympics that have a rich history of judging controversies. There's usually at least one to add some spice to every games, winter and summer alike.

They usually come in figure skating and boxing, though there have been others in gymnastics and basketball.

All, though, have this in common — they are never overturned.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why are they deciding to start overturning results now?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020214/ap_on_sp_ol/oly_on_olympics_6

[benperkins]

It was rigged by the French and the Russians. And that was proven so they rightly adwarded the Gold Medals to the team that was robbed. I see no problem.

Ben

[Curti]

ya and canada got another gold :D:D:D:D:D:D no problem with that!! ;)

[Matt]

Well, what's done is done. Congrats to the Canadians. Now make them go away! :funny: Other athletes (not including curling players) deserve the chance to share some of the spotlight during these Winter Olympics. :)

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Matt
Well, what's done is done. Congrats to the Canadians. Now make them go away! :funny: Other athletes (not including curling players) deserve the chance to share some of the spotlight during these Winter Olympics. :)


:funny:
Hey! What's wrong with curling?! LOL. Any sport where you can drink while you play is OK with me:funny:
I've gone curling a few times. It's fun. It's a little bit like bowling on ice.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Geronimo



:funny:
Hey! What's wrong with curling?! LOL. Any sport where you can drink while you play is OK with me:funny:
I've gone curling a few times. It's fun. It's a little bit like bowling on ice.
You know, that thought crossed my mind when I was dialed into a little bit of non-stop curling action the other day. "If this is an Olympic sport, why isn't bowling?" :funny: Like bowling, I'm sure it takes some skill to play the sport at a high level but it's just funny to think about what kind of training these people go though compared to the athletes of the other sports. While the other athletes are working out, building their strength & speed, these people are sitting around, downing a few cold ones and sliding some stones across the ice. :funny:

BTW, Where do you go to play the sport of curling? Do they have places just for curling up there? Needless to say, we don't do much curling down here in Charlotte.

[Matt]

From: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020218/ts_nm/olympics_figureskating_judge_dc_2


The French judge said that she had been pressured for months to vote for the Canadian couple and claimed she was threatened after the Olympic competition and forced to admit she had acted under instructions from the French figure skating federation.

"I did not want to talk straight away, but my reputation has been tarnished and I have nothing to lose," she told the paper.

"Since the 2000 world championships in Nice, ISU members influence judges in favor of the Canadian pair Sale and Pelletier.

"The pressure again increased in Salt Lake City, but I judged in good faith that the Russians were best," she said, adding she had been threatened after leaving the judges tribune.


(Follow link above for full story)

[Heather]

Originally posted by Matt
From: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020218/ts_nm/olympics_figureskating_judge_dc_2


The French judge said that she had been pressured for months to vote for the Canadian couple and claimed she was threatened after the Olympic competition and forced to admit she had acted under instructions from the French figure skating federation.

"I did not want to talk straight away, but my reputation has been tarnished and I have nothing to lose," she told the paper.

"Since the 2000 world championships in Nice, ISU members influence judges in favor of the Canadian pair Sale and Pelletier.

"The pressure again increased in Salt Lake City, but I judged in good faith that the Russians were best," she said, adding she had been threatened after leaving the judges tribune.


(Follow link above for full story)


:shocked: :shocked: :shocked:

*Throws up hands*

This woman has no spine whatsoever! Had she told the Canadian Federation to take a hike and stood up for her opinion then this circus could have been avoided. Oh well too little too late..the Canadian Federation got what they wanted out of the deal. I just hope there aren't anymore of these tortured and "pressured" souls hanging around for the Ladies event next week!


Thanx Matt for the article:)

[benperkins]

Well the worst case of a team being robbed was The Czech Republic being beaten by a OFFSIDE goal in the Euro 96 Soccer touniment :furious: Sorry I ment the Germans

Ben

[SHANIANUTS!]

