Once again, the Olympic games have occurred with many exciting events and athletes. Unfortunately, one of the things that wasn’t exciting was the supposed ice skating scandal which took place at the Iceberg Skating Palace in Sochi this month.
It is supposed that the women’s single skating judges gave slanted scores to Adelina Sotnikova, the 17-year-old Russian skater, so that she could take the gold medal.
But Sotnikova isn’t the only one who has been involved in a scandal due to judges. A few of the other scandals involve another ice skating scandal which occurred during the 20o2 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, where Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier and Russians Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, where the pairs had to share the gold medal on the podium due to a controversy among the judges.
There are many more examples. 2004: Paul Hamm in gymnastics; 2010: Evan Lysacek in ice skating; 2012: Shin A-Lam in fencing. I could go on forever!
But what does the Olympic Committee decide to do? Add even more judged events in this year’s Olympics. Ski Halfpipe (men and women), Ski Slopestyle (men and women), Snowboard Slopestyle (men and women), women’s ski jump, and the Figure Skating Team events are all the latest judged events in the Olympic list of events.
Now, how many regular, non-judged events has the Olympic Committee decided to add? Only three: Biathlon Mixed Relay, Luge Team Relay, and Snowboard Parallel Slalom.
The worst part of it all is that all these scandals take the attention away from all the other events that don’t have judges and are far more fair than the judged ones.
Judged events are subjective. If a judge is from a specific country, they’re obviously going give an advantage to their own countrymen, and in Sochi, Russia, people find it suspicious for Sotnikova to be in first place
Sotnikova was an amazing skater, don’t get me wrong. I feel really bad for her since she did skate amazingly, and I’m afraid that, thanks to the Olympic judges, her entire ice skating career will be scarred by this scandal.
Is it even worth cheating? What honor is there in gaining a medal when you didn’t even work hard to earn it? Isn’t it a horrible feeling to be accused of cheating?
