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15 February 2002  

Skategate

Since I was asked: I'm glad Salé and Pelletier got their gold. Though I didn't see the competition (I expect to hear from the citizenship police any day now), it seems that all the experts agree that only unfair bias could account for the Russian win. But I wish the Russians had had their medal taken away. After all, they wouldn't have had it if the judging had been fair.

The bigger question this whole thing raises in my mind, though, is how someone can choose to invest the tremendous time and effort necessary to become an Olympian in a sport where the outcome is dependent upon the whim of an "emotionally fragile" judge. Or a nationally biased one. Here, according to the National Post, is what the French judge implicated in the Salé and Pelletier debacle had to say on this subject:

One is stuck between a rock and a hard place. We're here to push our skater, but without contravening the ethics and risking suspension.

On a related note, here's a good Robert Tracinski piece in praise of figure skating. In it, he gives an interesting explanation of its status as a sport rather than an art form.

The primary reason figure skating is regarded as a sport is that it could find no place in contemporary art. After all, the essence of the modernist approach to art has been destruction: to tear down the standards and methods of every art form, to destroy melody in music, to destroy realism in art, to expunge rhythm and grace from the dance. Amidst this orgy of destruction, why should the modernists wish to help create a new art form? And of course, if modernists were ever to gain control of figure skating, we can be certain that it would soon become unwatchable (and unwatched). Sports provide a relatively clean and safe refuge.

09:08 PM |