Here is an interesting item I got in one my digests today on this subject:
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 08:32:16 EST
From: stellacious@aol.com
Subject: In a society that loves to win, cheating shouldn't be a surprise


In a society that loves to win, cheating shouldn't be a surprise



Last Updated: Feb. 16, 2



Got to admit it: I love a good cheating story.
It doesn't have to be as big a stage as the Olympic Games, where a worldwide
audience has been exposed to some questionable behavior by judges in the
ice-skating competitions.
It can be a friendly game of checkers between friends. Because the thing
about cheating is, nobody's immune.
Olympic officials awarded a second gold medal to a Canadian skating couple
based on allegations of vote-trading between former Soviet bloc and French
judges following the awarding of the first gold to a Russian couple.
Nobody from the Olympics is saying it aloud, but it's clear some kind of
cheating went on.
For me, any news about cheating in sports harkens back to my childhood, the
time when most children receive their fundamentals in the art form.
For example, whenever we played Twenty-Eighth Street in touch football, you
had to make sure to keep score very closely or else they would add two or
three touchdowns when you weren't looking.
Or in basketball, where everybody knew Alonzo traveled whenever he had the
ball, even if he always insisted he didn't.
Even a contest as benign as Scrabble was unfair game. One particular member
of our gang was notorious for coming up with fictional words.
He always ended up winning because everybody knew he was very well-read - he
planned to attend college to become a writer - so few challenged him.
(OK, so that was me.)
As defined by Webster, to cheat is "the act of deception or swindling;
deception; fraud."
Cheating, essentially, is playing outside the rules. That's a fine way to
define morality for children's games, but it gets a bit more ambiguous as you
get older.
Because even as you learn cheating is wrong because it gives you an unfair
advantage, as you get older, a certain part of the brain starts to ask:
What's so wrong with that?
Some sportswriters and commentators in Salt Lake City have gone ballistic
with their outrage over this story.
Makes you wonder where they've been the last couple hundred years.
Cheating in the Olympics isn't an extraordinary development. Why do you think
they make all the athletes take drug tests?
As most experts have acknowledged, the sort of vote-trading alleged in the

skating incident was endemic during the Cold War. In Olympics-time, it hasn't
been that long since the Berlin Wall fell.
If this were another sport, the specter of cheating wouldn't blemish many
reputations. A sport like boxing has such a seamy history, real fans aren't
surprised by a dubious decision by a judge.
Professional sports such as baseball, football and basketball loudly proclaim
their freedom from cheating, mainly because those games are heavily bet by
professional gamblers who wouldn't gamble if they thought the games were
"fixed."
Despite that, every time referees in those sports make a boneheaded call,
half of the fans have no doubt somebody got paid off.
Most of us have cheated at something, particularly sports but also in other
arenas.
It might not feel good to admit you're a cheater, but if you include things
like lying on a resume, underreporting taxes and being unfaithful in
relationships in the definition . . . well, join the club.
Cheating is considered a flaw of human nature, but in the competitive sense,
cheating can also be viewed as a virtue.
Because if you are the type of person who will do anything to win, by
definition cheating must fall into that category.
Moving up in the corporate world may require a certain degree of "cheating."
If you are up against a colleague for a promotion and seek to give yourself
an advantage by spreading negative gossip about that person, is that cheating
or simply good office politics?
In some professions where obfuscation is part of the job description, it's
almost mandatory. (Don't tell me stockbrokers don't "cheat.")
Here in Milwaukee County, we have come to see how politicians can cheat
citizens in little ways with unfair taxes and poor service.
They also cheat in big ways, as the mushrooming pension scandal delivers
fresh tales of how county insiders concocted "back room" deals to inflate
their salaries and perks in full public view.
(Granted, if you're smart enough to cheat the public in full view at a
government meeting, that's pretty impressive.)
You can cheat your employer by leaving work early. You can cheat on your best
friend by talking negatively about him behind his back.
You can cheat on your mate by exchanging winks with a co-worker.
You can cheat yourself by not getting the most out of your ability.
Cheating is the flip side of what it means to accept your odds in life
instead of trying to artificially enhance them.
Considering what it takes to stick to the straight and narrow, if you're
someone who can honestly say you've never straddled that ethical line, maybe
you should check your pulse.
When cheaters are exposed in the media, whether it's college students trading
answers on a test or an Olympic athlete taking steroids to keep up with the
competition, it makes no sense to me to point a stern disapproving finger.
In a society that values winners above everything else, why do we act like we
don't understand why some people hate to lose?

