OK I have to briefly share some thoughts about Olympic figure skating. Those of you who know me (hi) may not realize that I am quite a fan. Crazy dancing, shiny outfit, dramatic music, constant threat of death or dismemberment by skate... what's not to love? A few things actually. So far nobody has completed a pairs long program without falling. I'm not talking about a minor extra step, I'm talking about sliding on the ice on your butt, major bust-ups, and sometimes more than one a performance. I understand that to win, you really need an excruciatingly difficult program, one that there is some chance you wont be able to perform without falling. But really? No one can finish their program without ice burns? Questionable.
And to make it worse, programs that I, and the wise NBC commentators find dull, mundane, or "not elegant and completely without musicality" get high points, and programs that are LOVELY do badly.
This scoring system seems to reward difficulty of tricks over anything else, seems not to penalize falls very much. Fail, Olympics, fail (although not as much of a fail as not being able to groom the track for the race earlier today).
