McCabe: Rigged 2002 Olympic Skating Possible Link to Trump

[mucifer]

Link to tweet

[Sedona]

1. The Rule of Nance

Last edited Sun Feb 24, 2019, 12:27 PM - Edit history (1)

Coincidence takes lots of planning.

[Baitball Blogger]

7. We're a long way from the days when we said, don't attribute to

corruption what can be explained away by incompetence.

That's all part of the armor that protects the white privilege society. Since they know they'll get passes in either case, they just move forward with decisions that allow them to skirt the law.

[Duppers]

9. Malcolm is the best!

We're flooded with info, thanks to a great investigative press, but we can only imagine the enormity of things the FBI and national security people like Nance are holding.

Talking to an average person about this is most frustrating. It's like the issue of global warming, they do not want to know. Someone, please explain this phenomena to me.

[spanone]

2. K&R...

[zentrum]

3. Whoa.

[onetexan]

4. Whoa is right

apparently SkateGate had its roots in RussiaGate

[PatSeg]

5. Seems to be a lot of Russians

behind every "gate" these days!

[onetexan]

8. no doubt, though at the time i was a big fan of the Russian pair Berezhnaya & Sikharulidze's skating

and thought artistically they were the better pair with higher technical difficulty despite their bobble. The Canadian team's performance was not as technically challenging nor as artistic. But what does this armchair judge know.

[PatSeg]

11. You know what is a real shame?

Historically Russians have excelled at so many things, art, music, dance, athletics, yet they still feel a need to cheat. How sad. Without their many asshole leaders, they are an extraordinary people.

[onetexan]

12. exactly - @the Sochi olympics it was clear there was rampant Russian cheating/doping

as many of the medals were then stripped after the fact, and the Russian athletes were not allowed to complete under their country's flag @the 2018 winter olympics. I think the whole Olympic thing is very political with alot of $ exchanging hands.

[PatSeg]

13. Yes

I have a hard time getting interested in the Olympics because it is so political and you always have to wonder if the winners were actually the best.

[zentrum]

14. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Tergenev, Chekhov.

[Awsi Dooger]

16. Tons of pressure on Russians to win the pairs event

They have excelled in the other disciplines but their artistry and teamwork and choreography is put to the ultimate test in pairs. I believe they had won pairs 10 Olympics consecutively heading into Salt Lake City. That's what led to the ongoing pressure and belief they had to fix the judging, once they were facing a strong team from North America while on North American soil. That 2002 Russian pairs team was very good but not among their best ever. Most of the time there really hadn't been much question the Russian team was superior. Babilonia and Gardner were similarly considered a huge threat to end the Russian dominance on North American soil in 1980. But Randy Gardner had the well-remembered leg injury that spoiled their opportunity.

As I remember from 2002, the fixing was a case of securing votes in one discipline in exchange for similar favors in another discipline. There have been many blatant examples of that over the decades, although this one was the only time one of the participating judges broke down and essentially admitted to it. The same thing was responsible for perhaps the greatest Olympic robbery of all time...Roy Jones being denied the Olympic boxing gold medal in 1988. That result caused the international boxing scoring system to be changed for 25 years, although they have now reverted.

BTW, there is so much Russian dominance of ladies figure skating right now that they come in waves and often the stars are replaced within a year or two. Last year it was the Olympic controversy between Medvedeva and Zagitova. Both very young but now already on the decline. Medvedeva is an emotional type and could not deal with that Olympic defeat despite skating flawlessly. She has changed coaches to Brian Orser from Canada. So far it has not gone well. Medvedeva finished 7th in the Russian championships and was left off the team for the European Championships. Zagitova placed 5th in those Russian nationals but was given a spot in the European Championships. She had the lead after the short program but had numerous mistakes in the free skate and ended up badly beaten by another Russian 16 year old. Zagitova is maturing physically and not landing her jumps with nearly the precision of 2017 or 2018.

[onetexan]

17. agree, the whole figure skating championships, as well as the Olympics, are pretty much a farce

the most blatant involving the Russians in 2014 Olys was the scoring of Adelina Sotnikova (Russia) over the exquisite Kim Yuna of S. Korea. They made sure she was not a repeat so they upped the technical and artistic scores of the Russian gal. Prior to the games, her scores on international comps weren't impressive. @the Olys, other than managing to stay vertical (albeit wobbling and hitting unattractive positions), she was clearly not in league with Yuna but managed to be scored higher.

[Awsi Dooger]

18. That 2014 women's result was a travesty

I felt awful for Yuna Kim. You could see the hurt and dismay on her face. She knew she had combined and executed everything the competition was supposed to be about, yet had it taken away by an upstart Russian jumping bean who basically didn't do anything before or subsequently. Heck, she wasn't the feature Russian entering that event. Yulia Lipnitskaya was the new darling and on all the billboards after the team event.

It was almost certainly payback for 2010 and Plushenko on the men's side. I remember the immediate speculation after that Vancouver result that somebody in Sochi 2014 was going to get screwed in favor of a Russian. I just wish it didn't have to be Yuna Kim, who is all all timer and deserves to be remembered as two-time gold medalist.

There have been more mistakes in the women's final verdict than all other disciplines combined, IMO, at least since I began following the Olympics as a young kid 50 years ago.

[Honeycombe8]

6. I don't believe in most coincidences, either.

Trump is such a con man. A grifter with a gold toilet.

[hughee99]

10. I only don't believe in coincidences when I want to believe something I don't have evidence for.

Otherwise, coincidences happen all the time.

[UTUSN]

15. K&R