[Eilsel]

I'm glad they got the gold and I'm not just saying that because I am Canadian. Their performance was flawless, absolutely no mistakes. Even if it wasn't as "complex" as the Russians performance, they still did an outstanding job. The Russian guy almost fell! I do have to say though that both pairs were very gracious about the whole ordeal. As far as saying that the Canadians were cry babies, they were not. I mean I'd be upset if that happened to me too. I'm just glad that it worked out for them all.:)

[Matt]

Scandal sells... :zzz:

[Heather]

:shocked: Yeeeesh make them go away:uhh:

You know something, it's amazing that while supposedly dealing with all that stress and pressure that they actually had time for a photo shoot:rolleyes: Talk about milking it for all it's worth:rolleyes:


Matt, are you trying to tortue me:funny:

[Matt]

Originally posted by Heather
Matt, are you trying to tortue me:funny:
Oh no, those images were for your enjoyment! :funny: Better get used to seeing them everywhere... at least until their 15 minutes of fame are up. :p

Seeing that they're "sharing" the gold with Russia, I think they should have shared the cover of those magazines with the Russian skaters. Oh well. :rolleyes:

[Heather]

Originally posted by Matt

Oh no, those images were for your enjoyment! :funny: Better get used to seeing them everywhere... at least until their 15 minutes of fame are up. :p

Seeing that they're "sharing" the gold with Russia, I think they should have shared the cover of those magazines with the Russian skaters. Oh well. :rolleyes:


Oh how sweet of u:smirk: :p

And yes, I do agree...since "fairness" is such a big deal to them why weren't the fair enough to share the cover with Elena & Anton? Hmm methinks there is a great deal of hypocrisy here:smirk:

[La Diablesa]

Originally posted by Heather



Oh how sweet of u:smirk: :p




:shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked: :shocked:

:p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p :p


:devil:

[Matt]

Don't be so shocked Silvi. That's just the kind of nice guy I am. :D

:p

[ShaniaLookAlike]

Originally posted by Heather
You know something, it's amazing that while supposedly dealing with all that stress and pressure that they actually had time for a photo shoot:rolleyes: Talk about milking it for all it's worth:rolleyes:


I'd say those photes were taken before the Olympics, for publicity. :p

[Heather]

Originally posted by ShaniaLookAlike


I'd say those photes were taken before the Olympics, for publicity. :p



:zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz:

[Heather]

Originally posted by Matt
Don't be so shocked Silvi. That's just the kind of nice guy I am. :D

:p



Oh yes.....the nicest:smirk:;) Hmmm.....perhaps I should unload all those great Enrique Igleisias pics I have:p :p

[Marine]

French :rolleyes:

[Matt]

Originally posted by Heather
Oh yes.....the nicest:smirk:;) Hmmm.....perhaps I should unload all those great Enrique Igleisias pics I have:p :p
Please no, I don't think I could take that. :cry: :funny:

Now that I look at it, I think the Newsweek picture may have been from a press conference but it's obvious the second isn't. This whole big controversy was probably the best thing to happen to the Canadian skaters. They wouldn't have earned this much attention if they had won the gold the night of the competition.

[edoctordave]

Originally posted by Matt

This whole big controversy was probably the best thing to happen to the Canadian skaters. They wouldn't have earned this much attention if they had won the gold the night of the competition.

That's for sure.

[Eilsel]

Just a quick question: Say if Sale and Pelletier were American, would you all criticize them then? Probably not! No offence to anyone, but I think that no matter what nationality they are, if they were from your country, you would probably be happy about it too. :uhh:

[Matt]

Originally posted by Eilsel
Just a quick question: Say if Sale and Pelletier were American, would you all criticize them then? Probably not! No offence to anyone, but I think that no matter what nationality they are, if they were from your country, you would probably be happy about it too. :uhh:
I just don't like how they're milking this to no end. They're taking all of the spotlight while the Russian skaters who also won gold are an afterthought. The way all this went down sets a bad example for future skaters and other olympic athletes who may come in second in future competitions.

