O O Ø O O O O
Best Games Ever
Jamie and David got screwed.
Let me admit, I'm not exactly a huge figure skating fan (far, far from it), but once again, the crowd says “perfect.” The commentators say “perfect,” and the judges say “I liked the fallin' down Russians instead.”
Call me a worthless idealist, but the Olympic picture I've always carried around in my head is one of athletic prowess. Slice the field up into a bunch of events, and whoever is the best in any given one gets a shiny medal. Sure, this depends on somebody's definition of best, but that can't be too hard to come up with, can it? We're talking athleticism. It's quantitative. First one over the line wins.
Yeah. I'm funny.
The Olympics, of course, have little to do with athletic prowess. Perhaps when everyone still competed naked things were different, but now it's an entertainment product, just like all the other pro sports that I used to like. (Come to think of it, competing naked is a pretty appealing marketing plan. I'm sure one of the new cable channels will latch onto that one in the near future.)
An entertainment product has to have crowd appeal, and though first one across the line works for me, it's obviously not enough for his royal-majesty-highness-right-honorable-big-studmuffin IOC Chair, or whatever he's making people call him these days. Crowd appeal requires judged events, it is said, so judged events we get.
There are points for second place. They're called style points.
Consider the ski jump, of all things. If ever there was an opportunity for an event to be based on good-old quantitative results, I would have figured the ski jump was it. Ski down hill. Jump off cliff. Measure distance at impact zone. Clean up bloody mess if required.
Of course, it isn't quantitative. That's not entertaining enough.
In the K-90 , you have style points. The style points, it would seem, are based on comparing your form with the ideal ski jumping form. The ideal form, of course, is the form which—in theory—would cause the ski jumper to jump the farthest. If this was true, then the person with the best style should fly the farthest, and win the event.
But, as I watched the K-90 gold medalist miss the silver medalist's mark by 4 meters, the irony began to beat its way into my head. When my grade 10 gym teacher told me that there were no points for second place, he wasn't being entirely truthful. There are, and they're called style points.
And when the Russians won the figure skating gold, well, I just had to laugh. Apparently all five people in the world who thought it was a better performance were on that judging panel. Way to go, folks. You've brought some real class to the sport.
The only thing funnier is going to be when his-royal-whatchamacallit IOC Chair declares these games, the judging-scandal-wrought, bribe-the-hosting-panel games, the “best games ever.” Best by who's measure?
I bet it's the figure skating judges that decide.
Kjell Wooding
Tuesday, February 12,
2002
PD
DXXXIV