Well, bias and skating are old bedfellows!!!

But I do think seeing the routine first helps. If you've ever watched one of the routines a second time I'm sure you'll find you see things you didn't notice the first time because your brain is spending less time trying to predict what'll come next and more on really watching.

Awwwwww, Pam. *hugs* It looked painful! I was so nervous watching their rehersal! lol!! Their routine looked excellent though. I'm glad they're through.

Pam's a bit of a liability, bless her!!! We might get Natalia back! lol!

I think Kelly would have had to skate with a different partner just for tonight. Obviously David couldn't as the accident only happened an hour before.

But we are led to believe that performance on the night is the criteria!

surely the difference between the kelly/david cases is the timescale....todd was hurt a couple of days ago so kelly,in theory, had time to practice with someone else but pam hurt herself immediately before the show so david couldn't really be expected to skate....but if he'd been given the automatic bottom ranking from the judges i have no doubt he'd have been voted through in sympathy and if he was in the bottom 2 then an anti-climax of no skate-off....how about - since he's had a free pass to next week- putting him automatically into the skate-off next week but still having to perform the 1st time as well

It is. Sorry, I'm not saying this very well (my Canadian accent throwing you off!!)

But basically it's easier to judge something if you know what to expect than if you don't. So for instance, if you are judging a performance of music, the more familiar you are with the music, the easier it is to hear all the levels and the subtleties (which is one of the reasons why sometimes a song we didn't like at first listening we find after a few time we do --- and of course vice versa!!)

You do lose the 'spontaneity' and the 'wow' impact -- but I think if you are judging it as a 'sport', on its technical merit that's ok. If you were judging it solely as a piece of entertainment I guess it would be different.

i have always really enjoyed watching figure skating over the years butto be honest this sums up why i personally am uneasy with 'sports' such as iceskating, the acrobatic versions of snowboarding and skiing and to a lesser extent ski jumping (cos of the style marks) being olympic sports....it's all based on personal perceptions and opinions rather than an absolute i.e. fastest,furthest, most goals/points etc so there are always differences of opinions....and i'm not just saying that about winter sports, others such as gymnastics,synch swimming, trampoling leave me cold (although admiring the ability) cos of the subjectivity involved

Yep. I agree. But I hope that the changes to scoring in figure skating will improve some of the issues with bias, and give a better (more auditable) reflection of the overall opinion of a team of judges. (But it's freaking complicated, and I miss seeing the 5.9s and 6.0s!!)

sure the new system helps but it still comes down to 'i think a is better than b' with the important word being 'think' and sure the big names are just that because they are good but it also becomes self fulfilling when they get high marks just because they ARE the big names (as we have seen on doi last week with bonnie when she could hardly stnd upright but got high marks)

Well, it'll never be perfect. But the new system doesn't involve the judges ranking skaters any more. Instead they have to apply scores to each individual element which are totalled. Then of the 12 judges who are marking, 9 (I think) are randomly selected by a computer to be included and of those, the highest and lowest are thrown out. The granular nature of the scoring (having to give each jump or spin it's own score) the randomness of which judges scores count, and throwing out of the highest and lowest scores should give a better picture of quality.

But yep at the end of the day there is no way to judge these events except by 'expert opinion', which will always be subject to debate.

I like watching skating though, so for all that I would hate to see it leave the Olympics.

suze ...can i just point out that i'm not attacking figure skating- i enjoy it enormously and am old enough to remember watching john curry win gold- i have the same problem with all such sports that are ultimately a subjective opinion rather than an absolute

No problem, I didn't think you were.

We've got two options with regards to those sports though, we decide they aren't sports and take them out of the Olympics (which would break my heart as ironically they are all my favourites to watch!) or try to find ways to make the scoring less susceptible to corruption (they'll never be free of subjectivity).

I'm intrigued by the new figure skating scoring system (which apparently doesn't apply to Ice Dancing at the Olympics for some reason?!) and I'm still getting my head round it. Which is why I was droning on!!