See below great quotes from Johnny and Evan showing their level-headed perspective. They just have to sigh, shake their heads and keep on moving forward. The quotes were included in a post on SkateFair Blog written by Sonia Bianchetti Garbato, a former ISU judge, Olympic referee, and author of "Cracked Ice," a book about the inner workings of the sport of figure skating:
Excerpts from Ms. Bianchetti Garbato's post on SkateFair:
"As reported by Salvatore Zanca of the Associated Press, commenting on the New Judging System, U.S. skater Evan Lysacek said the system 'is pushing the skaters to try for more difficulty, especially in the second part of the program. The thing is you dont need to necessarily skate a perfect program to have the results come out in the order they should.'
The mens event has always been my favourite. Usually at least the last two groups to skate are exciting, breathtaking, fantastic. But this time in Moscow I could have cried. I wanted to turn the television off!
Truly, it was the worst mens final at a World Championship that I have ever seen. A real disaster. The choice of the medal winners was not among the competitors who skated the best programs, but among those who skated the least badly!
After the mens qualifying event was over, and the draw of the starting order for the short program had been held,
Johnny Weir, the U.S. champion, was dropped from fifth to sixth, which meant that a new draw of the starting order for the short program was needed. When informed, Johnny commented, 'This is the only system in the world where you can drop a place overnight.'
And what to say of the fact that the free skating results that appeared on the scoreboard in the arena, on television and distributed by the Internet, with Lysacek in second place, Buttle in third and Sandhu in fourth, were changed after the medal award ceremony, dropping Lysacek from second to fourth place?
Is our sport becoming a joke?"
Excerpts from Ms. Bianchetti Garbato's post on SkateFair:
"As reported by Salvatore Zanca of the Associated Press, commenting on the New Judging System, U.S. skater Evan Lysacek said the system 'is pushing the skaters to try for more difficulty, especially in the second part of the program. The thing is you dont need to necessarily skate a perfect program to have the results come out in the order they should.'
The mens event has always been my favourite. Usually at least the last two groups to skate are exciting, breathtaking, fantastic. But this time in Moscow I could have cried. I wanted to turn the television off!
Truly, it was the worst mens final at a World Championship that I have ever seen. A real disaster. The choice of the medal winners was not among the competitors who skated the best programs, but among those who skated the least badly!
After the mens qualifying event was over, and the draw of the starting order for the short program had been held,
Johnny Weir, the U.S. champion, was dropped from fifth to sixth, which meant that a new draw of the starting order for the short program was needed. When informed, Johnny commented, 'This is the only system in the world where you can drop a place overnight.'
And what to say of the fact that the free skating results that appeared on the scoreboard in the arena, on television and distributed by the Internet, with Lysacek in second place, Buttle in third and Sandhu in fourth, were changed after the medal award ceremony, dropping Lysacek from second to fourth place?
Is our sport becoming a joke?"
