This is really, really unfair!
Korean figure skater Kim Yu-na circles the rink with the South Korean flag draped around her back at the Iceberg Skating Palace in Sochi, Russia, on Friday, after finishing second in the women’s individual competition behind hometown favorite Adelina Sotnikova. / Yonhap
Experts say Yu-na had gold robbed
By Baek Byung-yeul, Kwon Ji-youn
Let’s get to the question right off the bat: Was Kim Yu-na robbed of the figure skating gold medal at the Sochi Olympics Friday? Was the biggest upset of the Games a result of home-ice advantage gone a little too far?
Kim failed in her bid to become only the third woman to repeat as Olympic champion, finishing second with 219.11 points after the free skate, 5.48 points behind 17-year-old Russian Adelina Sotnikova, who became her country’s first female champion ever.
However, retired athletes and experts brought into question the fairness of the judging, arguing that Sotnikova’s points were dramatically inflated, as did several media outlets here and abroad.
Kim had put up a historic performance at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, where she crushed the competition with a world-record of 228.56 points, edging silver-medalist Asada Mao of Japan by a staggering margin of 23 points plus.
The competition was much closer in Sochi. Kim skated flawlessly in both her short program and free skate, executing her jumps and other routines without mistakes. But Sotnikova, who trailed Kim by less than 0.3 points after the short program, pulled off an impressive free skate program that was awarded 149.95 points by the judges, a score just 0.11 points short of Kim’s record 150.06 in Vancouver.
Most experts appear to be in agreement that Sotnikova was good. But, perhaps not 149.95-points good.
Two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt described the outcome as “stunning.”
“I don’t understand the scoring,” she said while commentating from her booth at the Iceberg Skating Palace. American skater Ashley Wagner, who finished seventh, said she was “speechless.” She slammed this year’s judging.
“They need to get rid of anonymous judging,” she said. “People don’t want to watch a sport where you watch some people fall down and somehow score above someone who goes clean.”
Korean analysts have also questioned the legitimacy of the judging, reporting that one of the judges who had favored the Russian in the free skate had been suspended for a year for fixing an event at the 1998 Nagano Games. Another was the wife of the Russian figure skating federation president.
Judges from the United States, Korea, Britain and Sweden were not selected to the panel in the long program after being on the short program panel the night before.
“It’s true that Sotnikova performed well, especially as an athlete who has just moved from the junior competition to the senior, excluding the one mistake she made in her last combination jump,” said Yang Tae-hwa, bronze-medalist in the ice dancing competition at the 1999 Asian Winter Games. “But I definitely don’t think she performed better than Kim. The results don’t make sense.”
Junior national team coach Oh Ji-yeon said Kim’s program elements were not all that different from those of her program for the Vancouver Games. But Ahn Na-young, an International Skating Union (ISU) international figure skating judge, disagreed and suggested that Sotnikova was rewarded for coming up with a more difficult program than Kim.
Kim’s free skate had six triple jumps compared to Sotnikova’s seven, Ahn pointed out.
“This may have been why Kim received fewer points in the Grade of Execution (GOE),” Ahn said.
“As a judge, I don’t want to blame the coaches and choreographer, who usually design a program based on the athlete’s capabilities. Designing an appropriate program is also part of the coaches’ and athletes’ skill.”
Carolina Kostner of Italy executed 11 jumps, seven of them triples, and finished third.
The New York Times (NYT) reported that Kim’s short program did not equal her performance at the Vancouver Games.
Adam Leib, a national technical specialist for U.S. figure skating, told the NYT that Sotnikova’s double combination jump was a more difficult jump than Kim’s double toe-triple salchow jump. Sotnikova’s jump included the double axel.
“She received high marks for her good flow, height and distance. She added a 10-percent bonus by executing the combination in the second half of the program,” Leib added.
Yet controversy doesn’t seem to be abating, as Korean netizens continue to express fury over the second-place finish of the nation’s sweetheart and legend. And it doesn’t help that this was Kim’s very last Olympic appearance.
“I did all that I can,” Kim said after the competition. “It’s not about the gold medal. It’s about the fact that I participated in the Olympics for the second time.”