Would there have been such a big deal made out of all this if the skaters hadn't been Canadian? Say the skaters were from finland for example, would there have been such a stir caused by the judging if the Fins came in second?

[Matt]

Originally posted by Matt
BTW, Where do you go to play the sport of curling? Do they have places just for curling up there? Needless to say, we don't do much curling down here in Charlotte.
My questions have been answered, curling is hot in NC! :funny: There is a 25-member curling club in Raleigh. :funny:

[Eilsel]

Would there have been such a big deal made out of all this if the skaters hadn't been Canadian? Say the skaters were from finland for example, would there have been such a stir caused by the judging if the Fins came in second?

Nobody can say for sure. But I do believe that there still would have been an upset about it. It would be the same thing if they were from the States. If they were from the States it would have probably had been more contraversial. I'm not trying to cause trouble but I just can't stand when people keep bringing this up. If they had of been from your country, you'd feel the same, i'm sure.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Eilsel
Nobody can say for sure. But I do believe that there still would have been an upset about it. It would be the same thing if they were from the States. If they were from the States it would have probably had been more contraversial. I'm not trying to cause trouble but I just can't stand when people keep bringing this up. If they had of been from your country, you'd feel the same, i'm sure.
Keep posting those pics Eisel. Heather can't get enough. ;)

Yeah, I know what you're saying and you may be right.

This is my question to anyone who knows anything about figure skating... How many judges vote on the outcome and how many judges (other than the one French woman) voted for the Russian pair over the Canadians? They seem to have made all this out to be the French judge's fault, but weren't there other judges who thought the Russians did better as well? The French judge wasn't the only one who voted for the Russians was she? My point is, the Russians must have done something right to get the votes from other judges. It was just a close decision.

[Eilsel]

There were eight votes excluding the French judge. Four voted for the Russians and four voted for the Canadians.

The Russians, Chinese, Polish and Ukranians voted for the Russians.
The Americans, Canadians, German and Japanese voted for the Canadians.

[Heather]

Originally posted by Matt

I just don't like how they're milking this to no end. They're taking all of the spotlight while the Russian skaters who also won gold are an afterthought. The way all this went down sets a bad example for future skaters and other olympic athletes who may come in second in future competitions.

Would there have been such a big deal made out of all this if the skaters hadn't been Canadian? Say the skaters were from finland for example, would there have been such a stir caused by the judging if the Fins came in second?


You read my mind:smirk: :p


Truly, I can't expect Canadians to be impartial on the issue. I'm not posing this as a criticism, but as a fact. These people are their countrymen, so their views on S&P's co-championship are going to be positive. But, no one can convince me that had S&P been an American team or a German team, that they would truly be so preoccupied with the issue. That's the way I see it. And personally had S&P been Americans, I would have still thought of them as crybabies:smirk:

[Eilsel]

__________________

[Matt]

The floodgates have been opened. Here we go...

Russian officials filed a formal protest of the women's Olympic figure skating final, saying silver medalist Irina ****skaya should get her own gold medal because of biased judging... (http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/winter02/gen/news?id=1338505)

and

The International Skating Union rejected a protest by the South Korean Olympic team, which threatened to skip the closing ceremony over Apolo Anton Ohno's speedskating gold medal... (http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/winter02/speed/news?id=1338293)

[Eilsel]

There, maybe Sale and Pelletiere will be out of the spotlight for a bit, eh Heather;) . I'm just kidding. I hope it all gets straightened out. I watched the skating last night after hockey and she did do a good job but she made a little mistake. Sarah, I think thats her name, deserved to win because she did do a great job. As for the speedskating, unfortunately I didn't see all of it, so I really don't know. Hopefully everything will work out. It would be a shame if anybody pulls out of the closing ceremony, and I hope that nobody does.:)

[Heather]

Ok:uhh: :uhh:


I agreed that what happened in pairs was unecessary, but last night the judges chose the right woman! Irina was tentative and sloppy last night, while Sarah was free and confident. I just don't see how they can dispute this particular competition. Sarah got the highest marks, won the long, therefore won the gold.