‎If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore



Monday, February 24, 2014

#501- It's kinda Soo-chi

It's been so long since I last posted or at least it felt like it. Last week and this is week has been filled with food, with the start of uni approaching get togethers are more frequent but that also takes a toll on the wallet especially with our god forsaken transport network and the prices it makes us fork out. I've decided that I'm going to buy a quarterly until they kick me off for using a plastic (yup not paper haha) ticket.

Winter Olympics has just ended and I need to rant it all out (sorry). Alright for those that don't know I love my figure skating (only follow it closely at Olympics) and Korean Culture so you can consider me a Kim Yuna fan, partly because I've come to love her by seeing her in various advertisements, collaborations- she sings well, variety shows and the out pour of love that she receives from the Korean public. After all, she is Queen Yuna for a reason.  I like many tuned in to watch the finals of the ladies figure skating, woke up early just to watch it which meant I only slept for 4 hours that day, my tv for some reason or another cannot receive the digital signals for channel ten so I was forced to watch it via my phone (thankfully it is legit live). When I saw Kim Yuna's performance it was just W-O-W, I've seen her other performances numerous times on Youtube especially her 2010 Vancouver one (you must watch she is just simply spectacular) and I knew that it wasn't her best performance but still it was flawless and you knew that she just deserved the gold. But no! Gold was given to a Russian who beat her by 5 whole points, I think it was just ridiculously and any one in their right mind (unless you're Russian) should not be able to fathom how that is at all possible, Kim Yuna is so graceful her transitions are just artistic and don't look out of place at all, every movement adds something to her skate whereas in comparison the Russian was definitely not as artistic but yet for some reason she beat her in the performance score. WTF? The Russian's free skate score was also abysmally close to Kim Yuna's free skate score in Vancouver, a performance that many describe as the the BEST EVER IN HISTORY so you should like me scratch your head in disposition wondering how on earth this woman was even allowed to get so close to that score when she had no where near the grace, poise, execution (she two footed and fell simple as that) nor choreography that Kim Yuna had.

Having read almost everyone news article out analysing the result, I'm so aboard the Soo-chi ship, Soo-chi in Korean is suspicious which is so appropriate because the Olympics is just another political battle ground it's like Cold War all over again. For one they commented on how there was no US delegation at the Olympics since whatever year (i.e. no president, first lady, vice president), the Russian skater two footed her landing which versus a flawless Kim Yuna, the judging farce is really prevalent when you compare how the 15 yr old Russian, Julia Lipniskaia fell repeatedly but still outscored American Ashley Wagner who did not fall at all, why? Because apparently the judges reward those who attempt hard jumps, if they fall well that goes into execution points but hey they still get the points for trying. How is that fair at all, is like saying I can attempt all the difficult jumps in the world and if I fall on every one of them I may outscore someone who didn't fall at all. What makes it worse is that the scores are now anonymous and are lumped together so you can't tell if there are any bloc voting which I'm 100% sure occurred in this Olympics as there was a tainted judging panel. One of the judges from the long program was from Ukraine and was previously found guilty of cheating but hedging votes,  another is the wife of the President of the Russian Skating Federation (CONFLICT OF INTEREST MUCH), and 2 other judges are from the old Soviet Union and well if none of their countrymen are they're going to root for someone in the Soviet Union. If you still don't believe me well, after the ceremony 2 of the judges were caught on camera hugging the gold medalist (SHAME!!!!). Finally, one of the other judges was Japanese and well Japan and Korea have a long history so you can assume that that judge was hating on Korea. All in all, because figure skating is judged subjectively, it's times like these when fans and analysts alike throw their hands up in the air in dismay.

I think it's going to be really interesting in 2018 because the Winter Olympics are going to be held in Korea and well Team Russia better bring ear plugs to drown out the noise of the crowd because I hope they get booed because they just rigged their home Olympics so that they ruined the hopes of a back to back gold for the country's most adored athlete, I mean she was held the nickname of Nation's Little Sister and that means a lot when it comes to measuring a famous person's level of adoration.

Finally, to those who care please sign this petition, I know that as the public we have no say in terms of changing the outcome but it was good to hear that Korea lodged a complaint with the International Skating Union so fingers crossed that that goes somewhere.
https://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/international-skating-union-isu-open-transparent-scores-and-remove-anonymity-from-the-judging-decisions-of-women-s-figure-skating-at-the-sochi-olympics 

Results of the judging:
http://rokdrop.com/2014/02/21/evidence-that-yuna-kim-was-robbed-out-of-a-2014-winter-olympic-gold-medal/

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