Dissecting Silver

[jumpschool]

Where the Canadian media picks apart Virture and Moir's Olympic Silver Medal. In a nutshell: 1 judge has had it out for them and Marina can't win. Except she can. And did. Twice.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir settle for silver in ice dance at Sochi Olympics
The gold medal for the American pair of Meryl Davis and Charlie White is raising eyebrows,

Comments

[jedinic]

I kinda love these articles. I KNEW that coach-sharing would've caused conflict along the way!

As for who deserved to win...no one will ever be able to agree on that.

[jedinic]

As for that one low-balling judge, I'm still surprised he got on that judging panel when so many in the skating community knew that was going on!

[whiteshadows_]

Who is the judge in question?

[parcferme]

Shawn Rettstatt

http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/showthread.php?43013-Ice-Dance-FD-2013-14-Grand-Prix-Final/page11

[haruhiko]

"We went to Marina on countless occasions and told her that we weren’t happy and in no way were we going to be happy with a silver medal (in Sochi)... I think Marina listened to us and we kind of reshaped some of our program. But she’s an artist as well, so she wanted to stay true to her vision.... We were both pretty blunt with her in the fall - and even leading up to the Olympics - that we weren’t happy and we felt sometimes that she wasn’t in our corner... she handled that tremendously well. She just, she’s been with us now for 10 years and I really think that she loves us and she pours her heart into our choreography."

Maybe it's just me buuuut it seems like everything being said in these quotes seem to indicate that their relationship with Marina was pretty healthy? Obviously they were able to communicate their doubts and concerns and they acknowledge that she listened and responded, and they made it clear that there were some things that they weren't happy about but that they know she loves/supports them.

[jumpschool]

What I'm really curious about is the max points each of their routines could have gotten.

Of course it all comes down to subjective judges and they'll do what they choose, but did Marina build programs for both teams that *could* have potentially netted them the same amount of points and it was up to the teams to execute them to their fullest? And again, to the judges to judge them fairly.

[jedinic]

I'm very curious about that too. I wonder if each pair knew the other pair's max potential score?

[eaweek]

I think the maximum number of points any FD can earn is... 120.50? It would be all level 4s, all +3 GOEs, and all 10.00s on the PCS.

[haruhiko]

Also based on the actual video of their presser they only brought up Marina and talking to her about rejigging their program because press specifically asked what they did/how they responded when they felt they'd skated well but the judges made it clear they preferred D/W's program. It honestly doesn't sound so shocking or revelatory as the "question coach's loyalty" headline makes it seem.

[jumpschool]

Thx for sharing that link.

IA, the second article is the media latching on to one part of their story and making it bigger than maybe it really was because it's a more interesting angle than "the judging just didn't go our way."

[haruhiko]

I follow tennis much more closely than figure skating and imo this kind of thing is hard, you want to be honest in press conferences and talk about legit concerns and issues but at the same time you run the risk of looking like you're not giving enough credit to your rivals (though it's clear from the press conference that V/M made every effort to credit D/W for their win) and also you risk the media blowing it up into a bigger thing than it is.

Like, the NBC article on these very same comments purposely left out every single positive thing Scott said about Marina while leaving in all the rest, making it sound a lot worse than it really was.

[jumpschool]

Shame on NBC for that. Ugh nationalistic media. It's not the actual story if you leave half of it out.

[parcferme]

maybe it's not Marina giving them less than 100%, but Fedor purposefully making sure they can't hit Level 4s.

[thebadunkadunk]

Sounds legit, that manwhoor can't be trust tbh