From: vlad@erg.sri.com (vlad)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.olympics
Subject: Re: Figure skating dispute (was Re: Synchronized Swimming Dispute)
Date: 12 Aug 92 21:31:42 GMT
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA

In article <1992Aug11.192100.12994@cs.yale.edu> loosemore-sandra@CS.YALE.EDU (Sandra Loosemore) writes:
>matt@unidata.ucar.edu (Matt Hicks) writes:
>
>   vlad@erg.sri.com (vlad) writes:
>
>   >Well, to make the sad story happier, there was one conciencious judge,
>   >American of course, who did not succumb to this Dutch assault on ABC and
>   >gave Diane the score that was .5 (!) lower than everybody else. As a
>   >result, on th eAmerican judge's scorecard, Diane was ranked below many
>   >other skaters who were still learning how to stand on their skates. All
>   >this gave Dorothy her gold medal. Hurray for USA!
>
>   It has always been my understanding that the highest and lowest mark are
>   thrown out in figure skating, so this particular American bashing tale
>   doesn't ring true.
>
>Your understanding is incorrect -- the high and low scores are *not*
>thrown out. 

Matt is confusing amateur figure
skating with diving and with pro figure skating. In amateur competition,
lowest and highest scores are not thrown out.

> The way figure skating is marked is that the numeric
>scores given by the judges are used only to rank the skaters and mean
>nothing by themselves. 

That is how it is done now. I don't recall whether in 1976 this system was
already in place. It may very well be that the system of adding up all
scores was in place then. But let us assume that they used the same system
in 1976 as today.

 The rankings of the skaters assigned by each
>judge are used to determine the winner -- the skater with the most
>first-place votes wins, the skater with the most first or second place
>votes places next, etc.  Thus a single judge who ranks a skater much
>lower than any of the other judges is unlikely to affect the outcome
>of the competition.  It almost always happens that the skater who wins
>a competition has a clear majority of first-place votes from the
>judges.

Well, I don't remember the exact numbers but suppose Diane had gotten 8
first places from foreign judges and 1 
twelveth place from th eAmerican judge. her total would be 20. Dorothy
would have gotten 1 first place from the American and 8 second places.
Total would have been 17. Thus, Dorothy would have won.
>
>This is getting into ancient history, but my recollection of the 1976
>figure skating competition was that Diane de Leeuw won the compulsory
>figures but that Hamill was a superior free skater and won the overall
>competition on that basis.  Although she was not a strong jumper by
>modern standards, her spins and choreography were terrific.

Well, in my opinion, she was way inferior to her predecessor, Janet Lynn,
who got only a Silver in 1972.

My recollection is that had the American judge not placed Diane near the very
bottom of her free-style rankings, Diane would have won. That was the
reason why that judge's actions caused so much furor.

I also recall that Diane was in no way inferior to Dorothy in free skating.

Vlad
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